Well, regardless I’m glad that happened for you! In my case I tried a thick OCC copper cable (which helped), changing the amp (also helped), and gave the LCD-XC burn-in as well as listening time, But in the end I still could not adjust.
While I’ve missed the planar bass, I have found my favorite sound in the ZMF biocellulose dynamic drivers. Until I try the Caldera Closed, at least.
Agreed- the (open) Caldera is a gorgeous headphone.
If I thought I could make an open-back headphone work in my living situation, I’d buy HifiWar’s “Cynar” stabilized Caldera listed in the classifieds here. It’s gorgeous, at a fair price, and from a trustworthy seller.
I’ve almost talked myself into buying it a couple of times, but it would get far too little use.
that's not how i would describe the caldera. in saying that i'm not disputing what you're hearing - that would be absurd. it just goes to show yet again how inherently subjective this hobby is.
I rerspect this TOTALLY. That is why I mentioned that I was coming from darker headphones and wanting to stress that with all tha pad roling and mantle mesh talk, ear adjustment may be the biggest part of the adjustment. I never found tonality a factor I had to adjust to with the headphones I own- although I did have other adjustments;- but with the Caldera- because my ears were used to darker sound from all my other headphones, and I found the Caldera RELITIVELY to energetic, and it took longer than it ever took me to adjust to thius specific change. I can definately hear someone coming from a HE1000 type headphone feeling the opposite.
I rerspect this TOTALLY. That is why I mentioned that I was coming from darker headphones and wanting to stress that with all tha pad roling and mantle mesh talk, ear adjustment may be the biggest part of the adjustment. I never fouind tonality a factor I had to adjust to with the headphones I own- although I did have other adjustments- but with the Caldera- because my ears were used to darker sound from all my other headphones, and I found the Caldera RELITIVELY to energetic, it took longer than it ever took me to adjust to a new headphone. I can definately hear someone coming from a HE1000 type headphone feeling the opposite.
I love my Caldera and I have no issues with the 'spiciness' using thick pads. I think you have described the sound perfectly, given your background of more relaxed headphones (Elite) with slightly darker treble (4Z).
I think we can all agree on one thing about the Caldera ... that it's a supremely transparent headphone. I'm rolling driver tubes for the past 2 days and let me tell you, every change to the driver tubes give a different type of treble. It's crazy transparent. The most transparent sets for me to date were in order TC, HD800 and Utopia ... Caldera takes it to a different level though, so even because of this when we're discussing Caldera, spiciness, brightness or lack there of, what we are really discussing is our chains.
I mean I can clearly hear how the tubes are warming up and setting in the first 30 min of playback ...
I think we can all agree on one thing about the Caldera ... that it's a supremely transparent headphone. I'm rolling driver tubes for the past 2 days and let me tell you, every change to the driver tubes give a different type of treble. It's crazy transparent. The most transparent sets for me to date were in order TC, HD800 and Utopia ... Caldera takes it to a different level though, so even because of this when we're discussing Caldera, spiciness, brightness or lack there of, what we are really discussing is our chains.
I mean I can clearly hear how the tubes are warming up and setting in the first 30 min of playback ...
I found the Caldera spicy up top when I auditioned it initially. A pad swap to suedes and listening to it from my secondary set up (Gustard R26 into Icon Audio HP8 mk2 with Linlai E-6SN7 tubes), it’s really hitting that sweet spot for me.
I agree that it’s relatively easy to “fix” the sound to your liking — whether it be the source, pads and everything else in between the chain. I thought DAPs aren’t great with Calderas until I auditioned it with N8ii and that was heavenly. Just the difference in listening experience from a Kann Max to a Hiby RS8, R8, RS6, then a Cayin N8ii are all soo very different.
I’m enjoing it just as much as my Suvara chain (Sonnet Morpheus into a custom 300B speaker amp with full power into custom headphone outputs)
I found the Caldera spicy up top when I auditioned it initially. A pad swap to suedes and listening to it from my secondary set up (Gustard R26 into Icon Audio HP8 mk2 with Linlai E-6SN7 tubes), it’s really hitting that sweet spot for me.
I agree that it’s relatively easy to “fix” the sound to your liking — whether it be the source, pads and everything else in between the chain. I thought DAPs aren’t great with Calderas until I auditioned it with N8ii and that was heavenly. Just the difference in listening experience from a Kann Max to a Hiby RS8, R8, RS6, then a Cayin N8ii are all soo very different.
I’m enjoing it just as much as my Suvara chain (Sonnet Morpheus into a custom 300B speaker amp with full power into custom headphone outputs)
Yeah tubes make dealing with hps like that way easier. So far the best combo from the tubes I have currently is WE 300B with Reflektor 6SN7. I ordered Pinnacle 6J5, I remember them being very similar to Reflektor but with higher resolution ... I had a set but I offloaded a bunch of tubes a month ago
I usually run with different quad setups in place of 6SN7 but most quads are too hot in air and treble regions with Caldera I find.
I think we can all agree on one thing about the Caldera ... that it's a supremely transparent headphone. I'm rolling driver tubes for the past 2 days and let me tell you, every change to the driver tubes give a different type of treble. It's crazy transparent. The most transparent sets for me to date were in order TC, HD800 and Utopia ... Caldera takes it to a different level though, so even because of this when we're discussing Caldera, spiciness, brightness or lack there of, what we are really discussing is our chains.
I mean I can clearly hear how the tubes are warming up and setting in the first 30 min of playback ...
we could also be discussing our aural perception of the caldera - our hearing acuity, sensitivity to certain frequencies, etc. and it could be a combination of that and 'our chains'. i should also add that i don't find the caldera to be more 'transparent' than the utopia. but that too is a subjective assessment.
I need another DAC like I need another hole in my head -- but this one interests me. The designer interests me. The same person designed my Metrum Onyx, and that has pretty wonderful sound, albeit no ingenious volume pot like the Sonnet Morpheus or Metrum Jade.
I think we can all agree on one thing about the Caldera ... that it's a supremely transparent headphone. I'm rolling driver tubes for the past 2 days and let me tell you, every change to the driver tubes give a different type of treble. It's crazy transparent. The most transparent sets for me to date were in order TC, HD800 and Utopia ... Caldera takes it to a different level though, so even because of this when we're discussing Caldera, spiciness, brightness or lack there of, what we are really discussing is our chains.
I mean I can clearly hear how the tubes are warming up and setting in the first 30 min of playback ...
I think we can all agree on one thing about the Caldera ... that it's a supremely transparent headphone. I'm rolling driver tubes for the past 2 days and let me tell you, every change to the driver tubes give a different type of treble. It's crazy transparent. The most transparent sets for me to date were in order TC, HD800 and Utopia ... Caldera takes it to a different level though, so even because of this when we're discussing Caldera, spiciness, brightness or lack there of, what we are really discussing is our chains.
I don't really mess around with chain-related stuff, but I definitely agree about the CO being unusually transparent with how they interact with music. Just about every other headphone I have/had impose a relatively consistent character on the music, whether it be consistently airy/light/relaxed (like a Susvara) or consistently punchy/thick/energetic (like an Audeze). The closest to a "chameleon" that I owned until this year was the Arya Stealth, but that headphone also had inconsistent peakiness across music, so it wasn't too tonally agreeable.
Something about the tuning, presentation, and damping of the CO seems to allow genre-appropriate characteristics to show through more easily. More relaxing genres like vocal and instrumental pieces yield satisfying smoothness and emotion, while more aggressive music like metal and EDM have the grit/speed/meatiness that make them fun. I've also found the CO to be more revealing of mixing/mastering than anything else in my collection, while not beating you over the head for suboptimal recordings.
The recently announced Cayin C9ii headphone amplifier driven by the Cayin N30LE line out with the Caldera Open as the Headphone ....that will be awesome....So looking forward to it.
I would like to suggest a different perspective. Caldera is not spicy and uncontrolled / uneven in the treble ... it's unforgiving.
The higher we go with performance of transducers the better we need to build and tune the system for said transducers. I owned Susvara for almost 2 years, I own 1266 TC for 3 years, Caldera swings in the same league. It has certain aspects of both TC and Susvara, with the ZMF wooden twist, but make no mistake, this is a sharp as a razon totl planar and as with Susvara and TC it needs a system built and tuned for it. The fact that you can run it from lower end gear and it will sound "ok" doesn't mean it is meant to be ran like this, and I don't think what most people experience are deficiencies or intended character of the headphone ... it's the fact that most people don't have a system of the high enough calibre built and tuned for it ... yet : )
I'm lucky because taming wild treble is what I've been doing for the past 3 years so I pretty much have my system ready to maximise Caldera, and when maximised it trades blows with TC no problem :>
Do you have a preference for TC or Caldera? I also have TC (and LCD4) and am considering also adding Caldera. Quite happy to add another set of headphones if they provide something different, but I don't want to buy a "lesser TC".
I did own the Auteur for a few weeks, but didn't like those at all, and sent them back, but I'm presuming the Caldera have quite a different sound signature to the Auteur.
Do you have a preference for TC or Caldera? I also have TC (and LCD4) and am considering also adding Caldera. Quite happy to add another set of headphones if they provide something different, but I don't want to buy a "lesser TC".
I did own the Auteur for a few weeks, but didn't like those at all, and sent them back, but I'm presuming the Caldera have quite a different sound signature to the Auteur.
That's a difficult one. Jurry is still out on that one as I need to do anothet 100h of Caldera break in before I can say for sure ... having said that ...
At the moment I would describe Caldera like this "as if they took the TC driver and put it in the ZMF chasis and then added a thin layer of ZMF tuning" ... to me they have many similarities, more similarities than differences sonic wise ...
Depends on the perspective you could see Caldera as a lesser TC, or as a better TC. It has maybe 80% of bass quantitiy, but with better quality (did you experience Susvara bass? That kinda bass that you can "see" with all of the details and movement? TC has more of an omnipresent bass in comparison, while Caldera has Susvara bass, but with 80% of TC impact ... so way way more than Susvara itself).
Caldera has more agreeable timbre. For wooden instruments it has god tier timbre. For everything else it's good.
Just like TC Caldera is sharp like a razor, it can get splashy in the treble easily so you need a chain to counter balance it to have the correct timbre for cymbals (like slightly softer driver tubes in a tube amp).
The plus is that pairings that work for the TC should work for Caldera. So it should be a simple addition to the stable. It has the same connectors as TC (with the centre pin tho, so double check your mini xlrs if the have a hole in the middle).
What else to say ... they are similar but also different. For me Caldera is definitely in the same league, it's not a lesser headphone for sure.
That's a difficult one. Jurry is still out on that one as I need to do anothet 100h of Caldera break in before I can say for sure ... having said that ...
At the moment I would describe Caldera like this "as if they took the TC driver and put it in the ZMF chasis and then added a thin layer of ZMF tuning" ... to me they have many similarities, more similarities than differences sonic wise ...
Depends on the perspective you could see Caldera as a lesser TC, or as a better TC. It has maybe 80% of bass quantitiy, but with better quality (did you experience Susvara bass? That kinda bass that you can "see" with all of the details and movement? TC has more of an omnipresent bass in comparison, while Caldera has Susvara bass, but with 80% of TC impact ... so way way more than Susvara itself).
Caldera has more agreeable timbre. For wooden instruments it has god tier timbre. For everything else it's good.
Just like TC Caldera is sharp like a razor, it can get splashy in the treble easily so you need a chain to counter balance it to have the correct timbre for cymbals (like slightly softer driver tubes in a tube amp).
The plus is that pairings that work for the TC should work for Caldera. So it should be a simple addition to the stable. It has the same connectors as TC (with the centre pin tho, so double check your mini xlrs if the have a hole in the middle).
What else to say ... they are similar but also different. For me Caldera is definitely in the same league, it's not a lesser headphone for sure.
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