**Personal Impressions of ZMF Atrium**
I recently got in a pair of ZMF Atriums in cocobolo. Local seller had them almost brand new, and said he didn't like the grain pattern. Personally, I think they're sexy af, so I managed to pick them up for a pretty significant discount.
I'm sure the Atriums have been reviewed by every tom, dick, and harry, but felt like contributing my take. My last headphone I'm coming from was a
Focal Clear.
::
Burnt in appx. 80hrs ::
**Mids**
- Significant forwardness. Can become pained in some mid-focused tracks if you’re used to listening at higher volumes
Rich, and textured in the lower mids
- Upper mids possess a “sing-song” quality; they are ever so slightly rolled off.
- At the same time, voices or instruments meant to be quiet are QUIET. Voices and instruments meant to forward are FORWARD
**Bass**
- Atrium feel as though they possesses a “bass aura”. The cups are washed in low end presence
- Slams when it needs to, sort of, but but a bass head’s headphone; slam is more in the manipulation of the “wash/aura” inside the cup. Could actually slam harder and I would be ok with it. (Correction in my notes: If the track calls for it, it *CAN* slam enough to satisfy the track)
- Tickles the ear with ambient “there’ness” and presence
- Sub-bass can be expressed as “aura” like. Not particularly strong or overpowering, but there
**Treble**
- Has a tendency to be peaky on tracks with well mastered dynamic range. Taming this with pads would be beneficial
- Delicate and smooth, despite potential peakiness
**Timbre**
- Incredible timbre, instruments feel distinct in character and tune
- Notes definitely have a slower decay than faster dynamic drivers, but not as slow to my ears as reviewers/users were making them sound. Very welcome sound profile over other headphones I’ve tried.
- Decay may get even slower with tube amps. Would need to be kept balanced because it *could* get too decayed easily.
**Separation, Dynamics, and Soundstage**
- Soundstage has significant pan, and intense verticality.
- Soundstage depth is perhaps a medium
- Dynamics are strong, superior to the Focal Clear
- Significantly more 3Dness than the Focal Clear; another level of separation. For example, I noticed a song (I should have written it down) in which there’s a central guitar are actually 2 people playing guitar standing beside each other. One is standing perhaps a foot closer to me than the other.
**Misc notes**
- Addictive quality
- ENRICHES well recorded music, hard not to move to the music.
- Does well with poorly recorded music. Won’t ruin it. Can work with it.
- Music snakes around in the depth of the cup and is electric
- Amazing for vocal focused electric, or romantic’esque tracks.
- Plays classical softly, perhaps overly soft for some. Noticeably misses some texture in the strings of string instruments, but- produces the notes themselves beautifully
- Electronic is lovely
- Rap does well in a different way. Highly musical representation of rap, not an attacking dynamic sort of “in your face” representation of rap that some 90’s artists may call for like Eminem or Dre.
- Sound signature is not that of an open back, but of an almost semi-open
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**Pad Rolling & modding**
**Simulated solid lambskin Universe** (I taped the fenestrations closed)
- Slightly more 3Dness
- Bass becomes somewhat muddy and splashy but has a lot more impact on the close soundstage
- Attack is more present. Notes hit harder, especially in the upper range. Not so much "sing-song" anymore
- Whole FR feels boosted.
- Decay is exaggerated significantly more
- Naturalness of vocals can be thrown off it seems
- Subbass increased
**Auteur lambskin perf**
- Soundstage deeper, but smaller
- Still sounds natural
- Confusing timbre…sometimes feels slower, sometimes faster
- Perhaps trading more attack for a lot less texture?
- Significantly more laid back presentation; more romantic, but more “common”; no treble hotness, but stops sounding like a ZMF headphone/unique. Seems to sound more like what you'd expect a really good headphone to sound like.
**BE2 Hybrid Perf**
- Very small soundstage, very small pad
- No treble peak
- Feel like a lot of detail is sacrificed
- Overall a bad pad
**Grill mod removal**
- Adds back texture to and presence to the upper mid range/highs
- Sacrifices even more peakiness
- Makes the Atrium fatiguing (
strange to me as I'm coming from the Clears; a very fatiguing headphone)
- This would be a great mod to be used with a pad that smoothed highs without too many other drawbacks
