Gramophone Dreams

As much as I delight in pagan dreams of sweetly perfumed garden nymphs, I’m embarrassed to admit that my mind also drifts in pleasant reveries whenever I hear the words research and development in the same sentence.

- Herbert Reichert

A Couple of Closed-back Headphones

I am by nature a greasy gear head. The idea of taking well considered steps of engineering to analyze and possibly improve the operation of any electrical or mechanical system never fails to get my imaginative juices flowing. This is why I’ve spent decades fascinated by perfectionist audio: I like watching and participating in its edgy, eccentric evolution.

So it’s perfectly natural that I’m attracted to what some call personal audio. I’m drawn to the latest headphones because they’re a part of a new, intelligent, fast-paced audio trend that is all about research and development. The leading edge of what’s technologically possible in headphones is advancing so quickly that companies like Abyss, Audeze, AudioQuest, Focal, HiFiMan, and Sony have zero time to bask in last year’s achievements.

One school of contemporary headphone engineering leans toward creating the type of sound I’ve heard in professional recording and mastering studios. This studio sound (bear with me) is typically strong, very clean, and finely resolved: purely Apollonian. It is neither bright nor dull, and energy-wise, it’s evenly balanced across the audio band. At its best, studio sound produces little to no listening fatigue, and has a “listen-into” quality that lets me hear how a recording was assembled and how I imagine the music was composed. I am predisposed to like this type of low-distortion sound.

SONY MDR-Z1R HEADPHONES

Of all the contemporary audiophile headphones I’ve studied, only five models have achieved the type of pro-studio sound described above: AKG’s K812 ($1499); Audeze’s LCD-4 ($3999); Focal’s Utopia ($3999); Sony’s MDR-7520, a pair of which I own ($499); and now, Sony’s new MDRZ1R ($2299.99).