I considered these from the same company. There are a lot of different designs by various companies in a similar size and price range. I have no idea which designs might work, especially when they aren’t rated with a weight range. I appreciate the suggestion but I decided to keep it simple for now.
There is also the IsoAcoustics line which I thought was borderline too expensive to consider. But then I realized that the price was for 1 and I would need 4 thereby making them hideously expensive and beyond consideration.
I forgot to mention a side benefit of any of these solutions is that it gets the Lyr+ higher off of the desk surface, which makes the volume knob easier to manipulate.
After no new headphones in almost a year, I’ve gotten 2 new headphones just this month!
The first was the Grell OAE1 that I’d preordered from Drop. Opinions on it are almost as divided as US politics. My own opinion is that since it does have a uniquely out-of-head soundstage presentation and I’ve mitigated its issues enough, I am keeping it. It will not be my daily driver though.
The second was the Meze Empyrean II Sunset Boulevard edition. I found out about these thanks to @Lothar_Wolf and, due to the limited availability, my wifu was kind enough to get them for me as an early birthday present. And it was soooo worth it. My wifu and I are very much into what we call “functional art”. That is something that is a work of art as well as performs a useful function. The Empyrean II Sunset Boulevard edition definitely falls into this category:
But the best part is that they sound as good as they look. I’ll be posting a mini-review in the Empyrean II topic, but TL;DR I agree with @Lothar_Wolf. These could easily be my one and only headphone.
Oh one last thing. I went back-and-forth on this but finally pulled the trigger and bought a Schiit Ragnarok 2. This is 100% in anticipation of getting a Modhouse Tungsten soon(ish). I tried my Schiit Mjolnir 3 with a friend’s Tungsten and while it did get loud enough - barely - I later remembered that I always experiment with EQ, which requires negative pregain. That means I’ll need some power in reserve. So rather than worry about it for months until my Tungsten arrive, I got a Ragnarok 2 while they were still around. I have A/B’d against the Mjolnir 3 a few times and differences seem very slight to me, if any. But I always seem to prefer the Mjolnir 3 without really knowing why.
I have been slacking off! Many changes since my last post. To wit:
The Meze Empyrean II have replaced my Audeze LCD-5 as my TOTL choice - the ultimate Tool tool.
I sold the Audeze LCD-5. I think Zeos summarized it best when he said the LCD-5 makes some recording sound amazing and some meh, but the Empyrean II makes all recordings sound good or great.
I ordered a Modhouse Tungsten.
I bought a Schiit Ragnarok 2 to make sure I have all the power I need for the Tungsten w/EQ. It will be fun to compare to the Schiit Mjolnir 3 with the Tungstens. I’ve already done some A/B with my Empyrean 2 and haven’t heard any consistent difference. I plan to get more serious about this when the Tungsten’s arrive.
I went to CanJam SoCal, listened to a all of their dynamic open backs, and came home with a ZMF Atrium Redheart. This has replace my Sennheiser HD800S as my choice for tube listening and certain types of recordings.
The Sennheiser HD800S have replaced the Focal Clear as my desktop daily driver. They’re more comfortable and with some EQ to give them a bass shelf, the sound is quite good off of the Schiit Lyr+.
I ordered a ZMF Bokeh Ltd. I’ve not had good luck with closed backs, but I’m still hopeful. The plan is to replace the Truthear x Crinacle ZERO: RED for outdoor listening as I like IEMs even less than closed backs.
I ordered a Fiio FT1 in beech. I couldn’t resist with all the hype around these and I think the lighter beech wood with silver frame looks stunning. It will certainly be interesting to compare to the Bokeh. The plan for these is to either replace or supplement the HD800S for daily use while working. Sometimes I could use the additional isolation but I’m skeptical that the comfort of any closed back will be high enough, especially when summer comes.
I ordered the Hifiman Mini Shangri-La energizer + headphones. I like the electrostatic headphones I’ve auditioned in the past. It’s time to upgrade from the Koss ESP/95X and see if it goes somewhere. This seems like a (relatively) low cost way to get both e-stat headphones and an appropriate energizer. Also the Mini Shangri-La has decent bass, for an e-stat. This has actually arrived but I’m waiting until Christmas to try it out.
Mods: I’m kinda bummed I can no longer edit my first post to keep the current state of my systems accurate. Is there any way to change that?
Did you try it at Canjam? We gotta meet up for the next one. I gave the FT1 a go at Canjam and in once in Japan, thought the FR is really good but it sounded super closed and narrow to me. To me I’d give the tonality a A- and spaciousness a D. To me it seems really good for $150 or whatever it is, but with tonality already being really good there’s probably not a huge improvement to be had with EQ.
No I have not tried it yet, but with all the buzz around it I just had to find out for myself. There’s another reason I got one too. My wife is experimenting with custom art for headphone cups and the design of the FT1 seems accommodating. Right now she is very busy with opening her online store for other projects, but I hope to post the results in the coming months.
After doing some research, I ended up getting these wall mount headphone hangers from TotalMount instead of stands: 
