Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

ZMF Bokeh Closed: A Deep Dive into Luxury Sound

April 10, 2025

[MSRP $1099, $200 more with a tuning set, more with additional/upgraded cables.]

Bokeh Closed in its case, connected to the ZMF Lectric C Cables

[Tl;dr: These are an incredible pair of closed backs, from a technical standpoint, an artistic standpoint, and a dedication to craftsmanship standpoint. They are very expensive even for someone like me, and they’re definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I really, really, really like them (and I’m not generally a big fan of closed-back headphones). They’re hands-down my favorite closed-back at this point, and I think they may be my endgame closed-back. If you know me IRL and you like headphones, you should come take a listen to them. If you like woodworking, you should come take a look at them.

Editor’s note: I put on Massive Attack’s “Heligoland” while I was editing this review, and … damn. These headphones are perfect for this kind of music, so they’re kind of perfect for me.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 10 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 8 out of 10 Denalis

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Headfi Audio for Dummies

March 13, 2025
[Update 11/16/25: I have completed a tiered recommendations list from $20 to $2,000+, and it’s available here.]

Last year I wrote a Stereo Building for Dummies post laying out the basics for a loudspeaker system. In the last couple of months I’ve gotten a few similar questions about headphones and their care and feeding, so I thought it would be worth putting together a quick outline of the basics of headphone hifi, or Headfi. I’m going to focus primarily on digital media in this post, but much of it (except the parts about DACs) will also apply to a purely analog system. I’ll start by reiterating my four rules of hi-fi audio, then get into it:
1. You like what you like. The most important factor in judging an audio system is also the simplest: does it sound good, to you, in your space, and listening to the things you want to listen to? ¹ Many of my fellow audio nerds spend a lot of time arguing about objectivity and measurements, and that seems silly to me. Do you like the $5 headphones that came with your phone? Sweet! Enjoy! Do you want to spend $25,000 on a set of Macintosh separates? Awesome, please invite me over to listen to them (and maybe add me to your will?).
2. Used gear is your friend. Audiophiles spend a lot of time chasing the new hotness, and a lot of their gear ends up in the used market. You have to be a bit careful with used gear from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, but a good used hifi shop will have tested and potentially worked on gear they’re putting out for sale, and can talk to you about it (and, usually, let you listen to it before you buy!).
3. Components interact in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Even high-quality speakers or headphones may sound less-than-stellar when connected to a particular amplifier or source, and it gets infinitely weirder in a separates-based system.²
4. No system is the end-all, be-all. Everything can be upgraded. Nothing is forever. Components break, and some of them can’t be easily repaired or replaced. That’s okay. Embrace the change. Half the fun of audio is figuring out what you can swap in for a particular piece of gear and the changes that doing so can bring.
[Caveat: I’m not an objectivist. I don’t really care about measurements or graphs;³ I care about what a system sounds like to my ears, playing music that I like, in the spaces I am inhabiting. I’m not going to talk about measurements here, but there’s a wild world out there of objectivists on the internet if that’s what you’re looking for. I’m also not a professional reviewer; I don’t (and can’t) listen to everything, and I tend to focus on the stuff I like rather than spending brain power on the things I don’t. Everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt.]
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Hifiman Edition XS; a Great Budget(ish) Objective Open-Back

March 7, 2025

[ORIGINAL MSRP $499. Purchased for $269 + tax on Amazon in February 2025 (and $269 appears to be the new, semi-permanent MSRP).]

[Tl;dr: The Edition XS are baby Arya Stealths; they have a lot of similar characteristics, but with a lot more tradeoffs (which you’d expect for a headphone that sells for less than half the price). They’re great for loud, complex songs but struggle a little bit with quieter, more subtle tracks, where they give up some ground to the Sennheiser x Drop 6XX. They can be a tad bright, but my in my experience didn’t cross over into being harsh. Good, solid but impressive base, decent male vocals but maybe a bit of veiling for female vocals.

At $269 they’re a great deal for a very objective tuned headphone, and I may buy a hard case and carry these as my “working outside the house” pair when I don’t want to haul the 6XX.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 7 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 8 out of 10 Denalis

[Update 9/15/25: I’m no longer recommending anyone buy anything directly from Hifiman. They still make some great products and some of them represent excellent potential value, but Hifiman’s corporate culture and poor customer service make me unable to recommend anyone buy directly from them.

If you want a Hifiman product like the Edition XS or Arya Stealth, I strongly recommend buying them from a retailer with a good returns process and that won’t make you deal with Hifiman directly.]

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Meze 109 Pro Review

February 8, 2025

[MSRP $799. Purchased for $799 + tax on Amazon in January 2025.]

[Tl;dr: These are my new favorite headphones, period. They’re not objective-focused; their tune is warm (and buttery, and magic), but if that’s something you’re interested in, I cannot recommend these strongly enough. They’re so good out of the box, in fact, that I’m not even using EQ on them. This is my end-game open-back, at least until I can justify trying out the Meze Empyrean 2.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 10 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 9 out of 10 Denalis [I know. I know.]

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Hifiman Arya Stealth: My New Favorite Objective Open-Back

February 2, 2025

[MSRP $1,599, marked down pretty much everywhere to $599¹. Purchased for $599 + tax on Amazon in January 2025.]

[Tl;dr: I wouldn’t pay the original MSRP, but these are awesome for $599 and that seems to be the new defacto price across the internet. These are hands-down the best objective-tuned headphones I’ve ever listened to. They can be a tiny bit treble-heavy, so it’s convenient to have EQ as an option, but I basically don’t use it 99% of the time so far. In my opinion, you have to pay substantially more to compete with it in an objective headphone, though I personally prefer something like the Meze 109 Pro for $200 more.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 9 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 9 out of 10 Denalis

Bass² Mids Treble Soundstage Comfort/Fit³
Arya Stealth 4A 3B 4B 5A C

[Update 9/15/25: I’m no longer recommending anyone buy anything directly from Hifiman. They still make some great products and some of them represent excellent potential value, but Hifiman’s corporate culture and poor customer service make me unable to recommend anyone buy directly from them.

If you want a Hifiman product like the Edition XS or Arya Stealth, I strongly recommend buying them from a retailer with a good returns process and that won’t make you deal with Hifiman directly.]
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Sennheiser x Drop 6XX Review, Seven Years in the Making

January 27, 2025

[MSRP $199 at drop.com, occasionally on sale. Bought for $199.99 in September 2018.]

[Tl;dr: These are a screaming deal for $199. They really benefit from a little bit of power (beyond what most consumer audio jacks will provide, though they sound surprisingly good through the free dongle DAC that comes with iPhones), so if you get a pair it’s worth considering an inexpensive DAC/amp like the Moondrop Dawn Pro, especially if you’re willing to spend $20 for a replacement cable and explore balanced audio.

These continue to be my first recommendation for almost anyone interested in getting into audio, and will be my go to when people ask me if balanced makes a difference.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 7 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 10 out of 10 Denalis

Bass¹ Mids Treble Soundstage Comfort/Fit²
HD 6XX 3B 4B 3B 2C B
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Ray-ban Meta Wayfarer Review

January 1, 2025

[Non-RX MSRP $316 in shiny black with green lenses, I paid … substantially more for prescription in shiny black.]

[Tl;dr: I’m genuinely surprised by how much I like these. Are they great, audiophile-grade headphones? Nope. But that’s not their use case, and not what they’re designed for. For what they’re designed for, they’re surprisingly excellent.]

[Update September 2025:

I’ve now owned three pairs of these sunglasses/headphones. The first pair (the pair reviewed here) lasted a month before they stopped charging, and Rayban’s warranty service is … less than ideal.¹ The second pair were a non-prescription pair my girlfriend gifted me … with a lens distortion so bad that the left lense looked and felt like a vertical bifocal. The third pair … well, I ordered that pair directly from Meta with leftover FSA funds that I had to spend before the expired. They sent me the wrong pair², and to date have refused to either replace or refund them.³]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 8 out of 10 Denalis (for their use case, if they work. As they actually are: 1 out of 10 Denalis)

Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis (for their use case)
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Phil's Top 10 Albums of 2024

December 31, 2024
This was a strange year in music for me. I actually didn’t listen to that much “new” music in 2024, having spent a lot of time going back to older artists that I loved. It was also a year where a few of my favorites were the result of going to live shows with friends, even for artists that wouldn’t normally get a lot of my attention. That’s pretty cool too.

So, what did I miss?
1. “Love Heart Cheat Code” by Haitus Kaiyote. I saw this group this summer in Carnation at the invitation of Robin Giese, and holy hell are they phenomenal live. This is a fascinating album with everything from seriously funky jazz-inflected bops like “Everything is Beautiful” to meme-y delights like “BMO is Beautiful” (featuring the voice actress from “Adventure Time”) and “Long Cat” (with it’s charming chorus of “He is the longest cat in the world”). If you like jazz, funk, internet culture, or phenomenal bass playing, check this out.
2. “No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin” by Meshell Ndegecocello. Meshell Ndegecocello was one of last year’s biggest musical revelations for me, after a friend pointed me to her 2003 “Comfort Woman,” one of my most played albums in 2023. “No More Water” is … incredible, both in terms of its own musicality and in its use of Baldwin’s writing. “What Did I Do” is haunting and beautiful, superbly mastered track that I’ve added to my speaker/headphone testing list because of the use of space. I cannot recommend this album to you strongly enough.
3. “Cowboy Carter” by Beyonce. I will start by saying that I’ve spent most of my life believing that Beyonce’s music is not for me (which is totally fine! It doesn’t need to be!), but between “Lemonade” popping up on Roon Radio a lot, and the ridiculous backlash against this album, I spent a fair amount of 2024 listening to this album. Honestly, this version of “Blackbird” is an example of a cover that surpasses the original, and the fact that Sir Paul McCartney blessed it is a testament to just how damned good Beyonce is. The rest of it is incredibly solid as well, from “Bodyguard” to “Texas Hold ‘Em.” I’ve always respected Beyonce as an artist (and cultural icon, and activist), but this album will be in rotation for a long time.
4. “I Love you So F***ing Much” by Glass Animals. Going back to my 2020 list, I cannot believe “Dreamland” didn’t make the cut given the ridiculous number of times I’ve listened to it every year since. “ILYSFM” isn’t quite at that level, but it’s a nice entry from a band that doesn’t seem to miss. Definitely darker in tone (if not content), standout tracks are “How I Learned to Love the Bomb” (and not just for the “Dr. Strangelove” reference) and “Creatures in Heaven”. At 40 minutes it’s a pretty short entry, but well worth taking the time.
5. “Dark Matter” by Pearl Jam. When one of your oldest friends calls you on a Thursday night and asks if you want to go see Pearl Jam play Climate Pledge Arena, you say yes even if they’re not your favorite band. What an experience, and it unlocked an appreciation for Pearl Jam that I’ve never really felt. (side note: the performance of “River Crossing” from “Gigaton” was a transformational moment and I have listened to that album more than this one). “React, Respond” and “Setting Sun” are the standout tracks on this one.
6. “Charm” by Clairo. I really enjoyed 2019’s “Immunity”, so when this dropped to a lot of buzz in the music media I picked it went into my 2024 summer rotation (and thus will always have a weird association with Singapore for me). I’d describe it as slinky college folk rock. “Thank You” and “Add Up My Love” are the standout tracks to me, though the whole thing is great background music for working, walking, or driving.
7. “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT” by Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift was omnipresent in 2024, and given how much I enjoyed “Midnights” I was feeling a little bit of Tay-Tay fatigue when this dropped in April. As seems to be the norm, I prefer the tracks that The National’s Aaron Dessner worked on vs the ones produced by Jack Antonoff, but I think the real strength of this album is in some of the unexpected collaborations. In particular, “Florida” is one of the most Florence + The Machine-y tracks I’ve heard in the last few years (including a Florence Album), and I mean that as a compliment. I’ve enjoyed Post Malone’s musical journey in recent years, and the duet here on “Fortnight” is lovely. I’d rank this behind “Folklore” and “Midnights”, but definitely a nice album in its own right, and it doesn’t demand my attention the way either of those albums do.
8. “Saturn Dayz” by Blackstarkidz. This was a late-year addition to my list, after a review on NPR. I haven’t spent as much time with it as I want to, but it gives me very De La or early Tribe vibes to me. It’s super interesting and I look forward to getting it in the regular rotation in 2025.
9. “In Waves” by Jamie xx. This is another one I got to relatively late, but I’ve been a fan of Jamie xx since I heard him live mixing before The xx’s first Seattle show more than a decade ago. I’m not sure where this one will end up in my canon (“In Colour” grabbed me really quickly in a way that this one hasn’t yet), but “Waited All Night” seems to be the closest we’re going to get to a The xx reunion album, and I look forward to more listens in 2025.
10. “BRAT” by Charlie XCX. I mean … this was a vibe, this summer. And I miss the sense of optimism and joy of August and September. “360” is the standout, though “Apple” is obviously also a bop.
Honorable mentions:
1. “the sugar machine” by slenderbodies. “sotto voce” was in my rotation a lot this year, so when they dropped a new album in 2024 I was curious to check it out. It’s … a little inconsistent, but will probably get a lot of play in the background while I work in 2025.
2. “Live on Boston Harbor” by Fleet Foxes. I’m not the world’s biggest Fleet Foxes fan, but tracks from this kept popping up on Roon Radio and I found myself really enjoying them, to the point where I spent some time with Fleet Foxes’ back catalog. If you like live music, recommend this album.
Hifi 101: Practical Applications

July 4, 2024
This is a companion to my post the other day about my philosophy for building a stereo system, aka hi fi rack. I’ve broken it into tiers ranging from $500 to around $3,000. You can certainly spend way more than that on a stereo, but if you’re going to invest that kind of money you really, really ought to test the components out for yourself to see if they work for YOUR taste. $3k is also about where I feel like you start hitting the point of substantial diminishing returns. The system I recommend at $3k is basically the system that I used for a long time, and the only reason I upgraded it was that I got a really good deal on a very high-end amplifier that I’d been coveting for a while. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s much better than the recommended Peachtree, and it definitely doesn’t play as nicely with my turntable. Similarly, my turntable is a substantial price upgrade from the recommended U-Turn, but I think I might actually like U-Turn’s house sound more and at some point I may swap that back in.

Remember my basic rules of hifi!
1. You like what you like. The most important factor in judging an audio system is also the simplest: does it sound good, to you, in your space, and listening to the things you want to listen to? Audio nerds spend a lot of time arguing about objectivity and measurements, and that seems silly to me. Do you like the $5 headphones that came with your phone? Sweet! Enjoy! Do you want to spend $25,000 on a set of Macintosh separates? Awesome, please invite me over to listen (and maybe add me to your will?).
2. Used gear is your friend. Audiophiles spend a lot of time chasing the new hotness, and a lot of their gear ends up in the market used. You have to be a bit careful with used gear from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, but a good hifi shop will have tested and potentially worked on gently used gear they’re putting out for sale, and can talk to you about it. Outside of speakers, most of my new-to-me gear has been used.
3. Components interact in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Even high-quality speakers may sound funny when connected to a particular amplifier or source, and it gets infinitely weirder in a separates-based system.
4. No system is the end-all, be-all. Everything can be upgraded. Nothing is forever. Components break, and some of them can’t be easily repaired or replaced. That’s okay. Embrace the change. Half the fun of audio is figuring out what you can swap in for a particular piece of gear and the changes that doing so can bring.
Let’s build some systems!
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Stereo Building for Dummies

June 29, 2024
I got asked the other day by a coworker about how I go about building an audio system, and I realized that while I’ve been working on this for more than a year, that I never actually posted it. So here it is. A tier list is coming soon.

[Caveat 1: go talk to your local hifi shop about the used gear they have available *after* you’ve thought about the basic questions below. I know the knock on stereo stores is that they’re full of arrogant assholes who talk down to anyone who doesn’t share their expertise, but that has genuinely not been my experience. They can help you figure out something in your budget that will play nicely together, they can setup and let you listen to things you’re interested in, and they know the local market. I’ll recommend some shops where I’ve had good experiences at the bottom of this post.

Caveat 2: all of this gets really complicated really quickly and has a lot of nuance. This is a thousand-foot view of my personal attitude towards hi fi systems. Your mileage, as always, may vary.]

My basic rules for audio gear:
1. You like what you like. The most important factor in judging an audio system is also the simplest: does it sound good, to you, in your space, and listening to the things you want to listen to?[i] Audio nerds spend a lot of time arguing about objectivity and measurements, and that seems silly to me. Do you like the $5 headphones that came with your phone? Sweet! Enjoy! Do you want to spend $25,000 on a set of Macintosh separates? Awesome, please invite me over to listen (and maybe add me to your will?).
2. Used gear is your friend. Audiophiles spend a lot of time chasing the new hotness, and a lot of their gear ends up in the market used. You have to be a bit careful with used gear from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, but a good used hifi shop will have tested and potentially worked on gear they’re putting out for sale, and can talk to you about it. Outside of speakers, most of my new-to-me gear has been used.
3. Components interact in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Even high-quality speakers may sound funny when connected to a particular amplifier or source, and it gets infinitely weirder in a separates-based system.
4. No system is the end-all, be-all. Everything can be upgraded. Nothing is forever. Components break, and some of them can’t be easily repaired or replaced. That’s okay. Embrace the change. Half the fun of audio is figuring out what you can swap in for a particular piece of gear and the changes that doing so can bring.
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