[geoffalter11]

Good Evening all... On Roon tonight with the Atrium and HP8 MK2 Signature. Might not be everyone's cup of tea. If not, disregard. For those who appreciate this type of music this quite a tasty 20 minutes of music.

 

[goldwerger]

I love nice cables for their esthetic and, mostly, ergonomic value, an I generally don’t hear any difference switching these around. But I’ve had a really unique experience with the Atrium I thought worth sharing.

Had a small meetup at my place a couple of days ago with @HiFiHawaii808 who brought with him a Lazuli Reference cable with mini XLR adapters. We tried them with the Atrium and I was really surprised to hear a (very) audible improvement - which was in more airy trebles, with the commonly related side effect of opening the sound stage. That wider sound stage was the lasting impression I had from trying this out.

These are heavy(!) and expensive(!) cables (and they are the cheapest and lightest those guys offer ) - but the Atrium sounded absolutely wonderful with them.

For those of you who may have this cable (likely Utopia owners with whom I gather this is a popular choice), get yourself adapters and try hooking it up to the Atrium.

For those of you who wonder, yea you can order them straight up with mini XLRs..

Item added to my bucket list of Atrium accessories

 

[TheMiddleSky]

Cocobolo's attack is still going on...

 

[geoffalter11]

Iv

I love nice cables for their esthetic and, mostly, ergonomic value, an I generally don’t hear any difference switching these around. But I’ve had a really unique experience with the Atrium I thought worth sharing.

Had a small meetup at my place a couple of days ago with @HiFiHawaii808 who brought with him a Lazuli Reference cable with mini XLR adapters. We tried them with the Atrium and I was really surprised to hear a (very) audible improvement - which was in more airy trebles, with the commonly related side effect of opening the sound stage. That wider sound stage was the lasting impression I had from trying this out.

These are heavy(!) and expensive(!) cables (and they are the cheapest and lightest those guys offer ) - but the Atrium sounded absolutely wonderful with them.

For those of you who may have this cable (likely Utopia owners with whom I gather this is a popular choice), get yourself adapters and try hooking it up to the Atrium.

For those of you who wonder, yea you can order them straight up with mini XLRs..

Item added to my bucket list of Atrium accessories

I’ve been using an Audio Sensibility Silver Statement with the Atrium with tremendous results. The Atrium sounds great with the stock cables too. The Silver Statement just tightens things up while providing a bit more top end resolution. The Dana Lazuli Cables are amazing, I can imagine they sound awesome with the Atrium.

 

[G8torbyte]

Been on a Funk/Soul/R&B kick after watching the animated movie "Minions: Rise of Gru" with my son over the weekend. It has a lot of classic funky music in the soundtrack.
I was a kid in the 70's so it brings back a lot of fun nostalgia and memories grooving at the skating rink.
Atriums bring such sweet life and imagery to this genre.

Found this gem looking up some classics from the 70's:

George still rocking it well

And this one was featured in the movie and I can't get it out of my head. Not so much for her singing but the brass, piano and percussion arrangement has me hooked. Moar cowbell!
I can see why Len sampled the break for their "Steal My Sunshine" single.

 

[bigjako]

An interim update on my Atrium experience. It still has less than 30 hours on it, so take with a big grain of salt. My last post was when it had less than 20 hours and things have changed substantially.

While I liked what the silver michanikos cable did for the top end, today I went back to the OFC because the silver cable lost a lot of the bass texture, which blew me away. I'd never heard anything like it. But with burn in, things have really opened up and spaced out. It's now very transparent and fast. I spent today going back and forth between the Atrium (on a Kenzie) and a few electrostatics (007 mk1, ES-1a and Sigma NB) and I feel like only the ES-1a was faster and less congested. The Atrium, in the way it (naturally) spaces everything out approaches that estat transparency and lack of distortion. I almost feel dumb for writing that the Atrium was less congested than a Stax 007 mk1, like it can't be so, but that's what I heard today.

One fun test for you: there's an instrument that gets played at 3:30 on The Band's The Weight. I don't know what it is, it's like an accordion or a mouth harp. I could barely hear it last week and today it came through a lot clearer on the same cable, which I credit to the burn-in. On the estats, that sound comes through much clearer.

I also did a quick comparison to the OG Auteur and the tonality was still very similar, but the OG felt a lot slower and more muddied. I love to A/B but I also know that it stacks the deck against the B variant because my brain is accustomed to the A. So I need to do some longer-term comparisons, but the Atrium is really special. Slam, bass texture/detail, very transparent and with a wonderful timbre. My favorite thing about the Auteur was how slow it was, but how liquid it was too - the best explanation I can give is to imagine a dark pool. When you drop a pebble into it, you get these concentric circles of sound slowly moving outwards. The nature of the Auteur was that there could be many, many pebbles dropped into the pool, with many overlapping concentric circles of sound rippling into each other. When I say slow, in this sense I mean you could hear the trailing edge of notes clearly just as you could hear the leading edge of new notes coming in. It was all very liquid and sweet, syrupy. I don't want to lose that, which is why I still can't imagine upgrading it, but the Atrium is growing on me.

I have a silver-plated copper cable coming in soon and I'm looking forward to what that does.

 

[JayDM]

Received mine yesterday and WOW. These are the first headphones I’ve owned which are as gorgeous to look at as they are amazing to listen to. I just can’t get over how beautiful they are.

I don’t know if I’ve just been extremely lucky with my timing and choices but every time I purchase a ZMF product I receive it WAY quicker than expected. I ordered the Atrium last week… seeing the 4+ week estimate on lead times I always expect ZMF’s to be a buy and forget for a while purchase, however I’ve always gotten shipping confirmation within 7 days on all of my orders. I mean I haven’t even received any of the 3 aftermarket cables I grabbed to try with the Atrium, bit novel to get the cans before the cables.

Too early to say anything about the sound except that I really enjoy it so far, first impressions are that they magnify what many previous ZMF’s have done well while also removing or improving on the small weaknesses I’ve found with previous models.

Comfort as usual is a surprise for me. Being large and heavy I never expect to find ZMF’s very comfortable, yet I always do. I’ve come to find that for me, weight is much less of an issue than design and removing hot spots on the top of the head. I don’t know why I’m still surprised as I’ve known this for a while, but my natural thought is light=comfort as well as believing I will much prefer the more traditional designs of Focal type cans. Both do not hold true for me, I much prefer a heavier headphone with a good suspension strap to the much lighter Focals, when they’re on my head I never notice the difference in weight, only the way it is distributed. Perhaps the co-pilot pad plays a big factor in my favor towards the ZMF design, but with it I don’t find the comfort much less than a Meze Elite.

 

[warrenpchi]

I have a silver-plated copper cable coming in soon and I'm looking forward to what that does.

I'll bring something to CanJam for you to try. I think you'll be amazed at how it's only copper.

 

[geoffalter11]

Received mine yesterday and WOW. These are the first headphones I’ve owned which are as gorgeous to look at as they are amazing to listen to. I just can’t get over how beautiful they are.

I don’t know if I’ve just been extremely lucky with my timing and choices but every time I purchase a ZMF product I receive it WAY quicker than expected. I ordered the Atrium last week… seeing the 4+ week estimate on lead times I always expect ZMF’s to be a buy and forget for a while purchase, however I’ve always gotten shipping confirmation within 7 days on all of my orders. I mean I haven’t even received any of the 3 aftermarket cables I grabbed to try with the Atrium, bit novel to get the cans before the cables.

Too early to say anything about the sound except that I really enjoy it so far, first impressions are that they magnify what many previous ZMF’s have done well while also removing or improving on the small weaknesses I’ve found with previous models.

Comfort as usual is a surprise for me. Being large and heavy I never expect to find ZMF’s very comfortable, yet I always do. I’ve come to find that for me, weight is much less of an issue than design and removing hot spots on the top of the head. I don’t know why I’m still surprised as I’ve known this for a while, but my natural thought is light=comfort as well as believing I will much prefer the more traditional designs of Focal type cans. Both do not hold true for me, I much prefer a heavier headphone with a good suspension strap to the much lighter Focals, when they’re on my head I never notice the difference in weight, only the way it is distributed. Perhaps the co-pilot pad plays a big factor in my favor towards the ZMF design, but with it I don’t find the comfort much less than a Meze Elite.

Love the purple and copper. Use in good health!

 

[geoffalter11]

An interim update on my Atrium experience. It still has less than 30 hours on it, so take with a big grain of salt. My last post was when it had less than 20 hours and things have changed substantially.

While I liked what the silver michanikos cable did for the top end, today I went back to the OFC because the silver cable lost a lot of the bass texture, which blew me away. I'd never heard anything like it. But with burn in, things have really opened up and spaced out. It's now very transparent and fast. I spent today going back and forth between the Atrium (on a Kenzie) and a few electrostatics (007 mk1, ES-1a and Sigma NB) and I feel like only the ES-1a was faster and less congested. The Atrium, in the way it (naturally) spaces everything out approaches that estat transparency and lack of distortion. I almost feel dumb for writing that the Atrium was less congested than a Stax 007 mk1, like it can't be so, but that's what I heard today.

One fun test for you: there's an instrument that gets played at 3:30 on The Band's The Weight. I don't know what it is, it's like an accordion or a mouth harp. I could barely hear it last week and today it came through a lot clearer on the same cable, which I credit to the burn-in. On the estats, that sound comes through much clearer.

I also did a quick comparison to the OG Auteur and the tonality was still very similar, but the OG felt a lot slower and more muddied. I love to A/B but I also know that it stacks the deck against the B variant because my brain is accustomed to the A. So I need to do some longer-term comparisons, but the Atrium is really special. Slam, bass texture/detail, very transparent and with a wonderful timbre. My favorite thing about the Auteur was how slow it was, but how liquid it was too - the best explanation I can give is to imagine a dark pool. When you drop a pebble into it, you get these concentric circles of sound slowly moving outwards. The nature of the Auteur was that there could be many, many pebbles dropped into the pool, with many overlapping concentric circles of sound rippling into each other. When I say slow, in this sense I mean you could hear the trailing edge of notes clearly just as you could hear the leading edge of new notes coming in. It was all very liquid and sweet, syrupy. I don't want to lose that, which is why I still can't imagine upgrading it, but the Atrium is growing on me.

I have a silver-plated copper cable coming in soon and I'm looking forward to what that does.

Awesome post. You are hearing Robbie Robertson's unique acoustic guitar lines under the music. Layered in with Richard Manual and Garth Hudson's organ and piano work.

 

[geoffalter11]

An interim update on my Atrium experience. It still has less than 30 hours on it, so take with a big grain of salt. My last post was when it had less than 20 hours and things have changed substantially.

While I liked what the silver michanikos cable did for the top end, today I went back to the OFC because the silver cable lost a lot of the bass texture, which blew me away. I'd never heard anything like it. But with burn in, things have really opened up and spaced out. It's now very transparent and fast. I spent today going back and forth between the Atrium (on a Kenzie) and a few electrostatics (007 mk1, ES-1a and Sigma NB) and I feel like only the ES-1a was faster and less congested. The Atrium, in the way it (naturally) spaces everything out approaches that estat transparency and lack of distortion. I almost feel dumb for writing that the Atrium was less congested than a Stax 007 mk1, like it can't be so, but that's what I heard today.

One fun test for you: there's an instrument that gets played at 3:30 on The Band's The Weight. I don't know what it is, it's like an accordion or a mouth harp. I could barely hear it last week and today it came through a lot clearer on the same cable, which I credit to the burn-in. On the estats, that sound comes through much clearer.

I also did a quick comparison to the OG Auteur and the tonality was still very similar, but the OG felt a lot slower and more muddied. I love to A/B but I also know that it stacks the deck against the B variant because my brain is accustomed to the A. So I need to do some longer-term comparisons, but the Atrium is really special. Slam, bass texture/detail, very transparent and with a wonderful timbre. My favorite thing about the Auteur was how slow it was, but how liquid it was too - the best explanation I can give is to imagine a dark pool. When you drop a pebble into it, you get these concentric circles of sound slowly moving outwards. The nature of the Auteur was that there could be many, many pebbles dropped into the pool, with many overlapping concentric circles of sound rippling into each other. When I say slow, in this sense I mean you could hear the trailing edge of notes clearly just as you could hear the leading edge of new notes coming in. It was all very liquid and sweet, syrupy. I don't want to lose that, which is why I still can't imagine upgrading it, but the Atrium is growing on me.

I have a silver-plated copper cable coming in soon and I'm looking forward to what that does.

The greatest version of The Weight ever played. With the Staple Singers at The Last Waltz.

 

[Monsterzero]

The greatest version of The Weight ever played. With the Staple Singers at The Last Waltz.

Warren Haynes, Jamey Johnson and a host of others are doing a Last Waltz tour coming up soon. I'd kill to see that!

https://blackbirdpresents.com/concert/the-last-waltz-tour-2022/

 

[geoffalter11]

Warren Haynes, Jamey Johnson and a host of others are doing a Last Waltz tour coming up soon. I'd kill to see that!

https://blackbirdpresents.com/concert/the-last-waltz-tour-2022/

Me too... Sounds quite wonderful, actually. I can't get enough of "It Makes No Difference" and any time Mavis Staples is singing I am locked in. "Let's Do It Again" is one of my all time favorite soul tunes.

 

[JayDM]

Love the purple and copper. Use in good health!

Thanks! Was between these and the red on black, can’t quite remember what they actually calls the color way. These really pop.

 

[geoffalter11]

Me too... Sounds quite wonderful, actually. I can't get enough of "It Makes No Difference" and any time Mavis Staples is singing I am locked in. "Let's Do It Again" is one of my all time favorite soul tunes.

For those who need a bit of Mavis Staples in their life...