[WillieB]

This is why I ship everything with UPS. UPS employees are salaried while FedEx Ground is contractors.

Fun fact: FedEx Ground and FedEx Express are actually different companies under the FedEx conglomerate. FedEx Express employees are salaried like UPS and they're better than Ground.

Thank you for attending my TedTalk on knowledge I picked up while working in a shipping department.

Yes, FedEx Ground used to be RPS years ago. FedEx was looking to get into/start ground/non-express shipping services, so they bought a complete company, RPS, instead of building their own and it does indeed remain separate until this day.

 

[tret]

Still surprised by how much I love the suede pads! Hoping to do more pad swapping next week.

What cable is that?

 

[wkesquire]

What cable is that?

1/4 inch Lektrik S (2-strand)

 

[greyforest]

after spending many hours with caldera i decided to offer some of my thoughts for people who still on the fence.

my unit is ork with mag frame i use the cable come with caldera with my system（BAL）

instead of say some hype-up sudo-conclusions i think it is more important to speak up some relatively objective subjective facts（you will know what i mean later）

in terms of technicality caldera does not compete or does better than other planars.

it does not have better frontal depth and soundstage than stealth or ether2

it does not have better resolution than susvara or Kennerton thor

it does not have better transperency than lcd5 or he1000se

but what caldera does better than all those headphones is realism

there are some moments when hearing music from caldera it just wows me. female vocals in particular, it felt like the voice is so vivid and expressive, that i never experience from other planars. usually they makes me fell boring not engaging as dynamics headphones. but this is completely different for caldera. caldera does have this dynamics driver feelings while add on the resolution advantage from the planar world.
for me thats a good balance. if you prefer dynamics headphones while wanting a bit more technicality caldera is the one to go.

 

[goldwerger]

Cross post for the Atrium thread (too good not to share)

Found this wonderful cover by Six-String Soldiers to Pink Floyd's "I wish you were here". The 2 guitars + banjo sound so great:

 

[dfiled]

For those that have listened to the Caldera on both lower powered tube amps and solid state, which do you prefer?

 

[AcousticMatt]

Would be my choice of colour scheme too. That grill with this beautiful wood is a stunning combination. Enjoy!

Looks incredible.

 

[jinxy245]

For those that have listened to the Caldera on both lower powered tube amps and solid state, which do you prefer?

My only tube amp is the og Pendant which is not lower powered by any stretch, but that definitely is my preference overall. TBH my ifi is no slouch either.

 

[gonintendo]

My only tube amp is the og Pendant which is not lower powered by any stretch, but that definitely is my preference overall. TBH my ifi is no slouch either.

I also prefer them on my Mogwai SE for most music

 

[TheMiddleSky]

For those that have listened to the Caldera on both lower powered tube amps and solid state, which do you prefer?

Hard to find low power SS amp nowadays. Anyway, Caldera with HA-3A is excellent. This amp deliver solid punch/bite into the sound that make Caldera lively. Other contender is Burson Soloist 3XP. I can enjoy both amp well with Caldera, but ultimately if I have to pick one, Cayin it is.

Doesn't mean Tube wins here, case above is simply Cayin HA-3A vs Burson Soloist 3XP. I enjoy caldera with Bakoon PRE7610mk3 a lot more (based on spec, this is 1W amp).

 

[WillieB]

Initial Impressions - Preface
I'm a relatively new audiophile, when it comes to collecting audio gear. However, I've been a musician since I was young, mostly piano and violin through college, then playing around with viola more recently. I'm pretty picky about my sound. I was introduced to ZMF through many sites like Head-Fi and Reddit, and have been enjoying my Atrium since September.

I've been saving for ZMF November and the Caldera release, and instead of buying that stabilized blue Atrium I'd been drooling over, I decided to put the cost difference of the Atrium upgrade into upgrading the Caldera. Since the Caldera's release date coincided with my 40th birthday, I decided to celebrate it by pull the trigger on the Kingwood Caldera!

I won't bore everyone with the details that others have already posted ad nauseam, and someone with more experience can surely do a better job of describing the finer details in length. So I'll just be sharing some pictures and my personal impressions.

Build
Unboxing video coming soon! To put it plainly: It's everything the official videos and pictures made it look like. It's beautifully crafted, and the gloss finish is fantastic. The craftsmanship clearly shows in both the finish and sanding of the wood. I don't regret the extra costs one bit! I've been giddy all evening since FedEx dropped off the package (wife is calling me "cute") – it's just that cool!



The wooden case is basic, but tasteful and classy. I really love the etched logo on the top!

Fit
Out of the box, it has a bit more clamp than my Atrium. Not uncomfortable, but snug. I may loosen it later. My unit weighs 602g, and after 2 hours of wear, the weight doesn't seem to be any more fatiguing to me than my cherry Atrium (520g). Of course, I've been using the 612g LCD-X every day for the past bit to prepare my neck for the Kingwood!

Source
Currently listening on a SMSL D300 (really love the ROHM DAC chip) through a Schiit Jotunheim 2 via XLR balanced, XLR balanced out to Caldera via the OFC cable. I'm looking into whether I want to upgrade to an iHA-6, but that's another story for later. Music is from FLAC and DSD files through FooBar2000 or JRiver.

Mids
On first listen, I immediately noticed mids sounding very life-like. Pianos in the mid range have a more realistic timbre and decay than any other headphones I own. At times, the Caldera makes me feel like I'm in the accompanist's seat at a nice full grand! Low violin and upper cello strings have so much texture that I can almost see the wafting rosin. Violas have a tonal quality that is very hard to capture and reproduce cleanly, especially on many headphones – and I feel like I've finally found one that can bring them to life.



Doing a quick sine sweep revealed a pretty deep dip (about 5-6dB to my ears) around 1.5kHz. Jury's out whether I like this hole filled with EQ, but it's growing on me without. It can reduces some honkiness in poorly mastered tracks.

Female altos are very forward and clean; however, sopranos' fundamental frequencies start hitting the dip around 1.3-1.4kHz and feels stifled unless I add some of it back via EQ. Pianos can also hit this region, and that can come off as a bit muted. I can live with it, though, but time will tell whether I EQ it or not.

Treble
Cymbals and hats have a lot of tactility. Guitar plucks are very pronounced and detailed in a way that grabs my attention. Speed of much of the upper-treble percussion are amazing, making them sound crisp and resolving without blending too much into each other. Initial attacks of kotos and harps are so clear, that octave plucks (when a note is played one octave apart simultaneously) are so much easier to tell when in a mix, even compared to a bright planar like the Arya. Unsurprisingly, the Caldera easily outclasses my other planars like the Arya or LCD-X in this regard.



It's clear that I hear a lot more treble on the Caldera compared to Atrium. It's not too much where I'm tempted to EQ it down yet, and I'm not feeling any fatigue so far after a couple hours. Of course, I like bright (or V-shaped) headphones. I had to EQ some treble back in with my Atrium (admittedly could do a better job), which made some poorly mastered tracks really piercing. I don't have to do that with Caldera, and the same tracks are much more pleasant to listen to.

One area where the Caldera's treble shines for me is in pure DSD recordings of strings. I was floored the moment I heard Rachel Podger's La Stravaganza (by Vivaldi). The attacks of her violin's incredibly articulate spiccatos, combined with the crystal clear harpsichord was an experience unlike any other. The extra amount of treble that the Caldera has reveals plenty of texture in upper violin strings. The dynamics and speed make for some of the best baroque listening I've ever heard, bar none. It's too bad it's not as roomy as the Atrium (more on that later), but I think the Caldera's positives clearly outshine that slight weakness.

Although not my genre, I put on some metal since this thread has been mentioning them a bit lately. And oh my – that's something else. I now understand what people meant by speed and metal. I don't have the words to describe it, but it's pretty crazy, that's for sure.

Bass
I'm a total bass head: My low-shelf is +8dB on the Atrium. I added the +7dB on the Caldera, and it sure slams like a nice planar. I've read people saying Atrium has more bass, but I'm not sure I hear it that way. Bass texture is quite a bit better than LCD-X (my bass benchmark). Even when adding in a good amount of sub-bass with EQ, it's still coherent.



Other Notes
Sound stage is smaller than Atrium by a bit, but I'm noticing more height than with the Atrium. That roomy atmosphere that the Atrium gives with its organic decay is replaced with clean, tight speed. It's more of a in-your-head intimacy, yet not claustrophobically so.

Noise isolation is reduced compared to the Atrium. I'm hearing the heater fans a bit more than I typically would. I actually like it more open (like the Arya), so I can hear what the girls and the dog are up to, or when they invariably need to ask something. A quick test of pink noise measured by a SPL meter at 72dB at 2ft from the speaker. It reads as 62dB at the same distance, when the same SPL meter is inside an Atrium cup closed off with a cardboard baffle. On the Caldera, it reads as 68dB. So on this quick and dirty experiment, the Atrium had a 10dB noise attenuation, and Caldera had a mere 4dB of attenuation.

Conclusion
The Caldera is most certainly a different beast than the Atrium. While I love the roomy organic feel of the Atrium for some tracks, there's really nothing the Caldera does an inferior job at. I'm pretty happy listening to it for all genres. The insane resolution makes it such a joy to listen to, and the aside from the mids-dip, the tonality is spot-on. I can wholeheartedly recommend this beautiful, yet amazing ear and eye candy of a headphone. Zach did a tremendous job, and the team has done a wonderful job of craftsmanship to put it all together. Many thanks to all the amazing people at ZMF and their many efforts over the years to develop the excellent Caldera.

I still need to try the different earpads, but I wanted to at least get some words down first. Thanks for reading!

Very nicely done. Fantastic pictures. Across all of them, you can see how the Kingwood shows it's different shades depending on how the light hits it.

 

[Kevintj604]

Yeah. Mine have tonnes of burls and are super chatoyant. They almost glow in the light.

This pair is up for sale today in the classifieds.

I lost my job yesterday so super tough decisions have to be made.

https://www.head-fi.org/classifieds...r-burl-w-wooden-display-box-and-extras.37264/

 

[joshua1122]

Very nicely done. Fantastic pictures. Across all of them, you can see how the Kingwood shows it's different shades depending on how the light hits it.

Thank you It's very cool how it can change its looks based on the ambient light's color temperature, and its angles. I think Kingwood is just very beautiful, and the more I've "bonded" with it over the past week, the more I've come to realize how much I love the grain and how it looks overall. I might be biased – but out of all the Kingwood sets I've seen pictures of so far, I've liked the grain and coloration on mine the most!

I was browsing through various lumber that I'd like to use for building a better audio rack, and my wife was pointing out how I'm very picky about my wood grains. I wish I could afford buying Kingwood in that kind of quantity to build a rack out of it!

 

[Pharmaboy]

Good morning everyone.

The striations in this oak are beautiful (and the finish is spectacular).

 

[WillieB]

Blackwood is my favorite wood. This is the best looking set so far to my eyes. Congrats!

Mine as well. I would LOVE a Blackwood Caldera. I have VO and VC in Blackwood. I guess Kingwood is similar though, in harness and color. If there is ever a run of Blackwood, though, I may be inclined to let the Kingwood go in favor of a that.