Long time owner of the VO here.
I’ve made several changes to my setup since I bought my VO several years ago, amongst other things switching from having a tube preamp and Burson 3XP to Ferrum Oor + Hypsos stack. Things (actually many things!) have improved but there has been one thing bugging me… After I while I realised that I’d lost a sense of space or ”air” that I had enjoyed so much with my VO’s!
One thing I really, really like with ZMF’s are/was that the sense of space it created without ruining the transients. My recurring issue with Hifimans lineup is the weird transients, it’s like they are stopped dead in their tracks - they just vanish. Things got so depressing that I decided to start looking for a replacement. I auditioned the Meze Elite (not for me) and the Audeze Lcd-5 (very much for me). The Lcd-5 is very much a clear window into the mix, albeit a bit mid-forward. And it had that sense of space I was looking for!
Back home I started thinking about selling the VO’s to finance the Lcd-5’s. I began looking at the pads I’ve collected over the years. Apart from the pads in my usual rotation (lambskin Verite, Universe and BE2) I realised that I also had some suede pads (BE2 and Universe) that I had totally forgotten about. So I tried them just for fun, the BE2 suede was still not for me but the suede Universe was very much for me. This was the sound I had been looking for all along!!!
I decided to share this story because sometimes it’s easy to go looking for the next great thing instead of working with what you have. After all these years and having the opportunity to audition many TOTL headphones I needed to remind myself that the ZMF VO is still a TOTL headphone. It’s not going anywhere