ZMF New Headphones: Vérité and Aeolus

Tineo seems cool! Never worked with it, love the color. Looks expensive, I'll look into it for future LTD's etc. Someday we want to be able to offer more custom wood options, who knows!

It mainly just feels nice and reduces the weight by about 33 grams. I felt like the headphones resonated a little more with low bass notes after I got the lighter frame on, likely just the lighter weight though and not any acoustic properties from the frame. I didn't measure any differences certainly.

 

Zach, what are the default pads going to be for the Aeolus?

 

Hello @zach915m. The Verite is looking really promising. I have a few questions for you if you’d be so kind:

1. Does the Verite use higher powered magnets than other ZMF dynamics.
2. What tesla/gauss are they rated at?
3. What pros/cons, design considerations, and diminishing returns are associated with using or not using an even larger/more powerful motor.
4. How much physical-weight and cost impact does going larger have.

Cheeky bonus question: Any chance we could see a few shots of the diaphragm/coil/motor assembly? (It might even prevent someone busting theirs open and farking up the tuning )

Cheers!

 

Universe pads!

1. Yeah it uses N50 magnets where-as we had N45 on the auteur.
2. I believe N50 = 50 gauss.
3. You always have to balance distortion levels especially in the bass with larger diaphragms. 50mm seemed to me like a good middle ground between a larger diaphragm and the smaller 40mm drivers where it has enough surface area to sound big but isn't a tiny little membrane. If you mean magnet size there wasn't a choice to use a more powerful magnet, I do think the stronger the magnet the more control the voice coil will have over the membrane. I wanted to go higher with the biocel driver but the biocel material we used wasn't stiff enough for n50, we did add a small amount of polyurethane to the biocel driver to get a larger magnet and stabilize the biocel material.
4. Our Aeolus/Atticus driver is about 18 grams lighter with the 30N magnets on the PET driver. So 36 grams per headphone. The frame of the Verite driver with the Be material costs about 5x as much as the other drivers, but we had to buy 58,000 drivers worth of material which cost about XXXXXX times as much as any of the other material. Reason being they had to melt down a certain amount of Be to coat the PEN driver.

 

What species of silk wood is used? (If known) Gotta say my Auteur are my favorite out of my stock Aficionado pre amped with Manley 300b neo.

 

My supplier is just calling it Albezia but I know there are a couple of them - I believe it's probably Mimosa and we've been getting a bit of Sap-wood and non sap-wood which is less yellow and darker. These are quick growing trees which helps with the lighter weight. I got the magnesium chassis' in and between the two silk sets I have here they weigh at 427 and 441 grams.

PS - Just weighed Aeolus, weighs 447 grams with non magnesium chassis and sapele. So with magnesium it would be around 415 grams or so. Those magnets in the Be driver do add some weight.

 

I'm a bit late, but the second monitor is a 240hz one (AW2518HF.) The first one is a LG 27UK650.

 

does it mean you will be selling drivers as well?

 

Oh sorry I didn't clarify - we had to buy that much material not drivers. The material gets used as needed as it is made into drivers.

 

I guess unless you plan to sell 29,000 pair of headphones, there maybe more Be based design down the road, considering the raw material on hand.

 

Any idea if the verite drivers will ever be incorporated into a closed-back design, in the vein of eikon/atticus?

Also, besides speed/distortion, does anyone know how microdynamics of Be drivers compare to, say, the TPE drivers on the atticus or biocellulose on the eikon? I've been reading that the atticus has better microdynamics than the eikon, so am wondering how different the verite drivers would be?

 

http://www.zmfheadphones.com/verite/
Verite info up on ZMF website!

 

http://www.zmfheadphones.com/atticus-and-aeolus/
Aeolus

 

Man.. I read through 20 pages of the Eikon/Atticus thread because I couldn't pick one of the two. Only then do I find out that the Aeolus is going to be coming out which sounds like the perfect in between.

I'm still curious about how open it will be compared to something like the HD650. Main reason is that my computer is loud AF, but I suppose I could get some quieter fans.

 

Open enough you can definitely hear the fans, or any other noise, through it.

Even the Atticus isn't that closed.

 

Get one of the EVGA or Seasonic supplies that you can run in ECO mode. Or you can spend for a completely silent Seasonic. My EVGA P2 650 in ECO never even swittches the fan on below 300W draw! Noctua makes a couple 120MM fans that have about 40CFM of airflow at around 6.5 to 7db of noise. Mine are around 9 to 11 db right now! Thinking about getting a couple of these Noctua's later. At 5 ft away from my computer noise is a whisper! The EVGA actually sounds better than my older Seasonic supply that was noisier. Quieter noise floor...more detail...better dynamics...a bit better stagin and focus! An LPS would really be the bomb. But they are really pricey. Got the EVGA for $75.00, slightly used on EBay!

Happy Listening!

 

I'll second the recommendation for noctua fans, although you want to stay on the versions with a speed reducer (it's a cable with an inline resistor) less your motherboard can vary can speeds with temperature.

There's better fans for specific applications - if your case can have a lot of fans, I suggest eloop noiseblocker at ultra low speeds - but noctua makes the best generalist fans and they're very good quality in general.

They also make by far the best air coolers.

But we're going wildly off topic.

On-topic, I'm currently on my temp air-cooled machine while I upgrade my liquid cooled one, and the Auteur does nothing to block the sound of the GPU fans when it's going, or the noise of the hoover. 70%ish open is pretty open.

 

Thanks guys. I was looking at the noctua fans anyway. They seem really nice but cost so damn much! I'll wait till I can get some on sale somewhere.

My other issue is my fridge, which is equally loud, if not worse. I should just take my dac/amp into my room and listen from my surface pro lol. Heavily debating it.

 

Noctua fan prices don't seem too bad to me. My mini ITX build is very quiet even while gaming and streaming with Noctua fans + some custom fan curves.

You should figure out where the noise is coming from, check temps, etc. Could be any combination of case fans, CPU fan(s), GPU fan(s), and PSU fan.You might be able to lower the RPM of your fans a lot and make things a lot more quiet without getting to unsafe temperatures.

 

The real selling point on the Noctuas is their reliability.

I have a couple coming up on a decade old and they don't make any more noise than when they were brand new.