I am going off memory from the demo I had with the Empyrean IIs, so take these brief impressions with a grain of salt. What I heard was with the Duo pads. Compared to the Calderas, the Empy IIs seemed more recessed/distant in the mids, more V-shaped overall. The Calderas sound more neutral across the board, having a balanced representation of bass/mids/treble. I would say they have better staging depth than the Empy IIs (and this extends to other ZMFs with the ADS), but width and height is probably closer to equal. Imaging was also fuzzier/more diffuse on the Empys.It’s been a while since the Empyrean 2 has come out now. Has anyone had a chance to compare them side by side with the Caldera?
To my ears, both sounded fairly different overall. I didn't really find the Empys to sound competitive at $3k, but they do seem like a good pair for relaxing and having some fun.