ZMF Caldera Headphone Review

[Chester]

Seriously, the guy does these reviews for free. He has objectively described the headphones characteristics, which no one seems to be disputing. They got a nice shiny golfing panther. I don’t see why the manufacturer and his followers are still here digging away. It’s a very bad look and a real shame.

 

[amirm]

The tone of language and word choice contributes greatly to how things are framed, and then the following discussion.

Nope. I praised the headphone with EQ. Members disagreed saying it better be right without EQ. Folks are not lemmings here. They think nothing of disagreeing with me as you clearly see. You are confusing me with other fora that protect their sponsors and make sure everyone walks the walk.

 

[NDRQ]

Seriously, the guy does these reviews for free. He has objectively described the headphones characteristics, which no one seems to be disputing. They got a nice shiny golfing panther. I don’t see why the manufacturer and his followers are still here digging away. It’s a very bad look and a real shame.

Because this manufacturer is one of the saint cow of an infamous audiphile site.

 

[L0rdGwyn]

I have made no character attacks. Reverse is true in the case of you and Zack. But I have not gone there. I suggest you focus your next post on bringing data to the thread instead of continuing to complain about me, the forum, etc. We have a master complaint thread for such things.

The truth is out in the open, other members have seen the pattern and have even commented on the behavior in this thread. Until you curb it, ASR will continue to be perceived akin to a tabloid as opposed to a scientific journal outside the bubble of this forum.

 

[NDRQ]

The truth is out in the open, other members have seen the pattern and have even commented on the behavior in this thread. Until you curb it, ASR will continue to be perceived akin to a tabloid as opposed to a scientific journal outside the bubble of this forum.

Other members? Literally 2-3 ZMF fan crying here, probably SBAF accounts..because you want to protect the "most well-liked one".

 

[next2nothing]

What I learned from this thread is that I prefer a subjective review of a random head-fi member, who never would claim to be objective about his preference, but who tries to give an insight in his preference with a reference playlist, talking in detail about how the songs sounded with different gear, comparing this different gear and who writes emotionally about his excitement or his problems with the certain piece of gear. All of this is about listening to music, which is an emotional process to some of us in the first place lol

To me, what Amir does are no reviews but few short ideologically coloured and often predictable statements that have to fit in the overall agenda or lets call it "ethos" of the forum. There will be no deviation. Sometimes a headphone that is easy to EQ will get more praise, sometimes less depending on the mood or bias. A headphone that is tuned to harman target is likely to get praise no matter what. Infact it would be enough just to post a messurement a EQ suggestion to achieve the holy harman and get to the next "review". To me ASR was always only good for messurements, that usually can be trusted and are indeed rather useful. Anything else though... well while sometimes very entertaining is usually ideological talk and pure subjectivism. Amirs crusade for a greater cause, his fans, the trolls, people who are dead set not to spend money on their hobby, people who never listened to a certain class of gear, but have a very strong opinion about it - all this can be dismissed when it comes to actual customer purchase descisions. Keep it to messurments if you want to be objective and think that messurements is the only thing that matters to when it comes to the listening expierience. But you will not do this simply because this board lives and dies by contreversy, members that feel superior by their "scientific" approach and threads like this one. Good thing is that ASR had enough positive influence on the actual reviewer scene, so many more reviewers start to make messurements.

What baffles me the most, is the lack of curioucity. This thread could have become a great insightful discussion with a designer about the choices that he made and why those have been made, there could be criticism and proposals to do things differently, but it would be a fun discussion that could bring our hobby a bit further and maybe give people some food for thought.
But hey, as a designer I would avoid giving any statements on this board in the first place, it can only go south considering there is zero room for discussion driven by actual scientific curioucity. For someone interested in scietific approach its simply mandatory to be open to other standpoints and being able to admit and to see flaws of the your own approach. Any serious academia would consider something like harman research a great starting point that gives us some valuable insights in listener preferences, but still just a starting point from which much more research had to be done. With lots of variables that are yet to be considered before we can make any generalizing claims about the preference of the majority or whats "best for the consumer".

 

[Mulder]

That would allow manufacturers the opportunity to provide pads / inserts, etc. if they feel those accessories would present their product in a light that aligns better with ASR's audience. It would also prevent the perception of being blindsided since they would know a review is forthcoming.

Zach is one of the most well-liked guys in the headphone community. Again, a courtesy email / phone call would likely have prevented the flared tempers in this thread and allowed for a more amicable conversation.

The question in the end must be whose interest ASR should primarily consider. Consumers' or producers'. Pretty much the entire so-called The HiFi press, the majority of all so-called online reviewers and the majority of all YOU-tube gurus scoff at the producer interest. I feel very leery of all this talk about producers' hurt feelings. You have to realize that ASR is not about feelings, but about measurable facts.

 

[amirm]

What I learned from this thread is that I prefer a subjective review of a random head-fi member, who never would claim to be objective about his preference, but who tries to give an insight in his preference with a reference playlist, talking in detail about how the songs sounded with different gear, comparing this different gear and who writes emotionally about his excitement or his problems with the certain piece of gear. All of this is about listening to music, which is an emotional process to some of us in the first place lol

Well, you haven't learned anything but posturing hoping to score an argumentative point. You are wrong factually anyway as I provided my listening test experience and did so precisely with what is wrong with the response of the headphone: "First impression out of the box was inoffensive but pretty boring sound. There was almost no deep/sub-bass response ." But no, you only want to hear people reinforcing that your buying decision, not any search for knowledge and objective information.

Keep it to messurments if you want to be objective and think that messurements is the only thing that matters to when it comes to the listening expierience.

I listen to every speaker and headphone. I do so because in every case I want to assess how much truth the measurements are telling. That in most cases subjective, after listening to those products, agree with the research is a feature, not a bug. That is what the research attempted to do: predict listener preference and it gets it right majority of time. Occasionally, I will go against the measurements and members give me grief for it. Wilson TuneTot comes to mind. I am cool with it as I could be wrong, or the research is right that it can't always predict preference.

And oh, if I don't listen, we hear people like you immediately claim the review is no good because "he didn't listen." I listen and now that is not good for you because I didn't give you a playlist? Really? You are that lost in this endeavor?

 

[amirm]

What baffles me the most, is the lack of curioucity. This thread could have become a great insightful discussion with a designer about the choices that he made and why those have been made, there could be criticism and proposals to do things differently, but it would be a fun discussion that could bring our hobby a bit further and maybe give people some food for thought.

You are baffled by nothing. Your designer has shown us no insight, no data, no studies, nothing to back up the choices he has made in the frequency response. He keeps saying the only justification is that he knows what he is doing and he knows what goes on in customer's head. To that end, we now know that he has made decisions that are simply not backed by how you properly evaluate listener preference. This is precisely what many headphone designers do with no compass as to what makes good sound. You have to put your trust in the hands, err ears, of this one person and go by faith.

 

[amirm]

But hey, as a designer I would avoid giving any statements on this board in the first place, it can only go south considering there is zero room for discussion driven by actual scientific curioucity.

There are some misguided designers like you say. But there are many who follow proper science and engineering and like what we do as much as we do. The list is incredibly long. I routinely get emails from luminaries in the industry praising our work and saying it is "daily read" to keep up with what the industry/their competitors are doing. To be sure, participating in forums is difficult. Membership here is tough: there is no police going around defending manufacturers like you see in head-fi. At a drop of a hat a forum sponsor there can get someone banned, their posts deleted, etc. We provide no protection like that. So you better be on your game. Fortunately we have people who know their stuff like the CTO at Genelec. Chief designer at Neumann. CTO at KEF.

And of course, this is on top of the researchers whose work we cherish. You routinely see Dr. Toole here. And Dr. Olive. And they reference us in their work. See this article from Dr. Olive: https://acousticstoday.org/wp-conte...ty-What-Do-Listeners-Prefer-Sean-E.-Olive.pdf

The Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality: What Do Listeners Prefer?

"The reaction from the headphone industry to this new research has been largely positive. There is evidence that the Harman target curve is widely influencing the design, testing, and review of many headphones from multiple manufacturers, providing a much needed new reference or benchmark for testing and evaluating headphones. Several headphone review sites provide frequency response measurements of headphones showing the extent to which they comply with the Harman target (Vafaei, 2018; Audio Science Review, 2020); in cases where they fall short, corrective equalizations are often provided."

See reference to Audio Science Review above? You don't see head-fi, do you?

At the recent AES conference, this paper was presented: An Over-Ear Headphone Target Curve for Brüel & Kjær Head And Torso Simulator Type 5128 measurements

"In addition to the 24 magnitude frequency responses derived from our headphone measurements, we included eight additional frequency responses: the mean of the responses from the eight headphones listed in subsection 2.1 (‘AvgAllmeas’), four HATS 5128 approximations of the Harman curve that were obtained from audiosciencereview.com [11] (dubbed here ‘APHarm2015,’ ‘APHarm2015v2,’ ‘APHarm2018,’ and ‘APHarm2018v2’). "

So you want to convince yourself of fallacies, be our guest. Just don't put them forward as arguments when they can so easily be shown to be wrong. We hold a unique position in the industry in how we, I and large group of people have come together to help measure and spread knowledge of technologies we buy without prejudice from manufacturers, forums and reviewers incentivized by money, folklore, etc.

 

[MacClintock]

Measurements and the nature of this specific discussion of Caldera aside. The reason I ended up not sending in headphones was because after I went through many of your reviews, I found that the nature of your writings and presentation of information was very biased towards a personal view that you seem to have. Many of the graphs have your writings and musings on them, and many times similar data is filtered in your speech in very different ways. This can be seen in this thread regarding the response of the Caldera above 8khz. Even though we know the 711 coupler not to be ideal you made direct comments numerous times on the first page about this area, this is why I suggested a 5128 may be of use if you want to comment on this area.

I found this to contain bias in some ways towards certain MFR's, and instead of trying to parse it out I decided I didn't want to complicate my life by trying to figure it out and work with you.

If I had, I would have sent you the new BOKEH and Atrium Closed as they are closer to Harman in some configurations.

I think if you do want to make everything more easily understandable for the end user, your readers, which I would like to think is the end goal here, doing a baseline of research on each product and the typical customer use case would be helpful to everyone and help thwart reactions from any side that bring pitch-forks out. ZMF is certainly well documented, and email to me asking if there's extra tuning options beyond stock configuration wouldn't have taken more than one email to get.


If you looks at the LCD-x 2021 you wrote:

"I am happy to strongly recommend the Audeze LCD-X 2021 revision with equalization. Without it, it is a pass for me."

For Caldera you wrote:

"I can't recommend the ZMF Caldera without equalization. With EQ, it sounds excellent but whether it is worth $3,500, you have to decide."

Notice the bolded statements, the order they come in, and then go look at the review and measurements of each. The subjective nature in all of this is too strong for me to want to work with you @amirm I wish this site really was about science, keeping an open mind, and moving the hobby forward, but it seems to be about you.

My main focus in life it to work on making headphones, and not deal with sources of bias. It's well documented that I cut these out of my life, like headphones.com, bloom audio, and other reviewers and such that I have trouble navigating the bias of. So yes that's why I chose not to send headphones in, as it makes my life easier. Ofcourse if people continue to send headphones in to you you can review them, and I do appreciate the parts of what you do that help headphone enthusiasts understand the hobby and that carry the hobby forward. I wish your subjective bias was made more clear to readers so that the data could come first.


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What I don't get is, apparently you don't want your headphones to sound neutral (i.e. being tuned to Harman), but you react offended if someone is mentioning and critizising it. You should stand for what you offer, a very expensive, nicely manufactured, coloured-sounding headphone. Otherwise your position does not make any sense and you showed again that logical reasoning is lost on you.

 

[MacClintock]

This is the very definition of jumping to conclusions, it's probably best to stop speculating unless you have a primary source of information. It isn't surprising in the slightest is that ZMF would not want to publicly disclose their driver supply chain as it presumably gives them a competitive advantage is a crowded headphone market. To fault them for not providing that information is absurd.

My guess for not disclosing them is that they don't want people to know how cheap they are and how badly justified the price for the headphones is.

 

[MacClintock]

The result of your review is irrelevant to me,

So what are you still doing here? The way you continue to talk unreflected stuff does not seem to confirm this.

 

[IAtaman]

hmm, actually your argument about the Sony MDR-ZX110, seems not to help your point, that thing has 110,000 reviews in amazon with 75% being 5 starts, huge sample that supports the importance to have a good FR for a headphone to be like by most people, but that headphone can not handle any subbass at all, and I really like my subbass, so is a pass for me even at that price.

I am sorry, I have no idea what your point is.

 

[solderdude]

What I learned from this thread is that I prefer a subjective review of a random head-fi member, who never would claim to be objective about his preference, but who tries to give an insight in his preference with a reference playlist, talking in detail about how the songs sounded with different gear, comparing this different gear and who writes emotionally about his excitement or his problems with the certain piece of gear. All of this is about listening to music, which is an emotional process to some of us in the first place lol

To me, what Amir does are no reviews but few short ideologically coloured and often predictable statements that have to fit in the overall agenda or lets call it "ethos" of the forum. There will be no deviation. Sometimes a headphone that is easy to EQ will get more praise, sometimes less depending on the mood or bias. A headphone that is tuned to harman target is likely to get praise no matter what. Infact it would be enough just to post a messurement a EQ suggestion to achieve the holy harman and get to the next "review". To me ASR was always only good for messurements, that usually can be trusted and are indeed rather useful. Anything else though... well while sometimes very entertaining is usually ideological talk and pure subjectivism. Amirs crusade for a greater cause, his fans, the trolls, people who are dead set not to spend money on their hobby, people who never listened to a certain class of gear, but have a very strong opinion about it - all this can be dismissed when it comes to actual customer purchase descisions. Keep it to messurments if you want to be objective and think that messurements is the only thing that matters to when it comes to the listening expierience. But you will not do this simply because this board lives and dies by contreversy, members that feel superior by their "scientific" approach and threads like this one. Good thing is that ASR had enough positive influence on the actual reviewer scene, so many more reviewers start to make messurements.

What baffles me the most, is the lack of curioucity. This thread could have become a great insightful discussion with a designer about the choices that he made and why those have been made, there could be criticism and proposals to do things differently, but it would be a fun discussion that could bring our hobby a bit further and maybe give people some food for thought.
But hey, as a designer I would avoid giving any statements on this board in the first place, it can only go south considering there is zero room for discussion driven by actual scientific curioucity. For someone interested in scietific approach its simply mandatory to be open to other standpoints and being able to admit and to see flaws of the your own approach. Any serious academia would consider something like harman research a great starting point that gives us some valuable insights in listener preferences, but still just a starting point from which much more research had to be done. With lots of variables that are yet to be considered before we can make any generalizing claims about the preference of the majority or whats "best for the consumer".

fixed the ramblings for ya...

What I learned from this thread is that I prefer an objective review so not by a random head-fi member, who never would claim to be subjective about his preference, but who tries to give an insight in his preference with a reference playlist, talking in detail about how the songs sounded with different gear, comparing this different gear and who writes emotionally about his excitement or his problems with the certain piece of gear. All of this is about listening to music, which is an emotional process to some of us in the first place lol

To me, what Amir does are measurements and not just few short ideologically colored and often predictable statements that have to fit in the overall agenda or lets call it "ethos" of the forum. There will indeed be no deviation from the scientifically determined target. Sometimes a headphone that is easy to EQ will get more praise, sometimes less depending on other factors as well. A headphone that is tuned to Harman target is likely to get praise no matter what. In fact it would not be enough just to post a measurement, an EQ suggestion to achieve the Harman target and get to the next "review" but it should be discussed so not closed for comments. To me ASR was always good for measurements, that usually can be trusted and are indeed rather useful. Anything else though... while sometimes very entertaining, is usually ideological talk and pure pseudo objectivism. Amirs crusade for a greater cause, his fans, people who are dead set not to spend a lot of money on their hobby, people who never listened to a certain class of gear because it is ridiculously expensive can have a very strong opinion about it . All this can be dismissed when it comes to actual customer purchase descisions. Keep it to measurements if you want to be objective and think that measurements is are indicative for the basis of what matters when it comes to the listening expierience. You should do this simply because this board does not live and die by controversy but likes the 'science', members do not feel superior by the "scientific" approach and threads like this one but like to see measurements and some comments on them to make purchase decisions. Good thing is that ASR had enough positive influence on the actual reviewer scene, so many more reviewers start to make measurements.

What baffles me the most, is the lack of curiousity for measurements by people that do not understand them. This thread could have become a great insightful discussion with a designer about the choices that he made and why those have been made, there could be criticism and proposals to do things differently, but it would be a fun discussion that could bring our hobby a bit further and maybe give people some food for thought and insight.
But hey, as a designer I would gladly make any technically correct statements on this board in the first place. It can only go south considering there is zero room for a friendly discussion driven by actual scientific curiousity. For someone interested in scientific approach its simply mandatory to be open to other standpoints and being able to admit and to see flaws of the their own and others approach. Any serious academia would consider something like Harman research a great starting point that gives us some valuable insights in listener preferences, but still just a starting point because there is tolerances (wiggle room) for just about everything in life. With lots of variables that should be considered before we can make any generalizing claims about the preference of the majority or whats "best for the consumer".
Of course 'majority' does also mean there is a minority as well. They thus deviate from the majority. It would be good if they realized that and just said... hey I like it this or that way and yes that deviates from what the majority wants. They should not say they have superior wallets, hearing, taste.

 

[Thomas_A]

The response on average between 1 and 5kHz is lower than Harman which could be right for some people (it appears to apply to me too).
Not all people have the same ear gain in that part of the frequency range as that of a standard measurement fixture.
A lot of people have more ear gain and thus prefer a bit of a dip there.

In case of the Caldera it isn't a 'smooth' dip but a bit lumpy and thus may sound a little 'off' compared to a headphone that just has a bit of a dip or no dip.
In any case a dip is not audibly as detrimental as a peak in that part of the FR.

Different pads and the insert could well improve measured performance. For that we have to look at other measurements that are out there.
A bit similar to testing/measuring a DT1990 with the stock pads only (the Balanced pads which aren't balanced at all).

It would have been a good idea if various pads and the insert were sent along with it and the request was made to measure combinations. This is a tedious job with lots of plots and reporting though.

While there is some variation between ears and ear canals between individuals, I don't think this is universal to some specific group. Having a significant dip and peak variation at 1-5 kHz is not what I found at least for the 5 persons (which completely different ear shapes) I tested with the DT-150/DT-100 headphone. Now this is not including the inner pars of the ear, but I think it is quite similar, and there is no variation 1-2 kHz seen.

 

[solderdude]

Ear canals are obviously not included. It is these ear canals that differ in length, width and shape.
The only way is to measure at DRP with special mics through really thin tubes.
The influence of the pinna is not very big with headphones. It is more substantial with sounds coming from the front and that's where the brain 'calibrates' on.

Were in-ear mics used that look like this ?

or mics like this:

When it was done with the latter it is logical you won't measure any differences.

The differences you measured might even be caused by insertion depth differences as the mic would be closer or less close to the same driver/pads.
You can still see some pinna gain boost (near 5kHz) which does not differ that much between ears with sounds coming from the sides.
And even then there are differences of several dB's between individuals. It would be interesting to see what it would measure like with the mic plugged into industry standard fixtures though.

here you can see that the ear canal resonance is between 1kHz and 5kHz and the concha is higher up but this is at a 45 degrees angle and not from the sides which makes a difference.
So with headphones the biggest changes are made by the earcanal and your and my ear canal differs from the GRAS fixture. Less so (anatomically) from the 5128 Zach is using (he even has 2 ?) but still can differ as that is based on some 'average' they found. Not all people are average.
All you need is a few dB more or less earcanal gain or at a different frequency and you may want a little more or less upper mids emphasis to suit your 'brain calibration'.

 

[Thomas_A]

Ear canals are obviously not included. It is these ear canals that differ in length, width and shape.
The only way is to measure at DRP with special mics through really thin tubes.
The influence of the pinna is not very big with headphones. It is more substantial with sounds coming from the front and that's where the brain 'calibrates' on.

Were in-ear mics used that look like this ?

or mics like this:

When it was done with the latter it is logical you won't measure any differences.

here you can see that the ear canal resonance is between 1kHz and 5kHz and the concha is higher up but this is at a 45 degrees angle and not from the sides which makes a difference.
So with headphones the biggest changes are made by the earcanal and your and my ear canal differs from the GRAS fixture. Less so (anatomically) from the 5128 Zach is using (he even has 2 ?) but stil can differ.
All you need is a few dB more or less earcanal gain or at a different frequency and you may want a little more or less upper mids emphasis to suit your 'brain calibration'.

However, a dip of 7 dB between 1-2 kHz as these headphones show should be supported by evidence. Where is that? And what ear canals are showiing that? Audiophile ear canals?

 

[solderdude]

The average level between 1kHz and 5kHz dropped. Ears do not care that much about narrow band dips.
I am not defending the tuning of this headphone and have seen much better response in that frequency range.
I was talking about average levels which would become more clear when 1/6th oct smoothing was applied. 1
The -7dB at 1.6kHz and -10dB at 4kHz will be somewhat masked by the peak at 2.5kHz.
Still .... the overall sound quality will improve when you increase the level at those dips.

Those dips are also highly pad dependent so there is that. Only 'standard' pads were measured. With the other pads the dips are still there though but different in level.
Clearly the tuning is not anywhere near as good as the 50% cheaper E3 but I reckon if you are a fan of ZMF headphones you might prefer the ZMF tuning (which is a powerful bias by itself).

For me a little less emphasis in the 1-5kHz range usually sounds 'more real' to me like the E3 below.

The tuning below is a bit too much (average is around -5dB in that range)

IME you lose some 'details' with the tuning above. It usually improves when it isn't as 'wonky' as the Caldera.

People could experiment with 32-band equalizers and make some presets that mimic the response a bit as shown above and listen to music (on known good headphones) toggling the EQ on and off to get what I mean.
The Caldera, as fine looking as it may be, does not do well in this part of the FR. I am sure ZMF fans will disagree and either not hear it or don't care and to them other sonic aspects will be more important... who knows.

 

[asrUser]

@amirm - If you are going to be continuing to run this forum responsibly, you really need to get the rig that most/many us manufacturers are using which is the 5128 from B/K. It will accurately give you results above 8K and more properly show the rest. I know the 711 coupler is great since it will reflect the Harman research, but the industry is moving past that as the 711 coupler is dated at this point. Maybe you can develop some findings with your own research more based on what your personal HRTF is as we all have large variances in certain areas.

Further - and as any ZMF owner will tell you, there's 6 sets of different pads for the Caldera, and a titanium mesh for the front that helps tune the headphone to your preferences/HRTF and without testing all of that the way an actual owner is and finding what works best for your own personal HRTF BEFORE doing EQ you are also doing a dis-service to anyone who reads this by stating "facts" without utilizing the headphone in it's designed sonic modular fashion. For example there's three different depths of Caldera pads, all which adjust the distance of the driver to the ear to account for different anatomies, as well as a fully perforated pad that more follows harman.

Please be more responsible and use the headphone the way an owner would, so you can provide accurate information since you have so many followers.

Hello Zach, I didn't expect some manufacturers to start heated discussions here, but it already happened anyway. As I remember amirm bought the GRAS of his own pocket and/or donations. I don't know if he's rich enough to afford a hella expensive 5128, but that's another topic.

Yes your headphones can be changed by a lot of earpads and mesh, but so can other brands. Why don't you just send all the stuff to amirm so he could find the best combinations? No hard feelings bro.