ZMF Atrium Biocellulose Driver Stabilized Wood Ltd Headphone

Atrium [ ey-tree-uhm ] // is a Roman architectural term referring to a centrally open room often at the entrance to a space, typically with domed or otherwise pitched ceiling. With the ZMF Atrium, you get our most open design, which features our patent-pending rear damping system that accentuates stage layering and depth, tactile "feel" with realistically natural timbre.

The Atrium expands the range of spatial sound experience first incepted with the auteur (now the “auteur classic”), through its shared biocellulose driver heritage and linear ZMF tuning.

SPECIFICATIONS:
Impedance: 300 Ohms
Driver: Biocellulose N52 Atrium Tuned Driver
Weight: 515 +/- 30g (Varies by wood)
Sensitivity: ~96dB/mW

Stabilized wood is a magical entity. The wood we used for this special run started its life as a maple tree that unfortunately acquired an infection. After infected - trees form “scabs” called burls in order to protect the rest of the tree when this happens, which causes the grains to intertwine, in effect closing this area of the tree to the greater circulatory system. This creates abnormally beautiful wood, but also wood that has figuring, voids, and gaps. These burls can be seen to the naked eye, and cut off the tree while allowing the rest of the tree to grow healthily. Once harvested though, all these voids can make the wood hard to use without stabilization.

Before the wood is machined into a headphone, the wood is cut to precise sized blocks and carefully dried to near zero percent humidity and then injected in a pressurized chamber with a special resin. The resin, not only beautifies the wood, but solidifies any of those gaps that would otherwise crumble when being machined. All this work to procure maple burl and stabilize the wood is a time consuming process, as it takes 6+ months from harvest to headphone, but we think the results show that’s it’s well worth the time.