Admittedly I haven't bought any tubes from Andy in about a year, but I agree that wait time is discouraging

Andy at vintagetubeservices has quite a few American made 6J5s. He keeps the imports for himself. Totally legit

You have no idea how much street cred that's worth in my book! So jealous.

Wanna job?

yeah, the USBs are not galvanically iso'd on laptops, so lots of electric noise does indeed creep in. A lot of noise isn't even really noticeable until it's gone. If you do end up going down the streamer path, I highly recommend skipping straight to a Roon ready device. I've tried quite a few...

Generally speaking, laptops and desktops tend to be noisy, with fans and background tasks. Streamers are essentially computers that do one thing and one thing only and are fanless, thus giving you a lower noise floor.

The Aegis is built exclusively for ZMF by Cayin

AC IMO

Nah... any good tube amp will benefit from rolling tubes. Eventually some owners will stumble upon a god roll or two for various headphones and that will separate the wheat from the chafe. Make no mistake, the Aegis is a killer amp, and the FOMO is real.

I'm not there yet. I have some various aspects of both that I'm quite fond of. I'm currently quite enamored with the CC in the depth of the stage. I need to bounce it off of the VO and VC to see which goes the deepest, but I'm having trouble getting a good seal at the moment with the Verites...

To my ears, the CC is quite close to the CO. You're getting the typical closed vs open differences in stage and bass, and perhaps a tad bit more decay vs the open, but overall they sound more similar than vs the AC

I agree with what has been said already. I'll add to it by saying that the hd6xx on a dongle might sound a bit underwhelming. Most who have heard the 6xx on a good tube amp will sing its praises, but it doesn't sound like you can afford a pricey amp at this point in time.

WOW! Rolo looks like a stuffed toy, just an absolute beauty.

I plan to, yes. :)

Sneaking in some early evening listening. Everytime I listen to the Caldera closed I'm taken by the depth of the stage, the holographic soundscape is simply breathtaking. It doesnt hurt that 3D-ness is one of my favorite aspects of headphone listening. I absolutely love this headphone.

Yeah, the Auteur classic will do quite nicely.

I agree with everything the fine gentlemen above said, but I would ask you what genres of music do you typically listen to? ZMF has a headphone for everybody, but some ZMFs are better for certain genres than others.

reminds me to share this gem I found on FB a couple of weeks ago. @goldwerger can relate.

Last evening i had one of those moments where all of the stars and planets aligned and was treated to audio nirvana. Pushing the 'shuffle' button on Roon while in my 'Headsets' playlist, I was treated to, in this order: The Caldera closed is capable of some seriously epic separation and...

I have that same Marantz. Pretty much all vintage receivers are a fantastic match for high impedance headphones. :deadhorse: You can get a vintage piece with more watts and less cash by some of the less popular brands like Akai, Onkyo, Fisher, Toshiba, etc,,, Marantz, Sansui and Pioneer...

WOW!!

I love it. I can't recommend battery systems enough. Granted it won't work for everyone, and if you happen to be fortunate enough to have good, clean electricity eminating from your wall, then your results might differ from mine, but the differences I'm getting are plainly obvious. A wise...