You may have heard of these. They're different, divisive, over-the-top.... or they're as friggin' awesome but strange as a limited edition engineer's passion project ought to be. This is by a length and a half the most grippingly dynamic headphone I've ever heard, and I've listened to almost all of the flagship cans. They break the rules and hearts of flat-neutral-obedient engineer-listeners, but in service of a vision which takes many aspects of its peformance to a qualitatively different level from anything else.

If a recording is truly good, or good enough, or at least not a compressed mess, these will bring your attention to the presence, pleasure, beauty, and the emotional verisimilitude of the music, leaving sonic descriptors and analysis many miles beides the point. These are ARTICULATE headphones with infinitely fine grained, infinitely extended micro-and- macrodynamic, speed, absolute control over the most dramatic dynamic shifts and extremes WITHOUT any deterioration of pure timbre, harmonic spectra, or of consistent time and space relationships between instruments and musical lines. No parameter of the music drifts or fails when some other comes to the fore. They are effective and integrated in this way at any level of complexity or volume.

Compressed studio pop ecordings will not be forgiven by these; but for some reason heavy-and-progrssive metal, chamber music, acoustic jazz, singer-songwriter, and many orchestral recordings are all likely to sound wonderful and REAL in the manner of some of the best in-room speakers.

They're heavy - blocks of titanium, and comfort is average, but they're fine - they don't get bag - and I've placed Dekoni nuggets on the headband, which ease the load. But they've been fine for extended listening. The drape, as you might expect, is similar to bigger Grado headphones, particulalary the PS100 and 2000 varieties, whose design scheme it seems to follow, perhaps to an homage to Ricci's early days working with Grado 'phones. Or not. The shape of the band, the rod and gimbal adjustability, but with the very pleasant and cool vented pads, all contribute to a just-fine physical experience of wearing them.

The pure silver cable is itself a piece of nice jewelry, ornate and very Italian objets d'art in look and feel, but nice to work with, on the long side, and....affixed, non-detachable. That was an emphatic design choice, reflecting the Valkyria Titanium as a whole work, meant to be Ricci's statement, not something to tweak; and besides, making it a fixed cable eliminates one are of structural vulnerability, and one less junction....however important some listeners will consider that. I don't mind. I have swapped out some cables for designer ones, but it doesn't feel important here.

"Neutrality", in this work of transducer-art, is so far besides the point that I keep envisioning the "if she floats, she's a witch" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. These sound as they do, with some serious and unique technology, because their character reflects a distinct but hardly-uncommon way of listening to music, the vision of its designer.

Whether you like it is a separate issue; I am one of a number of user-reviewers who have been thrilled by the highly-refined and sonically rich armbar of dynamic control and infinitely fine-grained resolution. They're fast, slammin', refined, lovely, at times euphonically suffusing the music with a slight golden glow but with the muscle and pure agility to dare you to make 'em cut it out. They tell you everything. That drop of panache spoils nothing, as long as you don't need your gear to be all "just the facts" antiseptic. You get all the facts, fast, and eloquently, and frankly, most music should sound this good anyway, if it doesn't already.

Why am I selling them? I need the money. I've enjoyed them. I'll kill some bills, and aim for some other flagship in the near future. I'd like them to go to someone who'll appreciate them.