Got my aged cherry in today! 
I have to admit, even out of the box they sound good. Treble is a bit intense and stiff still, but man that bass kicks! It kind of sounds to me of what would happen if the VC and Auteur got it on. Granted that’s after only 3ish hours so far haha. New toy syndrome in mass effect here, but i’m enjoying it! But so far I do really enjoy how they sound, new or not. I can tell they’ll be keepers even without burn in.
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@Eric75 love the pearlescent sheen to the finish! Like a flash of reflection in a moonstone, just gorgeous! Congrats!
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Those are beautiful! Mine are coming tomorrow, super stoked! I got the same colorway too, they’re very elegant 
I like your stand, btw… it really complements the headphones.
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Thanks! The stand is from Grainacoustics, post# 60 Headphone Stands - #62 by grainacoustics
I need to take some decent pics of it, but it’s a beauty for sure. Despite how tall it is, and slightly small base, it holds my heavy ZMFs without issue.
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That is a looker. Great finishing and colour probably one of the best pics I’ve seen of the aged cherry. Treble will even out smoothly over time but will still sound a bit etched in the 5-6k region but is still smoother than the verite and utopia in my experience.
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Thank you, Eric, for your feedback. I am thrilled that you like it. I will definitely use your feedback for my next design. This was my first stand that I made, so now you own the first edition of grain acoustics waterbird series :))
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This came today, and so far all I can say is wow! Mids are unreal, has lots of bass slam even before proper burn in.
I happened to be listening to some Chris Isaak recently, and the tracks “Wicked Game” and “Blue Spanish Sky” from Heart Shaped World sound like you’re there in the studio with him, I’ve never heard it sound so intimate and realistic. I was using Schiit BF2 and Valhalla 2, and I think it was a really nice synergy…
Also, my headphones “birthday” cracked me up, so I had to include a picture of it too 
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I recently got the Enleum and it works beautifully with the Atrium
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The Atrium is ZMF’s latest headphone featuring a custom-designed biocellulose dynamic driver and Zach’s famous wood cup design. This new headphone also features an all-new grill pattern that is exquisite and internal filter system. This new Atrium is marketed as a co-flagship product, and comes in at the same price as the Verite series, which starts at $2499.
This headphone is part of a private loaner tour courtesy of ZMF and will be shipped to the next user after this review.
The new Atrium comes in similarly weighted as the Verite series, and the base Atrium model is roughly 490 grams but can vary in either direction depending on the chassis and grill/rod combination chosen. The model I have on hand has aluminum chassis and aged copper grill and rods, making this on the heavier side of the headphone options. It weighs approximately 545 grams with the Universe pads attached.
That said though, I did not find this headphone to be so heavy I could not wear it, and perhaps that is in part due to the new headband padding that is added to the upper band. There is still a leather strap on this unit which will help with weight distribution as well. For my personal preferences, I slapped on my ZMF Co-Pilot pad on this headphone, and most of all my weight concerns were put to bed. Of course, this is not an included accessory, but can be purchased separately from ZMF directly.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about the design and looks. I think they speak for themselves. They are gorgeous, as usual, and perhaps the best looking ZMF set yet.
Sound Impressions
The Atrium is very much a ZMF-house tuning, with lush and natural mids that really carry the headphone. There is a small low-end emphasis in the bass, but it’s not overwhelming or distracting, and it’s fairly neutral up until the upper-mids. Treble is tuned darker than what I consider neutral, but there’s enough energy in the upper treble range to not make this headphone totally dark sounding. It’s actually a very well-tuned set, and probably my favorite ZMF headphone overall.
My listening impressions came solely with my headphone setup of Roon source from my audio server, Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE DAC, and the Bakoon AMP-13R amplifier.
How does this headphone differ from the rest of the ZMF lineup?
Well first off, it’s probably some sort of cross between the neutral-tuned Auteur, and the flagship Verite. The tuning is probably in-between both, as well as a technical performance somewhere in-between as well.
This headphone isn’t one you’d pick if you’re looking for fast transients and attack. That’d be one of the Verite’s with their beryllium-based driver, which has quick agile performance that gives perhaps a better resolution overall, and a highly technical sounding headphone in a warm and dark headphone tuning that is unlike many things out there.
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Instead, the biocellulose driver here presents a more natural decay, with longer sustain, and more body and softness than the edgier transients of Verite. This one is made for rock music. While it doesn’t have a massive amount of deep sub-bass and slam qualities, it has got a nice organic feel to it that works really well with any rock song I threw at it, and I gave it an onslaught of indie rock, 90’s alternative, and classic rock songs I listen to frequently. It handles it all wonderfully, and with it’s darker treble tuning, there’s little fatigue from hard striking cymbals or hi-hats.
Pads, Filters, and more Squiggles
There is a slight peak at 5KHz though, and that helps bring some guitar riffs up front, but I never found it fatiguing either, nor sharp or harsh. That said, this specific Atrium uses the full solid mesh filter. If you swapped it out with one of the more perforated filter options, this area may become more focused, and perhaps sharp. I did remove the filter to see how it would respond, and it wasn’t pretty, so let’s just keep it on for sanity sake.
Speaking of modifications, this tour package also came with a set of Auteur perforated leather pads. The default pad this came with was the Universe perforated leather pads. The differences in appearance is quite small if you are looking from afar, and distinguishing the two could cause some confusion. The Auteur, though, has a steeper angle to it, and this makes it a little taller than the Universe pads on the rear side, as well as having a wider skin-touching surface on the back-end too.
As far as sound changes, the Auteur pads are a subtle shade of more relaxing than the Universe pads, with a little bigger soundstage along with a more subtle sound, specifically in the upper-midrange and beyond. That said, I still prefer the Universe pad option for a more neutral tuning that I personally care for more.
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The Atrium has a medium-sized soundstage, and isn’t quite as large as Verite, but does not come off as collapsed, trapped-in or claustrophobic. I actually like the overall presentation, and imaging is solid to go with it. While this specific headphone doesn’t come off as grand and sweeping, it has a more traditional portrait and music is flowing nicely through it.
More Impressions
I’m going to get away from talking the technical nitpicks now, and just talk about how much I’ve enjoyed my brief time with the Atrium. I can go on and on with random technical jargon or what not, but that does take away from just the overall satisfaction of listening to music with this thing on.
As I said before, rock music excels with this headphone. There’s a wonderful balance of hearing something represented so effortlessly like it does on the Atrium. Very rarely did I find the tuning to sound strange. Yes, it came up here and there, and it may not work for perhaps the modern pop and electronic music, but throw on a rock band and you got a great cozy set to listen to here.
The darkness of the treble is typically something that bothers me a lot. The Focal Clear Mg was one of those headphones I had a lot of high expectations for, as someone who loved and adored the Elex, the Clear and the Utopia. Instead, they made it dark sounding, and went overboard, and it clearly ruined some of the magic and smeared the technical attributes of the Focal series.
That’s not a problem here with the Atrium. The darker tuned treble works. It lets me enjoy fatigue-free listening for hours. It works well because despite what I could call a veil or grain, it doesn’t sound like that at all. There’s little to no spill over to ruin some of the technical attributes of this headphone. Detail still out clearly, and I don’t feel like upper harmonics are missing; perhaps slightly tamed down, but never muted.
I’m blasting through my 90’s rock playlist now, and just feeling great listening to Eddie Vedder’s howling vocals, Tom Morrelo’s buzzing guitars, or the steady drumming of Jimmy Chamberlain. There’s something enchanting about listening to the Atrium that makes me smile, bop my head, tap my feet, and just relax through the evening.
Price-point aside, this is a really nice headphone overall. Great looks, great sound, and you know you’re getting a lot of care and dedication put into each unique set.
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The upper treble around 8K+ is hard to get with anything but a HATS unit but it is there. I know this sounds elitist but in R/D I had a hell of a time correlating that area with what I heard until I used the new B/K unit. Because of this you’re likely to see a lot of people calling this area dark without hearing the Atrium because of the 7108 GRAS units and the Mini DSP stuff being mostly prevalent.
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Also - not to get on a high horse or anything about measurements, but we get a ton of emails of people being confused by how our headphones sound because of people seeing the “target lines” and the measurements not being lined up the same on each graph. A core example in these of crinicle’s site, this is the Verite normalized at 1.2 KHZ:
Then on the auteur it’s normalized at about 300 HZ or so:
This is incredibly misleading, and hard for someone to follow who isn’t innately aware of this, hell it’s hard for me to follow. Overall the Verite is a less bright headphone and most users find it smoother sounding than the OG auteur, which in contrast just has more treble. This is what owners find, and the general consensus is from the hundreds of users we talk to. Could there be people who hear either differently based on the myriad of options we have and the way the high impedance drivers react to sources, absolutely!
But for someone trying to get a feel based on graphs this makes it really tough. These basic ideas would be easy to see if the graphs were both normalized in the same place. Otherwise, they are very hard to compare.
EDIT: And I totally get the argument that the measurer could say “hey this is how I hear it and that’s why I lined it up this way.” But that injects a subjective element into something that is supposed to be objective.
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Hi Zach - I agree. My website FAQ states that the mic is only good to about 8KHz or so. That’s pretty standard limitation for the older GRAS-type mics. This is why I just share the measurement but my reviews are almost entirely subjective impressions, and in the case of the Atrium – I love it!
It does still sound a little darker than my other main headphone (i.e. susvara), but as I stated in my review, the treble is still there and everly present and clear.
As far as your comments on normalization. I agree that normalization can change how something may appear to a novice user of graphs. I default to 500Hz myself, which I believe is what “industry standard” is, or at least that’s what Harman research used. I only adjust it for very specific headphones/iems like V-shaped ones where this 500Hz normalization point just does not work right.
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We have a Susvara demo in shop, amazing headphone!
Thanks again for checking them out and also should have stated - nothing I stated has anything to do with one reviewer or otherwise, just general trends I’ve noticed lately. Your work and impressions are great!
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It’s also an issue with the high smoothing of target curves in general. We made this point in a recent video on how common targets that are smoothed to 1/3 or 1/2 octave don’t reflect fine-grained HRTF information that exists above 5khz even for the rigs the targets are devised on (meaning a subjectively good result may look dark or uneven for example). While they’re a useful reference point, we reviewers need to emphasize that headphone targets like these shouldn’t be treated as prescriptive, for precisely that reason. I think Dr. Olive may disagree with this point on Harman, since as you change the direction of the sound things starts to look more smooth like his target does above 5khz. But that doesn’t mean those HRTF features go away, they just shift to a different spot, and will shift differently depending on the individual ear. The same is true for features at 3khz and below and we don’t ignore those ones.
I look forward to more being done with the 5128, and in some ways the fact that there isn’t a well-established target on this system gives it a bit of a blank slate appeal.
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I updated my “Headphones Ranking List” and Atrium scores an “S” class before and after my normalized scoring system! I put it up there with Utopia, which is just one below Susvara.
*normalization is based on a standard normal distribution, taking into account all the scores in the population and re-weighting them based on a normal curve.
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You should hit Dan Clark up for an Ether 2 test drive. This one is super sweet to my ears.
I’m awaiting release of the revised Auteur Classic.
When do you think you’ll get your hands on the Atrium? I think you’ll like them.
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The Utopia along with both ZMF flagships are pretty much the top dynamic driver headphones at the moment. 3 hard hitting and dynamic sounding headphone with 3 distinct flavors.
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Son of a $*#%, I think by the end of the year I will finally own a ZMF!
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