I honestly didnât listen to it a lot due being fixated on the buzz, but I did enjoy it. I listen to metal mostly. I like a full sound with some slam. Crack or Crackatwoa be a good choice?
A crack + speedball would be an excellent choice for full sound with slam, imo I would start off with that before you go crackatowa, should be a simple enough build if you can solder. Really fun amp, and they hold their value very well. While itâs not on the level of something like a v280 or burson it is a really good amp still
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Havenât soldered in about 10 years so I might just get Paul on their forum to build it for me. I might give it a go though.
Yeah there are a few builders that do a good job, I know @Hazi59 had a good experience with someone recently
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The smell of the zmfs certainly is amazing and lasts for a while. Took like 4 months for my Aeolus to lose the smell. Maybe thatâs partially why I decided to order an eikon lol. Went for ltd when I wouldâve been fine with camphor but after my experience with Zmf so far it feels worth it regardless.
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Savor the SoundâŠ
INTRODUCTION
Iâve had the exciting opportunity to spend a couple weeks with the ZMF Eikon. This set was loaned to me by another HFGF member. A special thank you to that person who may or may not choose to reveal themselves in the comments that follow this post. Beyond that and in this season of giving thanks (I write this on Black Friday 2020), Iâm grateful to this community for supporting my reviewing. A heartfelt âthank youâ to you all 
. With that sappiness out of the way, letâs get back to the EikonâŠ
The ZMF Eikon is a closed-back, biodynamic-driver (biocellulose), over-the-ear ear headphone with a rated driver impedance of 300 ohms and rated sensitivity of 98dB/mW. The headphone cups are made of wood and the stock wood type (and the type used in this review) is camphor. The starting price is 1499.99USD.
Iâve been wanting to check out ZMF headphones for awhile. I went into this review with great excitement. I learned some cool things and now I share them with you. Here goesâŠ
KNOW YOUR REVIEWER
You may skip this if you're familiar with my reviews
My preferred genres are rock/metal and classical/orchestral music. Iâm getting to know jazz more and enjoying quite a bit. I also listen to some EDM and hip-hop. More and more Iâm learning that I prefer âfunâ sound signatures over neutral for most of my music listening. Since Iâm a rocker/metalhead, fun â in this case meaning elevated bass and tastefully elevated treble â is my preference. For acoustic-oriented music I prefer a more neutral signature. My hearing quirks include a high sensitivity to midrange frequencies from just under 1KHz to around 3Khz, give or take. My ears are thus quick to perceive âshoutinessâ in headphones in particular. I describe âshoutinessâ as an emphasis on the âouâ sound of âshout.â Itâs a forwardness in the neighborhood of 1KHz and/or on the first one or two harmonics above it (when I make the sound âooooowwwwwâ into a spectrum analyzer the dominant frequency on the vowel sound is around 930Hz, which also means harmonic spikes occur again at around 1860Hz and 2790Hz). In the extreme, it can have the tonal effect of sounding like a vocalist is speaking or singing through a toilet paper tube or cupping their hands over their mouth. It can also give instruments like piano, but especially brass instruments, an added âhonkâ to their sound. I also get distracted by sibilance, or sharp âsâ and âtâ sounds that can make ssssingers sssssound like their forssssssing esssss ssssssounds aggresssssssively. Sibilance does not physically hurt my ears nearly as quickly as shout, though. Itâs distracting because itâs annoying and unnatural. Readers should keep these hearing quirks in mind as they read my descriptions of sound.
Feel free to stalk my HFGF profile summary. I have a big gear list in there if youâre curious about what gear I have experience with.
BUILD
There is a lot of praise all around for ZMFâs craftsmanship and the overall quality feel of their products. My opinion is no different. These are well made headphones that exude quality and craftsmanship. They are a bit heavy, mostly due to the wood cups, but I donât find them uncomfortable. The weight becomes an issue only when I look down at my desktop while writing something by hand or if I keep hitting the wrong button on the keyboard and have to lower my eyes to find that elusive button. Moments like that inertia takes over: a heavy headphone at rest wants to stay at rest, a heavy headphone in motion wants to stay in motion. However, the weight is not crazy. If you have experience with the Audeze LCD series or a Lawton modded Fostex headphone, the weight and inertia is similar in feel. This review set has the stock Eikon pads and they are big enough to completely surround my average-size ears. They are soft but can tend towards warm â not a sound description but a temperature description in this case.
SOUND
I used a variety of electronics to test Eikon. I tried just about every combination of amp and dac I have on hand right now (see my gear list in my profile). However, I most frequently used the Schiit Bifrost 2 DAC and about a 50/40/10 split between Liquid Platinum, Eddie Current ZDT Jr, and Lake People G111 as the amps for this review. The Bifrost and Liquid Plat was my preferred combo but the other two amps were not far behind. The Eikon did not change a whole lot between solid state and the tube/hybrid amps. For the most part it sounded very clean on a pure solid state like the G111 and more stereotypically wet âtubeyâ on the ZDT Jr and in between those â though closer to clean â on the Liquid Plat. Technicalities such as detail varied some with the amp that I was using but there wasnât a huge change in overall character or sound signature between solid state and tube like there is with the Sennheiser HD6?? Series. In other words, the Eikon did a good job of being the Eikon while taking on a bit of the flavor of whatever amp was driving it. I donât currently have an OTL tube amp so I wonât be able to comment on how Eikon responds to that amp design. The 300-ohm impedance does pique my curiosity here, though. Note: I say âstereotypically wet tubeyâ here to try to communicate the difference in sound. The ZDT Jr is known as a âwetterâ sounding tube amp â i.e. itâs smoother and comes with a bit of âgooeyness.â But not all tube amps are âwet.â Some are very clean and detail-oriented making them sound much more like the common understanding of what solid state amps sound like. OK, end of PSA 
Sound Signature
My subjective description of the Eikonâs signature is that itâs mostly neutral with a âhint of funâ and has very good high and low extension. By âhint of funâ I mean that it sounds like there could be just a slight emphasis on bass and treble but that could also be a psychoacoustic effect based on the excellent high and low frequency extension. To my ear, the 1 KHz range has a slight emphasis at times, but Iâm going to credit (blame?) my own hearing quirks on that and say that I donât think Eikon has an actual elevation there. I havenât looked at a FR graph before writing this, though, and donât really plan to look at one either.
The bass is tight and controlled and extends quite deep. In a somewhat clichĂ© description, the Eikon can do punchy bass when it really needs to, but itâs not a bass cannon. Headphones I have that are similar in this regard would be Elegia and DT-880; neither are bass cannons that will satisfy bassheads, but they can dig deep and provide some punch when the music asks for it. I was pleasantly surprised how much bass oomph it can have when the first bit of the Crosby, Stills & Nash track entitled âLong Time Gone.â I was using the track immediately before it â âHelplessly Hopingâ â to test vocal harmonies and then that track came on with really impressive bass response. I probably should have put Long Time Gone in our Bass Gods Approved thread, but Iâll let someone else take care of that if they agree it belongs there. In a final comment on the bass response, on the Eikon I detect no bloat into the midrange.
The treble is airy and extended. I only notice sibilance when the recording is sibilant. Detail is present without being overwhelming. The treble is also the area where the timbre has a relative struggle â more on this in the timbre section to come.
The midrange also strikes a good balance between being detailed and natural sounding. Vocals and instruments are well separated â to a point. In extreme cases the midrange reproduction could get a bit overwhelmed and the instrument and vocal separation and soundstaging could fall apart some, especially in the midrange. I have to emphasize that these are in the extreme cases, though. The two examples that first come to mind are the 1812 Overture by Erich Kunzel & the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra and The Poet and the Pendulum by Nightwish. The former, in the closing 5ish minute celebration overture, has a full symphony, a full vocal choir, a bell choir, and real cannon fire going off all at the same time. The recording is also a bit bass heavy. Itâs a torture test. The Eikon held it together pretty well but it was also noticeably straining to do so. Some of the instruments and voices blended together and the soundstage flattened and smeared a touch. The Nightwish song has a passage starting at about 7:30 that has dueling electric guitar and violin solos overlaying a full orchestra with strings and horns AND a full metal band with drums, bass, and rhythm guitars, and then throws in both growled male vocals and clean female vocals on top of all that chaos â itâs not the greatest recording to boot either. Where the 1812 Overture track falls into what I would describe as âbusy midrangeâ this Nightwish track falls into not just busy but also âaggressive midrange energy.â Itâs not Eikonâs wheelhouse. It wasnât bad, but it fell apart quicker than some of the large planars I have on hand that arenât markedly different in price from Eikon (HiFiMan Edition X V2 for example, which was originally $1600).
Soundstage & Imaging
In my opinion good soundstage and imaging are vital in making music sound natural and realistic and are therefore things that I tend to pay a lot of attention to in my listening. What I noticed with Eikon is that I didnât pay as much attention to them as I normally do. Thatâs either a compliment or criticism. Both features were good enough that I didnât notice them being bad. Neither feature is so good that it stands out to me as excellent. For the price range, it seems to strike a good balance of adding to the experience without being a distraction for good or ill. I suppose Iâve written myself into thinking thatâs a compliment. The Eikon sounds wide without sounding expansive. Its horizontal imaging is solid enough that I could more or less place instruments in the soundfield and there was decent separation between sonic images. Most of that imaging was lateral and soundstage/imaging depth was only hinted at more than delivered, but that seems pretty standard in this price range; true 3rd dimension imaging (front to back) seems to be reserved for more top-of-the-line gear.
Timbre
Hereâs where the Eikon really shines. The timbre, especially in the midrange when the music isnât too busy, is some of the most natural Iâve heard from a headphone. Voices sound like voices. Pianos sound like pianos. Trumpets sound like trumpets, and on and on and moreso than just about anything Iâve had on my head so far. There is a very organic, natural quality to most midrange sounds. This is especially true on more intimate acoustic music that emphasize voices and just a few instruments. And jazz. Oohhh jazz. Jazz sounds wonderful on these cans. Thereâs a very rich and lifelike quality going on here. Now, I mentioned above that the timbre can struggle a bit in the treble. Every now and then the treble can sound a bit thin and metallic. I had this same complaint about my Lawton-modded Fostex headphone. Iâm hypothesizing that this might be a limitation of the biocellulose driver material, which the Eikon and modded Fostex have in common. No driver material is perfect and tradeoffs have to be made. I did not find this metallic treble distracting very often, and it was less frequent on the Eikon than the Lawton (I think mostly because the Lawton emphasizes treble more than Eikon), but itâs there and at times could pull me out of the moment.
Letâs Talk About Music Genres & Eikon
By and large I found the Eikon to sound at least good on pretty much everything I threw at it. There is a range of musical styles on which they sound utterly fantastic, though, and I let the cat out of the bag some with comments above. Music that is acoustic and vocal oriented sounds GREAT on this headphone. I want to use the adjective âintimateâ here too, but thatâs not always true. There is some music that most would not categorize as intimate â like some energetic jazz, for example â that sounds wonderful. Some form of qualifier on âacousticâ is needed though because full symphonies that tend toward the epic and bombastic â the 1812 Overture mentioned above, Beethovenâs 5th, as examples â or pipe organ music which are acoustic are good on the Eikon, but not its strength. So, letâs call it ânon-epic acoustic and vocal music.â Think jazz (omigosh jazz, did I mention how good jazz sounds on these cans yet?), mild folk rock, or even some pop-rock such Eagles or Fleetwood Mac or Crosby, Stills & Nash as mentioned earlier (yep, that vocal harmony was terrific) can sound stellar on Eikon. On the other hand, for me there wasnât enough low-end energy for harder rock, metal, EDM, hip-hop, and there wasnât the sense of grand scale that I like for the bigger, epic classical music or movie soundtracks. As I mentioned in the Sound Signature section, the Eikon hints at fun, but doesnât quite deliver enough on the fun aspect for my tastes on rock, metal, etc. The Eikon is not bad for these genres, it just doesnât quite reach the level to which some of my other headphones have reached for these genres. However, if youâre an acoustic music listener, the Eikon could be your closed-back-high-end-but-not-quite-top-of-the-line jam.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I put Savor the Sound at the very beginning as a bit of a spoiler. It was somewhat fortuitous that my listening time with Eikon happened in November insofar as a holiday that is so connected with food helped crystallize my thinking about it. My experience with Eikon varied a lot with music genre. For most of the music I listened to the Eikon was solid but nothing extraordinary. But then there would come some tracks in a shuffle that sounded heavenly. And then I put on a Jazz Classics playlist from Qobuz (if you have Qobuz, check this playlist out, seriously) and it sounded so lifelike and engaging. What was the common thread? Then I was making devilled eggs for Thanksgiving dinner and taste tested the filling and thought it needs to be a little more savory. Then it hit me: savory. The Eikon excels on music that is to be savored. What it does at the price point for the human voice, for stringed instruments, for pianos, etc. is something special. Intimate, acoustic music where not just the patterns of notes and chords but the sounds of the voices and instruments themselves speak in a touching way is where the Eikon is most at home. The Eikon is competent for rock and metal and the like, but itâs not as fun or engaging for those genres as my HexV2, Audeze LCD-2 prefazor, or my Lawton modded Fostex X00. Unfortunately for me, those rock and metal genres are the ones I listen to the most and for me personally I would struggle to justify spending this much to listen to genres that take up something like 20% of my listening time, especially when I have other headphones that perform admirably with these off-genres already. Still, the Eikonâs strengths are such that I am now more keenly interested in finding a ZMF that works for me than I was previously. If ZMF has a headphone currently or will have one soon that punches in the bass and holds lots of energetic midrange information together like my HexV2 yet maintains the midrange timbral splendor the Eikon hasâŠon top of the beautiful aesthetic and exquisite craftsmanshipâŠI would start scraping together and saving my pennies to get there. However, I know there are numerous music lovers out there whose tastes are the reverse of mine and if thatâs you then you owe it to yourself to check out the Eikon and presumably the rest of ZMFâs line.
Thanks for reading everyone. Enjoy the music!
Oh, if it matters at all, I put a teaspoon of dill pickle juice and 1/8 teaspoon of mild chili powder in that devilled egg filling and yes, they became oh-so-savory. Had to use the mild chili powder, though. Too many people to feed who donât like spicy food as much as I do 
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Wow!! War and Peace in audiophile form⊠LOL!! Just kidding Wavetheory!! Excellent review and write up and I know that you put your thoughts into itâŠ
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Excellent review! I enjoyed reading it so much and agree with so many points you made in your sound analysis. Iâm so glad that I was able to turn you onto ZMF and get you interested in them, and Iâm so happy that you had a positive experience with the eikon. I look forward to reading even more reviews from you in the future!
Also I think the ZMF you might be interested in for that more energetic sound with rock might be the Atticus. I always hear really good things about it and how fun the midbass is. @Hazi59 should be able to give you more info as he loves his
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Itâs been a great experience. Thanks for the loan!
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Thanks for the thorough analysis and write-up on the Eikon. Iâd been looking for something that was less an advertisement/plug and was more personal.
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Great review! Itâs got me excited. I should have my eikon shipped anytime in the next few weeks and you raised my excitement greatly. Iâm very afraid itâs going to replace my Aeolus as my top/most preferred headphone but I guess thatâs also a good thing lol.
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They came in. Always worth the wait. They look and sound absolutely gorgeous so far 
Thanks @Zachary_Mehrbach !
Iâll try to remember to write up my full thoughts on them sometime in the future.
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Does anyone have experience wearing the Eikon while wearing glasses?
Iâve heard from some people that wearing glasses while using closed-back headphones can âbreak the sealâ and mess with the sound a little.
Is that at all the case here?
I donât have the Solon but I do have the atticus, and I donât have any issues with the seal and my glasses effecting anything
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Reporting that the Burson Conductor 3X Reference pairs very well with the Eikons.
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I wear glasses and it is fine.
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I wear glasses and it is a mess. The arms on the glasses are not thin, so I get a headache by wearing them and using a HP.
Quite a bommer, so I have to use IEMs most of the time
After 8 months of Eikon ownership, I cleaned them. Yikes, how much shit accumulates on leather and wood just from it sitting there on a stand on my desk. Only moving from the stand, to my head and back to the stand. Yuck. lol
Anyway, clean you cans regularly. And while in the process of cleaning them⊠I decide hey let me try and see how the Auetur pads sound on these things. You know, since I bought them and had them sitting in the case all this time. Both pads are lambskin, very supple.
So after a couple of hours of having the Auetur pads on, wow! What a difference. Itâs exactly the direction I wanted to move in. Theyâre immediately more spacious sounding. Not that the Eikon was ever claustrophobic or too intimate. Itâs just that the Auetur pads give everything a little more room. They keep the same subwoofer like slam that the Eikons can deliver but they a a bit wider, open, and a little brighter. The only difference between these two pads is the size of the ear hole. Theyâre identical in ever other dimension. Just about a quarter of an inch longer in length and about 1/8 of an inch in width.
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Good to hear your impressions! I just received my Eikon this week and I did order some lambskin Auteur pads along with it, but Iâve been listening to it stock to get a feel for the sound first before pad-swapping.
Glad the wait is over for you if you got them new. Listen for a gooooood loooooong time to them, get used to the sound before you make the change, so get intimate with the signature and can better appreciate what changes.
EDIT: they do give up a smidge of slam on the bottom, but Iâm wondering if thatâs because theyâre new and not as supple yet as the Eikon pad that saw daily use for 8 months or so.
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