My "Heritage" colorway Homage just arrived! Pretty pleased with it so far. It's still warming up and I've only listened to it for 3 hours so far, but initial impressions are pretty good. It's fairly inline with what I've been reading across all the different threads online, whether it be expectation bias or otherwise. It does sound a lot more detailed, holographic, and wider sound stage than my Jotunheim 2 (but that's not a hard amp to beat for those metrics).
The Atrium sounds the best I've heard it on a solid state amp – even better than the Magni Piety. It's definitely a different sound than on an OTL, but I'm loving it so far. The staging and atmosphere of the Atrium here is a whole different story compared to the Piety. Yet it has so much more resolution I can pick out than on the Piety or the BHC.
I've felt my VC doesn't pair the best with the tubes I'm currently rolling on my BHC, so I've been using it on solid states recently. I think the Homage runs it the best out of the amps I own. It does sound slightly better on high impedance mode to me, and the added sound stage just sounds open-back like. I'll have to do a longer listen on it, but I feel the VC has finally met its match for me.
I felt the XLR inputs sounded much more robust than the RCA. The RCA felt rather thin sounding, and the XLR just sounded "fuller" for a lack of better terms. I didn't carefully volume match them, and it could also be my DACs that sound different from each output. Will need to test more, I guess.
On my dynamics, I really struggled to hear a whole lot of difference on the impedance switch. I wasn't sure at all on the AO, and felt the VC sounded like it improved on High – but I wasn't sure if I could pass a blind test on it. I was even beginning to wonder if the switch was broken. Then I plugged in my Susvara. It was night and day difference between the two now, and Low sounded significantly better for the 60Ω planar driver. So it does work!
As I started typing this, I had moved the Homage back to my desk and plugged in the Caldera. I queued up a random soundtrack playlist, but it kind of sounded worse than I remember it sounding on the Jotunheim. I was pretty puzzled. I kept on typing, color graded the photos, and noticed the impedance switch in the picture. Sure enough, the impedance was still on High – oops! Flipping it off, I noticed an immediate "expansion" of staging and holography. The textures of drums and plucked strings were back to the way I've always loved them on the Caldera. It's quite the difference! So both the planar cans had noticeable changes from the impedance setting for me. Very interesting!
Minor nitpick: The VU meter calibration is fixed to whatever signal is incoming. Which does makes sense, in that >0dB is clipping – so the VU is supposed to help show headroom, etc. But the biggest issue for me is that I have EQ bass shelves that can go up to +8dB, so I have a -8dB preamp applied. When using HQPlayer, I also have to add a -3dB reduction for DSD interpolation protection. That's -11dB that the VU can't use – and -10 to -20dB on the meter is a tiny 2-3mm of space for the needle to move. In fact, I'm seeing zero needle movement right now with a moderately quiet track. The VU also scales with the gain setting, so with an IEM set on Low Gain, there's even less VU movement. So with either software EQ or IEMs, the VU is virtually useless, which makes me a bit sad since the meter looks so cool. If there was a pot/dial to calibrate the meter, even just for appearance's sake, that would have been great.
Otherwise, it's a great sounding amp, priced reasonably well, and an interesting aesthetic to add to my desktop collection. I think the front panel matches my Atrium and VC pretty well!
One last wish: there should have been a ZMF logo laser-engraved somewhere on the white space on the front panel (or silk screened to the chassis top)! All my other amps have some kind of branding visible from the front.
@zach915m do you sell any small, cool looking ZMF stickers that would go well here?
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