ZMF Bokeh Review: Just Can't Get Enough

So first, gratitude for being allowed in this loaner tour. Thanks to @ChaChaRealSmooth and @zach915m for this loaner.

As I noted in my Sennheiser HD660S2 review, I am not real experienced with headphone listening. I’ve had my Koss’s for around 7 months now, and am used to them and like them a lot. They share a lot of that “planar/ribbon” sound that I’ve centralized in my speaker system for over 30 years now.

Chain: LP>Denon 301II MC>SME>Skoll (SE)>Kara (balanced)>Bokeh via Kara headphone amp/jack
Chain: CD>Phillips>Yggdrasil (balanced)>Kara (balanced)>Bokeh, …

So, my only cross references are the Koss’s and my recent memories of the Senns. But, that is partially obstructed by another change in the system since then: the arrival and insertion of Yggdrasil A1 (the original).

Here’s my initial take (both via Yggdrasil and with LPs):
1. I like these a lot more than the Senns pretty much across the board
2. In some ways I like them more than the Koss’ in other ways I don’t
3. They are comfortable enough on this 7 5/8 hat size head
4. The pads are a nightmare, even if I didn’t have hand arthritis it’d be fiddly AF, with it, it literally took me 30 minutes to figure out how to invert/roll them back on. (They were loose when I received them)
5. I think they are beautiful
6. I love that the closed design blocks out background noise.

Now on to specifics I observed (many of which correlated to @Ksaurav402

I find the midrange to be very big, warm and “bloomy” (note that I do NOT consider bloom to be a flaw, to me real instruments, most especially for example, vibraphones are all about “bloom”…). The mids reminded me of Rodgers LS3/5A’s driven by a good tube amp. Big, blowsy, warm, phat… let’s call it organic. On some pieces, this was GOLD to me (e.g. small group Jazz), in others it just didn’t sound REAL to me (especially my well known classical references.

Bass on some pieces was over-done (likely because closed/resonance?), but not objectionable, just not as “real” as the bass I get from my Koss’s

Sound space sounded very big, a bit overdone/echoey to me (but again, my reference is planar/ribbons). Again, likely do to physics of being closed.’

As @Ksaurav402 pointed out, it is obscuring some details in the upper highs (especially noticeable in direct back and forth A/B with my Koss. The Koss’ were just “cleaner, smoother, higher”. Neither were etched or anything like treble f’ery/DSS nastiness…

It may sound like I didn’t like them, but the reality is I liked them a lot. Should I convince myself that I *need* a close set, they would be first on my list in fact. They had some of the ribbon magic I like (not all mind you, but more than the Senns did). An analogy might be in order.

For those that remember back in the day (let’s say 80’s, but true in the 70’s as well). We all had/started with MM carts, and, for a while, the best sounding were Grados… then came MC’s…

This headset has (to me) very much that warm, rich-mids, solid bass, rolled treble “Grado MM sound”…

I’ve one more day and night of listening (shipping off to @ilikebananafudge Saturday morning. More impressions anon.

 

OK. All I said before holds, but there are variables I discovered:
1. They (generally) LOVE Jazz (well recorded), that midrange bloom/warmth is like a marriage made in heaven for things like, say, tenor sax
2. I didn’t like them at all on my rock or prog references; preferred the Senns here TBH
3. They loved classical as well, but… w/o the soundscape/stage they had on Jazz… seemed a tad constricted (too many distinct simultaneous instrument lines maybe?)

The quality is obvious.

Thanks again for opportunity.

Off later today to @ilikebananafudge_

 

As usual, thanks to everyone that made this loaner possible, especially @zach915m for bringing these beauties into existence!

The build quality is typical ZMF, which is to say extremely good! I thought they were super comfortable and looked gorgeous. They also felt very light on my head—even lighter than other ZMFs for some reason. I prefer the standard ZMF hardware that comes with other ZMFs a little more, but I thought the Bokeh hardware was still excellent. As others have mentioned, swapping pads on the Bokeh is a little harder than other ZMF models, but I honestly didn't have too much trouble.

The Bokeh are warm, bassy, and smooth. I thought that the tuning was definitely on the dark end of the spectrum, with ample bass and tame highs. I'd say that they're warmer and darker than my Verite Closed (Blackwood). I never detected any unwanted peaks in the frequency spectrum no matter how loud I cranked the volume. The Bokeh are decidedly non-fatiguing headphones. Despite the ample bass quantity, I didn't think that the bass bled into the mids, but I tend to like a lot of lower mids. I noticed that there wasn't much of a sense of upper treble "air" with the Bokeh, but the treble was present enough to prevent them from sounding claustrophobic.

When listening at low volumes, the ratio of bass to mids was somewhat unbalanced to my ears. It made vocals sound thin and distant to me. However, when I turned the volume up a bit, this ceased to be a problem. This also happened to me back when I owned a pre-fazor LCD-2. I always felt like there was something missing in the mids at lower volumes. The Bokeh had a similar sensation to me, which I guess tracks with @purr1n's assertion that the Bokeh has an Audeze-esque turning.

I felt like there was a little bit of woody resonance to the sound of the Bokeh, especially in the bass. There was definitely less than the Atticus or Verite Closed, though. Speaking of the bass, I noticed that kick drums sounded better on the Bokeh than I've ever heard them on any other headphones. Perhaps this has to do with the relatively quick transients, coupled with the strong bass response. I found that the transients were somewhere between the snappy transients of the Auteur Classic and the slower transients of the Atticus, probably leaning more towards the Auteur Classic.

As for detail retrieval/plankton/microdynamics I thought that the Bokeh were a little behind all of the other ZMFs that I've heard (which are the Atticus, Aeolus, Auteur OG, Auteur Classic, Atrium, Verite Closed, and Caldera). There was still a good amount of detail, but I noticed that subtleties in the music were less defined and harder to hear with the Bokeh. It had a simplifying effect on the music.

The Bokeh scaled somewhat, but not dramatically. It's something I wouldn't worry about if I were a Bokeh owner—they sounded good out of anything. In fact, I think this is one of their greatest strengths. They really work with gear that is otherwise harsh or edgy. For example, I find that the upper mids and treble of the Piety are prickly and fatiguing, but I could put the Piety in high gain and crank the volume with the Bokeh and I didn't get any fatigue. In fact, they sounded great! The Piety was a great pairing. Another good pairing was my iFi micro iDSD Signature Finale (what a moutful!) because it emphasizes the mids, which improved the bass to mids ratio at lower listening volumes.

Overall, I really like the Bokeh, which is not surprising considering there are four ZMF headphones in my house between my wife and myself. The Bokeh are warm, bassy, smooth, and forgiving. They're excellent when you want to crank the volume and rock out without any fatigue. It's really impressive that Zach keeps creating excellent headphones that are all different from each other and from other headphones on the market. Bravo!