I was fortunate and jumped to the head of the line for a Pheasantwood and they just arrived today. I had to listen of course -- they sound like the consensus opinion, warm ZMF house sound, mildly downward tilting FR, but fast and snappy. Like really fast. And really snappy. Because of the snap and speed, my first impression after 15 seconds was "wow really black background". I spent some time with Clears and while those had a slight metallic sheen, cold and hard, and were not to my taste, Verite is almost the opposite: warm and glowing with just the barest of bare hint of cup coloration. Sounds like a wooden musical instrument, which I gather was the intention.
Forward mids might be a little fatiguing, and collapses the sound stage a bit depth-wise, but this is just my personal preference as I'm used the recessed mids of the LCD-3, plus it's early. A little closed in right now because of the mids, but hoping that will relax quite a bit in the coming weeks. Instrument separation and imaging are already very very good. Bass extension and quality still goes to the LCD-3 (I'm team planar-bass), plus Verite has a slight mid-bass hump for slam, but very slight, and not distracting. Already very resolving, but didn't call attention to itself. Effortless resolution, the best kind. For atmospheric electronica, I'm never going to give up the LCD-3, but that treble shelf really messes up anything going through that region. My work around was to avoid piano and acoustic music in general with the LCD-3. Verite fixes all of that, and more.
Chain was Yggdrasil A2 and Mjolnir 1; going to hook it up to tubes (EC ZD) tonight.