VZR Model One

[SladeNoctis]

Ordered myself a pair. Any suggestions on a dac/amp that's good pair for these and can switch between PC/PS5.
I hear that when connected to a console the mic isn't the best.

 

[AlwaysForward]

Ordered myself a pair. Any suggestions on a dac/amp that's good pair for these and can switch between PC/PS5.
I hear that when connected to a console the mic isn't the best.

Congrats! I’d say that you’re probably good to go with whichever product best fits your use/budget. I think one of the key benefits is that these things are incredibly efficient and designed to work directly with your PS5 controller.

I’m not really much of a gamer do I don’t have any product recommendations other than the confidence that you should have pretty good results from anything & that upscaled performance will definitely be a good investment.

 

[b0lt 0ns]

Ordered myself a pair. Any suggestions on a dac/amp that's good pair for these and can switch between PC/PS5.
I hear that when connected to a console the mic isn't the best.

these are very easy to drive so pretty much anything including portable amps will power it well. i originally used a FiiO E10K DAC/AMP and it sounded pretty good for $99

 

[561915]

After a couple days of gaming and music listening, I think I can form some preliminary people opinions on them. I don’t think I’m past the breakin point yet, but so far I like them quite a bit.

The build is very nice and feels sturdy. The headphones have very good passive noise insulation. They’re pretty comfortable but move around a little bit and have some interesting microphonics when you touch the headband.

My friends told me the mic was quiet and staticky but I think this was an issue with the motherboard port of my current setup. I don’t really care about mic quality since I use external mics anyways and care more about whatever is going into my ears when I buy a pair of headphones.

Sound quality wise I think they’re very good. Compared to the HyperX I have, there is no competition, especially in the high and low frequencies. The VZR’s have much more controlled and deeper bass and also have more resolution in the higher frequencies and don’t have that ~7k dip. The stock tuning is perfect for gaming and movies but for music I concur with others that the vocals are not as forward. This is similar to my DT990s in some ways but overall I would say the stock tuning of these lends itself to most applications and is mostly inoffensive. Soundstage; pretty wide for a closed back headphone and the positioning is incredible for gaming, it borderline felt like cheating sometimes in terms of finding enemies, if only my aim didn’t suck so much lol. My standard headphones/speaker testing song is Flight of the Cosmic Hippo by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, and these headphones passed. Many setups fail in this song with either bass uniformity or a natural treble response. This usually makes the bass in this song sound either dull or completely missing, or makes the harmonica and banjo sound unnatural. The VZRs make the bass sound correct and impactful, as well as not losing a natural tone to the instruments and drums. The bass solo starting at 2:03 will show any system’s weaknesses with bass speed and high frequency resolution, you should be able to hear the bassist’s fingers moving on the strings while also being blasted with clean bass. Speaking of the drums, I do agree with others that the drums sound very realistic and not overly sibilant. Misty by Frank Sinatra sounds spacious and positioned incredibly. It sounds like the orchestra and the drums have their own pocket in space. I have more to listen before I can form a final opinion, but I will say that an amp is almost required to extract the most out of these headphones. The difference from a lightning dongle to a JDS Atom is immense. (UPDATE: tried the USB-C Apple Dongle through an iPad, quite a bit better than the Lightning dongle into my phone, the amp is still better even though the headphones sound pretty good through the USB-C Apple Dongle) They do seem to be pretty efficient so really anything that provides clean power should work beautifully, I’m sure they scale well though.

 

[b0lt 0ns]

They definitely need amplification but nothing major. The apple dongle is overhyped or at least it doesn't work on Android phones properly I couldn't even get library level volume out of my moondrop chus with it let alone these things.

If you enjoy bassy music use the bass and high boost setting on peace apo eq. I listened for 3 hours to EDM/dubstep and the bass is so heavy and clean IMO. I don't think I'll be able to use them neutral outside of videos/gaming anymore lol.

 

[AlwaysForward]

They definitely need amplification but nothing major. The apple dongle is overhyped or at least it doesn't work on Android phones properly I couldn't even get library level volume out of my moondrop chus with it let alone these things.

If you enjoy bassy music use the bass and high boost setting on peace apo eq. I listened for 3 hours to EDM/dubstep and the bass is so heavy and clean IMO. I don't think I'll be able to use them neutral outside of videos/gaming anymore lol.

Lol that’s some serious dedication to bass. I would say that I’m an audiophile bass head, I’m mostly into EDM/Dance artists nowadays but my music journey started out playing in bands and recoding.

In practice, I tend to be the kind of user that enjoys the Harman reference curve and their “more bass” curve which adds a 3db shelf. For example, with the Sennheiser 560s, I love the clean standard tuning and how well it takes a bass boost while retaining the mids/highs. Or when I am using an Audeze w/ Reveal, I’ll switch between their curve as is and adding a bass shelf to it depending on my mood.

The VZR is the first time I have ever heard a reference tuning that satisfies both sides of my heart and brain without EQ. It’s strange.

 

[561915]

They definitely need amplification but nothing major. The apple dongle is overhyped or at least it doesn't work on Android phones properly I couldn't even get library level volume out of my moondrop chus with it let alone these things.

If you enjoy bassy music use the bass and high boost setting on peace apo eq. I listened for 3 hours to EDM/dubstep and the bass is so heavy and clean IMO. I don't think I'll be able to use them neutral outside of videos/gaming anymore lol.

I definitely want to experiment a bit with EQ and see what these are capable of. The Apple dongle works great as a DAC into another amp, but not as it’s own amp. Part of me wishes there was a nice powerful dongle but at the end of the day they’ll always lose out to an external battery or plug.

Lol that’s some serious dedication to bass. I would say that I’m an audiophile bass head, I’m mostly into EDM/Dance artists nowadays but my music journey started out playing in bands and recoding.

In practice, I tend to be the kind of user that enjoys the Harman reference curve and their “more bass” curve which adds a 3db shelf. For example, with the Sennheiser 560s, I love the clean standard tuning and how well it takes a bass boost while retaining the mids/highs. Or when I am using an Audeze w/ Reveal, I’ll switch between their curve as is and adding a bass shelf to it depending on my mood.

The VZR is the first time I have ever heard a reference tuning that satisfies both sides of my heart and brain without EQ. It’s strange.

Stock EQ they are a bit low in quantity for me in terms of bass but they are definitely satisfying out of the box. If they take EQ as well as I hope they will then I think the VZRs kill quite a bit of the sub $500 market in terms of closed backs.

 

[AlwaysForward]

I definitely want to experiment a bit with EQ and see what these are capable of. The Apple dongle works great as a DAC into another amp, but not as it’s own amp. Part of me wishes there was a nice powerful dongle but at the end of the day they’ll always lose out to an external battery or plug.

Stock EQ they are a bit low in quantity for me in terms of bass but they are definitely satisfying out of the box. If they take EQ as well as I hope they will then I think the VZRs kill quite a bit of the sub $500 market in terms of closed backs.

Which headphones have bass aligned with your preferences?

 

[b0lt 0ns]

I definitely want to experiment a bit with EQ and see what these are capable of. The Apple dongle works great as a DAC into another amp, but not as it’s own amp. Part of me wishes there was a nice powerful dongle but at the end of the day they’ll always lose out to an external battery or plug.

Stock EQ they are a bit low in quantity for me in terms of bass but they are definitely satisfying out of the box. If they take EQ as well as I hope they will then I think the VZRs kill quite a bit of the sub $500 market in terms of closed backs.

you can get rid of those suppressed vocals rather easily with EQ. i honestly just love the bass though lol.

Lol that’s some serious dedication to bass. I would say that I’m an audiophile bass head, I’m mostly into EDM/Dance artists nowadays but my music journey started out playing in bands and recoding.

In practice, I tend to be the kind of user that enjoys the Harman reference curve and their “more bass” curve which adds a 3db shelf. For example, with the Sennheiser 560s, I love the clean standard tuning and how well it takes a bass boost while retaining the mids/highs. Or when I am using an Audeze w/ Reveal, I’ll switch between their curve as is and adding a bass shelf to it depending on my mood.

The VZR is the first time I have ever heard a reference tuning that satisfies both sides of my heart and brain without EQ. It’s strange.

yea i enjoy good bass on most genres it just makes it sound better to me. when im in the mood for neutral sound i just use my HD650s but for EDM/dubstep hands down the model ones are my go to. i think i prefer warm/colored sound which is why bought a bottlehead crack to dip my toes into tube amps.

ever since i got a set of HD58X and EQd them with oratory1990 settings the bass on the VZR didnt sound as good anymore but im glad i decided to start playing with EQ. i was trying to avoid it for a while because it seemed like cheating but i would rather cheat and enjoy the headphones than not want to use them because i didnt like something about the sound.

 

[561915]

Which headphones have bass aligned with your preferences?

EQ’d T20RPs had nice bass quantity and was fast but something sounded kinda “hard” about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Also the drivers rattled some with low frequencies. I generally like speakers for bass though.

you can get rid of those suppressed vocals rather easily with EQ. i honestly just love the bass though lol.
ever since i got a set of HD58X and EQd them with oratory1990 settings the bass on the VZR didnt sound as good anymore but im glad i decided to start playing with EQ. i was trying to avoid it for a while because it seemed like cheating but i would rather cheat and enjoy the headphones than not want to use them because i didnt like something about the sound.

I’ll give EQ a shot once I’m at a PC again. I don’t feel like EQ is “cheating” as much as it is tweaking a headphone to your own preferences. I just really like when a headphone sounds good out of the box so I can plug it into whatever and know what it’ll sound like. Some sort of hardware parametric EQ on a portable amplifier would be cool for carrying around your EQ settings.

 

[561915]

One of the things the guy mentioned in the reviews I linked is that VZR is working on other models. I would like to see a higher end model (maybe $500ish?) with a more advanced driver and slightly different bass tuning. The driver itself doesn't seem to be anything special (even though they say it's custom), kind of the typical $100 to $300 level dynamic driver that is very likely being elevated due to the tricks they're using. I'd like to see what some higher end features combined with the acoustic lens is like. As of now these just can't keep up with the dynamics/clarity/speed of my other headsets that aren't even that much more expensive. It wouldn't shock me if they came out with a cheaper model too since most people out there won't spend this kind of money on a gaming headset.

I agree with this guy here that VZR should make a higher end model. I think a biodynamic driver would be cool, or possibly a more advanced frequency shaping lens.

 

[AlwaysForward]

“,,, neutral sound i just use my HD650s”

650 is a euphoric experience but it is definitely not neutral. 600 is closer but not with music that has a lot of sun bass information

 

[b0lt 0ns]

650 is a euphoric experience but it is definitely not neutral. 600 is closer but not with music that has a lot of sun bass information

I mean neutral in the sense that it doesn't add anything to the music that doesnt belong, at least to my ears. this is obvious when you EQ them to Harman and they don't actually sound different. I can't stand bright headphones that's the only thing that will fatigue me with a headphone which is why they are amazing. They are the one headphone I will never get rid of, sennheiser's sound is what got me started into headphones.

 

[AlwaysForward]

I mean neutral in the sense that it doesn't add anything to the music that doesnt belong, at least to my ears. this is obvious when you EQ them to Harman and they don't actually sound different. I can't stand bright headphones that's the only thing that will fatigue me with a headphone which is why they are amazing. They are the one headphone I will never get rid of, sennheiser's sound is what got me started into headphones.

Purely my own view of the state of the headphone community, not aimed at you but imho the semantics of what neutrality should mean or does mean is a massive point of confusion in head-fi dialogue.

I think it’s a common thing to acquire a mental model of neutrality from one’s initial experience with a hifi product, like the 650 or in the case of speakers, it’s often bookshelf sound that lacks bass and has a colored/euphonic optimization in its design.

When I refer to neutrality, what I am interested in is closer to studio monitoring or professional mixing environments. I am of the belief that neutrality should refer to as close to the sound in real life or ideal professional audio settings to inform what neutrality actually means.

And just as in real life there is variation in rooms or studios with how the sound shows up, so too should we not be overly dogmatic with Harman as an immutable truth.

In fact: Jude, Crinnacle and many others have pointed to the upper mids of Harman being somewhat over emphasized for their own tastes when comparing to their respective experiences with live sound. I think I fall into this camp as well.

You can see the trend of Apple AirPods Max and Sennheiser IE900/600 fitting into neutrality while relaxing that upper mids spike.

In the case of the VZR, I think it’s arguably aligned with this mids preference in how neutrality shows up.

Ok I’ll step down off the soapbox now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[b0lt 0ns]

Purely my own view of the state of the headphone community, not aimed at you but imho the semantics of what neutrality should mean or does mean is a massive point of confusion in head-fi dialogue.

I think it’s a common thing to acquire a mental model of neutrality from one’s initial experience with a hifi product, like the 650 or in the case of speakers, it’s often bookshelf sound that lacks bass and has a colored/euphonic optimization in its design.

When I refer to neutrality, what I am interested in is closer to studio monitoring or professional mixing environments. I am of the belief that neutrality should refer to as close to the sound in real life or ideal professional audio settings to inform what neutrality actually means.

And just as in real life there is variation in rooms or studios with how the sound shows up, so too should we not be overly dogmatic with Harman as an immutable truth.

In fact: Jude, Crinnacle and many others have pointed to the upper mids of Harman being somewhat over emphasized for their own tastes when comparing to their respective experiences with live sound. I think I fall into this camp as well.

You can see the trend of Apple AirPods Max and Sennheiser IE900/600 fitting into neutrality while relaxing that upper mids spike.

In the case of the VZR, I think it’s arguably aligned with this mids preference in how neutrality shows up.

Ok I’ll step down off the soapbox now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

I could be misusing terminology I only just really got into headphones 2 months ago and I simply looked up the definitions of terms people generally use referring to sounds when talking about different headphones so i might not have the best understanding of what those terms actually sound like. I've only owned 6 headphones and 2 IEMs so far with 3 of them being sennheiser.

What I assumed neutral was is something that does not lack or excel at any specific sound. Something that can play any genre of music just as well as the next.