I’m sure this topic could potentially be offensive to true audiophiles, but as the headline states… I want my first pair of headphones to be all I need. For month’s now I’ve become obsessed with closely following this community, and have spent dozens of hours watching every review possible of all the high-end headphones favored by this Sub… What I have narrowed it down to, essentially, is the HE1000SE, Focal Clear MG, Arya Stealth Magnet… If I purchase one of these, will I ever be truly satisfied with just the one pair? Or will I long for an experience that other pair’s of headphones have to offer?
Even at endgame levels, each heaphone is good at particular things. There are allrounders but that will mean they are not excelling on a particular aspects but is quite good at everything.
If you want your headphone for listening to every genre of music, to watch movies and play games at the same time you might need an allrounder. One I could recommend is ZMF Auteur. They are no longer in production, but it is succeded by ZMF Auteur Classic, they are tuned quite similarly with improved dampening system.
It is tuned very close to neutral with a little bass boost, which I think is perfect for every genre. They just sound so right and natural. I remembered listening to piano on them and it is able to show so many details in a single note which I never heard before in any other headphones, not even on HE1000 or Abyss Diana that cost twice than this headphone.
I think around $1000 - $1600 is the sweet spot for me and anything past this point is a huge diminishing return where you only get very little improvement for the additional price you pay.
For dac/amp pairing Auteur are not very picky about this so you can go for a good solid ones like the Schiit lineup or JDS labs. ZMF used to recommend JDS labs for the budget DAC/amp that would pair well with most of their headphones.
This is my recommendation. However, you should demo everything yourself, and see what suit you.
ZMF still do recommend JDS, well they did earlier this year when I bought a pair of atrium closed. They said that they had a collab in the works but couldn’t say when that would be released other than Q4 2023 or later.