Just picked up my Verite Open. Spend half an hour demo'ing it with a Chord TT2. Knowing that the Chord unit is slightly on the lean side of neutral, I wasn't concerned by some minor issues in the treble. Sure enough, when I put the Verite on my home rig it is as spectacular as I expected, without any treble bother.
This headphone is what the Focal Utopia should have been. I jumped on the Utopia hype train and bought one way too early without demo'ing it first. I could live with the small (but very precise) sound stage, but I could not live with Focal's tuning. Not my thing.
Almost pulled the trigger on the E2, but decided to wait for someone to build a headphone with similar technical capabilities to the Utopia, but with tuning more in line with my tastes. The Verite seems to be ticking that box for me. At last, a headphone worthy of the hype.
The headphone is the store unit, but I was the first customer to try it. Only one or two of the store staff had used it, briefly. So it still has very few hours on it. Should become more relaxed with a few more hours on it - however it is stunning as is.
This headphone rewards upstream components. My home rig is detailed below. This is giving results significantly more pleasing than the TT2 I used in store.
PC->ethernet->Metrum Ambre->I2S->Metrum Pavane->GS-X Mk2
My Pavane has been upgrade to Adagio standard with DAC TWO modules. Superb R2R NOS DAC for those that might be in the market for one. I found the move to I2S feed with the Ambre unit well worth the money. It improves on the Singxer SU-1/AES feed significantly.
Will fire up the Glenn 300B amp shortly and see how that performs.
EDIT - to get the image working. My Gorilla hands struggle sometimes.
