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ZMF Caldera Headphone Review

Rate this headphone:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 47 25.7%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 85 46.4%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 31 16.9%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 20 10.9%

  • Total voters
    183
To my ears, it lacks bass to the point that my bass heavy reference tracks are totally bland and unenjoyable.
You are a self-professed bass head, though. I find Harman to be far too subby to be accurate. HRTF and taste matters.
 
You are a self-professed bass head, though. I find Harman to be far too subby to be accurate. HRTF and taste matters.
I am??? I like to hear deep bass that headphones can produce. They are superior to even the best speakers. I absolutely do NOT like bloated or exaggerated bass. This headphone has simply no sub-bass response on tracks that show it easily with my speakers and other reference headphones. Do an AB comparison and it is jaw dropping difference.

Let's remember that you have no tactile feedback in headphones. You need that boost to get something to replace that.
 
From my plain life experience if someone spends over a decade with something and is successful with it, there will be a fair amount of knowledge.It rarely occurs that people poke in the dark for 10 years without any idea of what they are doing which your review implies and yet are successful with what they do. More and more people enjoy ZMF tuning and advice others to try a ZMF for a reason. People are here for sound in the first place, great craftsmanship and customer care is a cherry on top. Yes I do think Zach has a fair amount of experience with tuning a headphone design from ground up.
You are misapplying that experience. A doctor with 10 years of experience does have more intuition and wisdom than another doctor who doesn't. But here, we are talking about two disciplines: building headphones and creating a target frequency response. I have no doubt Zack has gained that knowledge and wisdom in building headphones. Given its great looks, and good work in marketing, he clearly has validation of that. He has however done no formal studies of any kind in listener preference. So cannot present any wisdom or intuition.

Your comments about this and that owner liking a headphone has no value. We review because we want to get to facts, not personal opinions biased by many factors outside of performance. The headphone market is heavily polluted by youtubers who will praise anything expensive loaned to them for testing. And if it is expensive in their book, it must be great. Even when they measure, they paper over the facts that conflict with their subjective remarks. This is why I started to test headphones.

There is another major reason why what he is doing is wrong: it continues to randomize the music industry. We all need to get behind one standard that is used both in production and playback. Only then we have any hope of hearing what the artist approved (and heard). If we continue this wild west of every designer's idea being right, we will never get there. With a single standard that is close to what many like, we have a headphone that can be used without EQ. And those that don't agree, can EQ to what they like.

We have such a target right now: Harman's. We all need to get behind that if we want to hear music the way it is intended. Anything else helps a company at the expense of us, the consumers and music lovers.
 
about the discussion:

The Harman bass boost is one thing (way too much for me),
but these holes in the midrange?
It is hard to believe that this would be preferred, let's say in a blind test with these very headphones; one version with holes filled, the other not....and then perhaps a third one with holes filled but a negative high shelf above 1000-ish Hz
 
In other news according to head-fi posts Zach cant reply to you since his posts are waiting for moderation approval ...
I see none waiting. As a member with too few posts, they get subjected to moderation if they trigger our spam filters. As we see them, we quickly approve them. I just looked there and was super disappointed to read this from Zack:

"Just to clarify, I am not trying to post over there anymore since now I know it's being moderated, none of my posts are awaiting approval since I'm done posting on ASR. I just think it's funny my posts were paused so Amir could drop the hammer."

We took no such action. His posts were approved by our moderators way before I even read them. And once he gets to 16 or so posts, all of his posts will appear immediately without our spam filter triggering moderation.

In sharp contrast, all of my posts on head-fi go to moderation queue and NEVER get approved!
 
I also read this from him:

"I did notice in one of his responses he posted this:

"We all need to get behind one standard that is used both in production and playback. Only then we have any hope of hearing what the artist approved (and heard)."

I'm sure @Jude could respond to this better, as he's been at a fair amount of studio recordings, but I don't believe studio mixers, producers and musicians are sitting there tuning all their gear to Harman and response to Harman before we even get it, and then if they did, why would we want to EQ it beyond that? Wouldnt we just want a dead flat etymotic like curve @EtyDave ?"


He is clearly misunderstanding what I said. Both the recording and playback industry need to agree on one curve. I said nothing about the recording industry already being there. They are not. They too use whatever response they think is right with headphones and speakers creating the so called "circle of confusion." This is a famous phrase coined by Dr. Toole.

With our efforts here highlighting importance of Harman target, we are seeing more and more companies using it. We need more companies to get behind it and work towards a universal standard.
 
Two things:

1. Spending $100,000 on a watch is done purely to be ostentatious and wasteful. It's shameful behaviour and should be criticized, in the same way spending tens of thousands of dollars on high-end audio "tweaks" is purely an ostentatious display of wasted wealth, is shameful, and ought to be criticized.

2. No one who spends $100,000 on a watch pretends it keeps better time than a $20 Casio. Plenty of people drop $3,500 on headphones thinking it will get them better performance than a $350 set of headphones. Those people are mistaken, and people are right to call out those errors in the comments.

So yeah, there's no good reason to spend $3,500 on a product that doesn't give you better performance, aesthetics, or comfort compared to a product 1/10th the price, and to the statement, "well it's just an ostentatious display of wealth like other luxury products", I say "yes, and that's gross".

Whoa whoa whoa, I don't buy expensive things to show off. I buy them to enjoy for myself!
 
I'm pretty sure there's many of you on this forum who enjoy a headphone that isn't tuned exactly to @amirm 's cult of Harman tuning, but are afraid to speak up because of the insane groupthink that happens here. I'm here to tell you that it's OK, because all of us on the side of things that are actually making headphones, know that there are many variations, including liking the Harman curve that can be enjoyable for many different reasons. I implore you to like what you like and stand up for yourself, because there's a reason you like what you like, and you're not alone!!!!
Yes there are and finally I can break free and confess, I am one of those. I could not speak out before as I was threatened by Amir and his Harman thugs. But now I found the courage! What I really like is a frequency reponse with big holes, preferably between 1-2 kHz and 4-5 kHZ, that is just my desired tuning. Also low bass and very unsmooth treble are my thing.
 
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What were the target curves compared in the Harmon research. I thought they just gave people a flat ish response and then let them adjust treble and bass.

Aren't there a very large number of variant curves that have acoustically audible differences. Wouldn't you need thousands of people to generate enough statistical power?

Would love to actually see the study design and contextual research. Not because I doubt the conclusions but it would be nice to know the context
 
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What were the target curves compared in the Harmon research. I thought they just gave people a flat ish response and then let them adjust treble and bass.
No, no. The starting target were Revel speakers in a reference room. They compared that to other targets like Diffused Field and found listeners preferred Harman's. Later on when this was established, they experimented with people having dials for bass and treble and adjusted the target. Idea being that without tactile feedback that speakers bring, headphones need more bass.
 
Sigh* I've been showing off my PEQ settings for a long time and nobody freaks out... LoL. ChiLax!
View attachment 330994
oh my god my ears are bleeding just looking at this!!

Are you correcting for a very treble-deficient speaker or headphone? Or for hearing loss? I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS!!!

(I'm not freaking out)
 
No, no. The starting target were Revel speakers in a reference room. They compared that to other targets like Diffused Field and found listeners preferred Harman's. Later on when this was established, they experimented with people having dials for bass and treble and adjusted the target. Idea being that without tactile feedback that speakers bring, headphones need more bass.
ah is the research published anywhere? it would be nice to see the experimental design and power for the studies.

So many questions. I'm just approaching this from the perspective of a researcher in biological and epidemiologic sciences without the audio background.

For example, I don't know what deviations matter or how much they matter between two Harman tuned FRCs.
 
I just looked there and was super disappointed to read this from Zack:

"Just to clarify, I am not trying to post over there anymore since now I know it's being moderated, none of my posts are awaiting approval since I'm done posting on ASR. I just think it's funny my posts were paused so Amir could drop the hammer."

We took no such action. His posts were approved by our moderators way before I even read them. And once he gets to 16 or so posts, all of his posts will appear immediately without our spam filter triggering moderation.

This is so unfortunate. I was seriously hoping that ZMF would have entertained backing up their configuration claims by working with Amir and sending in more of their designs, or fly in like its CanJam, and then letting the data make the point.

Far too often disagreements lead to people just simply disengaging.


Nothing every improves if folks just stomp off and never communicate again.

ASR can be a bit biting based off my reading of some of these threads, but ZMF came in pretty hot and the mods let it go. No filters, as it should be. Amir gets called a liar, a Topping shill, new members question his technical skill, even his age. The mods let it run, as they should. ZMF running off like this, and using the shield of subjectivity on Head-Fi is just disappointing.
 
Yep, I admit I expected a bit more from Zach.
Looks like an attempt for damage control but alas that back-fired. A bit more restraint, kindly worded arguments and discussion would have saved a lot.

Too bad... design and looks are great.
 
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