Dan Clark Audio AEON 2 Noire Review

[jhaider]

The Pro has two DAC chips and a more powerful headphone amp.

Gotcha games are so tedious…but at least be right when you play next time ok?

DACs are unimportant. From what I see both have 1.5W headphone amps.

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Ok there’s some cockamamie bridge thing you can do with a Rube Goldberg wiring contraption on Pro apparently. I have never bothered with that.

 

[staticV3]

Gotcha games are so tedious…but at least be right when you play next time ok?

What are you talking about?

 

[paudio]

My questions about the issue itself was just ignored, like I mean just not answered. I don't have any acoustic testing equipment and now my last email which was 10 days ago asking whether if I shipped the set to them in San Diego, they would be able to diagnose and tell me about the issue is still unanswered.

So they haven't got back to you yet basically.

 

[icey.seri]

So they haven't got back to you yet basically.

They told me to send it in without replying to the thing about whether it's an issue or what has happened and now I've asked them if they could tell me if i sent it in and no they haven't replied yet

 

[icey.seri]

They straight up told me that there was some sort of internal issue. And they replaced my drivers. What do you mean they just ignored it?

The resistance should match very closely. If something is wrong with the voice coil or with the planar trace it could definitely change the resistance. You can also do a comparison sweep with something like REW. I think I posted my results recently before and after they replaced the drivers.

By internal did they mean for it to be within the company or within the drivers?

 

[paudio]

By internal did they mean for it to be within the company or within the drivers?

I think it was internal is in internal to the business. They confirmed as well that the issue was the drivers themselves. So maybe they ended up replacing bad drivers with drivers from the same bad batch, their testing process corrected the issue temporarily or something or they had some other procedural hiccup during replacements for this issue. Not sure.

 

[Hyacin]

I got mine RMA'd last year from the thread and guess what? its happened again, this time on the left side, after my experience with how subjectivist and dragged out the RMA was with the local retailer I'm divided between doing it directly (more money sunk on this) vs Opening it up myself

Woa... I think this is happening with mine. I have to set my balance quite a bit to the right for centre things to sound centred. I wanted to do some additional troubleshooting, connect it to other sources, etc. ... but seeing you describe exactly what I'm experiencing has me thinking now it might not be a 'me' thing :-/

 

[paudio]

Woa... I think this is happening with mine. I have to set my balance quite a bit to the right for centre things to sound centred. I wanted to do some additional troubleshooting, connect it to other sources, etc. ... but seeing you describe exactly what I'm experiencing has me thinking now it might not be a 'me' thing :-/

You can do a measurement in REW by doing a L+R sweep with some kind of microphone stuck between the pads with the pads sealing against each other. This will show you some kind of difference.

Mine were similar. The image always sounded off to one side. Are they in warranty still? I would reach out to their support.

 

[Hyacin]

You can do a measurement in REW by doing a L+R sweep with some kind of microphone stuck between the pads with the pads sealing against each other. This will show you some kind of difference.

Mine were similar. The image always sounded off to one side. Are they in warranty still? I would reach out to their support.

Less than two months old, so they should 100% be under warranty yes!

Yeah, REW sweep should be easy and prove it for sure ... just been trying to figure out the best way to be extra sure - bypass as much other hardware as I can, check on multiple systems - something. I should try to get it done tonight!

 

[Hyacin]

You can do a measurement in REW by doing a L+R sweep with some kind of microphone stuck between the pads with the pads sealing against each other. This will show you some kind of difference.

Mine were similar. The image always sounded off to one side. Are they in warranty still? I would reach out to their support.

Oh yeah, clear as day, almost 3 dB -

I emailed the shop I got them at to ask if I could take care of it through them, or if I should contact DCA directly. Hopefully I can take care of it with the shop because I'm in Canada and shipping to/from the States is typically eye wateringly expensive, especially California.

I tested through DAC and amp, then just DAC, then just straight into the laptop (the horror!), all showed the same inbalance.

 

[paudio]

Oh yeah, clear as day, almost 3 dB -

View attachment 386210

I emailed the shop I got them at to ask if I could take care of it through them, or if I should contact DCA directly. Hopefully I can take care of it with the shop because I'm in Canada and shipping to/from the States is typically eye wateringly expensive, especially California.

I tested through DAC and amp, then just DAC, then just straight into the laptop (the horror!), all showed the same inbalance.

I'm in Canada. I think it cost me <$60 via Canadapost insured. They send them back with a value of 30 USD so you only get hit with a small fee at the border. I sent mine twice.

 

[Hyacin]

I'm in Canada. I think it cost me <$60 via Canadapost insured. They send them back with a value of 30 USD so you only get hit with a small fee at the border. I sent mine twice.

Thankfully the retailer (headfoneshop.com <3 ) is going to take care of it for me with their distributor. He was going to validate it for himself first though in store, so I figured I'd better get all my ducks in a row - so I hooked all my gear up to a different system, and pulled out my M23R instead of the UMIK-1, retested, and did NOT see the same results

I'm thinking now though that I think it was manifesting well into listening sessions, and possibly even getting worse the longer I went, as I remember having to adjust and then readjust the balance - so I'm starting a long listening session on that other computer right now, and am hoping to be hearing and seeing the issue in a couple hours at most.

If I can prove it without a shadow of a doubt, and if they're going to replace it with a BNIB unit, I may actually take the opportunity to upgrade to an E3. We'll have to see how this evening goes though.

 

[Hyacin]

It returned after about 2.5h of listening, 2.422 dB variance at 1kHz, MUCH worse just below and above that -

 

[paudio]

Thankfully the retailer (headfoneshop.com <3 ) is going to take care of it for me with their distributor. He was going to validate it for himself first though in store, so I figured I'd better get all my ducks in a row - so I hooked all my gear up to a different system, and pulled out my M23R instead of the UMIK-1, retested, and did NOT see the same results

I'm thinking now though that I think it was manifesting well into listening sessions, and possibly even getting worse the longer I went, as I remember having to adjust and then readjust the balance - so I'm starting a long listening session on that other computer right now, and am hoping to be hearing and seeing the issue in a couple hours at most.

If I can prove it without a shadow of a doubt, and if they're going to replace it with a BNIB unit, I may actually take the opportunity to upgrade to an E3. We'll have to see how this evening goes though.

They replaced both drivers on mine. The issue has been intermittent for sure for everyone that I know of so far.

 

[holdingpants01]

They replaced both drivers on mine. The issue has been intermittent for sure for everyone that I know of so far.

Same here, but I actually got a new pair altogether, they're more than aware of this problem at this point so I wouldn't worry about it going on and off and them missing the issue

 

[icey.seri]

It seems that the easiest way to do this is to present them with multimeter readings

 

[Hyacin]

It seems that the easiest way to do this is to present them with multimeter readings

The shop seems happy to take it back on my word and reference to this thread and that it's an intermittent issue - and I did produce REW measurements with two different mics connected to two different rigs ... but, if one wanted to do multimeter readings without ripping the things apart, making them possibly ineligible for return, how would one do that?

 

[holdingpants01]

The shop seems happy to take it back on my word and reference to this thread and that it's an intermittent issue - and I did produce REW measurements with two different mics connected to two different rigs ... but, if one wanted to do multimeter readings without ripping the things apart, making them possibly ineligible for return, how would one do that?

you can just measure impedance of drivers on the headphone plug

 

[Hyacin]

you can just measure impedance of drivers on the headphone plug

OH NEAT! That sounds super easy! I've had them boxed up since I was going to take them back a couple weeks ago but didn't (place and hours are a little out of the way), but I think my tight k371s are giving me headaches, so I'll pull them out tonight for my session of SW: Outlaws, and when they start acting up I'll whip out the multimeter!

 

[juliangst]

My Aeon Pads are already disintegrating.

Should I replace them with new DCA Pads or get the Dekoni Sheepskin pads which should last a lot longer than DCA's synthetic leather?

According to Dekoni, the sheepskin pads have a bit of a bass boost (probably because they're not ventilated like the DCA pads)