Quick summary
Zeitgeist's new luxury in-ear monitors come in a choice of four "stunning" woods.
They're wired, with a frequency range of 15Hz to 35kHz and prices starting at £799.
You've got to love German luxury audio brand Zeitgeist: their products are anything but boring. Hot on the heels of this summer's birchwood Artisan Collection IEMs and the related Whisky collection, the latter of which is made from whisky barrels, the firm has now turned its attention to other woods. And the results appear to be, ahem, tree-mendous.
The new Trees collection uses responsibly sourced woods from four "stunning" species: sequoia, aka giant redwood; African zebrano; Yucatan redheart; and Mediterranean olive. All four versions have identical specifications but each pair is unique thanks to the near-infinite variation of wood's growth and grain. All bar the olive pairs are reddish-brown in colour; the olive wood has a more yellowish cast.
Zeitgeist Trees collection: key features and pricing
These are all wired designs, which helps not just with sound quality – there's no compression to make data wireless transmission-friendly – but with weight and comfort too, because the earphones don't need to accommodate batteries and wireless circuitry.
The specifications appear to be the same as the Whisky collection, with a proprietary tuned 2-way balanced armature, 17 ohms impedance and a frequency range from 15Hz to 35kHz.
Prices start at £799 / €899 (about $999 / AU$1,580) for the olive and redheart editions, while the sequoia and zebrano woods are £100 more at £899 / €999 (about $1,145 / AU$1,785). All four options are available now from the Zeitgeist website and from luxury retailers including Harrods and Selfridges.
I love the look of these but I'm still waiting for an even more unusual set of IEMs from the brand: this summer they promised that earphones made from genuine asteroid rock plus "an exclusive slice of history" would launch before the end of 2024. If that's still the plan they'd better get a move on: there isn't much of 2024 left.
