Pros:
  Gorgeous Wood and Metal Construction
  Extremely Comfortable
  Excellent Dynamic Drivers
  Easy to Drive on Balanced Connection
  Very Good Packaging
Mediocre:
  Stiff Cable
  Durability
  Treble
  Price
BULL:
  2-3 Month Wait Time
BLUF:
  The Verite Open (VO) is an extremely solid headphone with excellent mids, good bass, beautiful construction, and solid build quality. The only letdowns are the stiff cable, mediocre treble, and a 2-3 month wait time for something this expensive.

  Ah, ZMF, the headphone world’s poster child. Originally a Fostex T50RP modder like Dan Clark and Modhouse, Zach and his team have come a long way in a few years. With the newer Atrium and Caldera on the table, how does the slightly older Verite hold up in the world of modern headphones? Really well. While I don’t always have the best things to say about ZMF due to how they shut down negative impressions about them, they do make truly excellent headphones. The VO is no exception despite the $2,500 MSRP, and the typical limited run of unique woods, metals, and interesting colors are fully available at various times throughout the year. So, what makes it good?

  Comfort/Build (Can you wear it for long periods, will it fall apart after one use?) – 4:
  The comfort is excellent, with a couple of padded velour straps running across the top and some excellent perforated suede earpads. The headphones are a touch heavy at ~450-470g, and there is a lighter magnesium chassis upgrade available for $250 extra. The Walnut on mine is truly gorgeous and the black grills with purple dust covers is a cool touch. The clamp force is a touch too much for my tastes, but it’s better than the JMA XTC 2.5 I have and worse than the CA-1A and SJY Moonlight. The cable is very high quality, but stiff and unwieldy compared to my similar Corpse Cable Gravedigger. The metal in a couple of spots looks a little chipped from the factory, but it’s hard enough to tell that it doesn’t really matter. Oh, and the hardshell case and microfiber cloth are a nice touch. The VO still earns a 4 here.

  The VO is running from my PC to a Chord Qutest to an iFi iCAN Phantom, the same system I test all of my headphones on since it can run basically everything including IEMs and E-stats. These are really easy to drive from the Solid-State mode at Low gain – they have a comfortable listening volume between 30 and 40 out of 100.

  Lows (Sub-bass/bass quality and quantity) – 4: The intro of “…Ready For It?” by Taylor Swift is excellent for testing bass and the VO reaches quite deep with above average reverberation and control. You can feel the sub-bass, but it doesn’t reach the level of the JMA XTC 2.5. It also doesn’t have any unwanted reverb and the bass doesn’t drown out the mids either. The VO earns an easy 4 here, but not quite a 5.

  Mids (Vocals/Instrument clarity and presence) – 5: Really excellent mids on the VO. I use “Liar” by The Arcadian Wild to test mids, separation, etc. and the VO displays an excellent recreation of the guitars and vocals here. It’s very easy to lose the female vocals on this song, but the VO displays them beautifully with some of the best separation I’ve heard recently – matched only by the SJY Moonlight in my current headphone lineup. This has a very mids forward presence, which plays to my preferences, it may not to yours if you prefer a V or U shape with recessed mids.

  Highs (Cymbals/High pitched vocals or instrument quality and presence) – 3: The highs are better than a lot of full-size headphones, which often are missing a good treble response, but I can’t say that the treble is good. You can hear some cymbals if you listen very closely, but they’re certainly not a forward presence here. On the plus side, the VO avoids the majority of the sibilance that can come with emphasized treble. Still, the VO only earns an average on the highs.

Soundstage/Imaging (How big and accurate the song sounds) – 4: The imaging is also very good, with the instruments surrounding the head, but providing a very forward representation as opposed to a full 360 that some headphones can achieve. The soundstage is average with the music relatively close to the head, but not in an unpleasant manner. It’s not a Sennheiser HD800, but it’s not trying to be either and it sounds far better to my ears.

  Value (Cost vs Performance): Oof, these are expensive. Like more than a DCA E3 and almost Abyss Diana MR expensive. If you can get them used or on sale, they’re worth it as a piece of art and an acoustic expression. If you can’t, I can’t really recommend them at full price with the stock wood. I have seen some truly gorgeous, stabilized wood with amazing colors though that are worth it for the looks alone, let alone some good sound. The biggest problem with the VO is actually from ZMF themselves – the Atrium is often considered better and has the same MSRP. For $1k more, the ZMF Caldera has shown up near the top of many endgame lists as well.

  Overall, I really enjoy the ZMF Verite Open. I hate that they took over 2 months to arrive since they charged me the full price on day one and just kept the money for 2 months. Pretty tacky considering they hadn’t even started working on them until the two months was about finished. ZMF, feel free to put funds on hold, but don’t charge people the full value until you start working on the headphones. Also, the cable is very annoying and comes with a relatively uncommon connection instead of 3.5mm. It could use some work. The lows and mids are truly excellent considering the dynamic drivers powering these, but I would like to see a tad more treble to highlight the cymbals better. Additionally, you could reduce weight by removing the padding on the top headband as it doesn’t add anything other than a nice feel when putting them on. The Verite Open is not worth it at MSRP, but it becomes a steal if you can find one you love the looks of at a decent price.

Bytes&Bull Overall Score: 4