Dan Clark Audio AEON RT Review (closed headphone)

[highpurityusbcable]

Always liked the design for some reason. They look very light and use "light" words as a naming scheme. Someone knows what he's doing. I wonder if they sound light too.

 

[mshenay]

I have the cx on the way. Im curious as well. Im not into eq so cx might be the way for me to go regardless.

I had an original Aeon Flow Closed and I enjoyed it a lot same as @solderdude I eventually replaced it with an Aeon Flow 2 Closed which has now been replaced by an Ether CX. For me I don't like the added low frequency energy A2C has it's slight U response isn't as enjoyable to my ears as the flatter CX

 

[abdo123]

But do note that this increase helps balance a bit of brightness at the other end of the spectrum where I have a shelf to bring down the highs a bit.

I thought brightness stems from frequencies between 1k and 5k being above the Harman's target, could you please explain what would be causing this?

Would the 'ideal' headphone that follows the target would sound bright to the majority of users?

 

[Guerilla]

These cannot be compared to the Anada and HD650, because those are open back headphones. Totally different use cases.

That said I do want to see how the PM3 and SRH840 do, because I own PM3's and I really like them in terms of sound (even though they could use some equalisation). But when it comes to build quality the PM3 is terrible. It uses fake leather that wears down very easily, so the pleather on my headband is falling apart with no way to replace it. I suspect that the PM3 also has pretty low distortion. When I was looking for headphones I also considered the FLOW Closed, but deemed it too expensive compared to the Oppo. Or better said, it was more than I wanted to spend.

Peel of the remains and use leather paint. First brush then spray I would say
Cheers!

 

[Maki]

Had the original AFC a couple of years ago, but it just never really clicked with me. Looking back, it may have been the 10K+ frequencies. When I owned it I was less versed in EQ, so I really want to try one of the newer ones.

 

[bt3]

Owned both the Ether C and Aeon Closed early on. That was years ago. For a small, narrow head they were just to large and cumbersome for me. I found as nice as the construction was on both headphones, one Hirose connector on each headphone could be a PITA to get to click into place. They could always be connected with some fiddling, but a case of robust/quality connector that is functionally not as easy to connect as many less impressive looking connectors. I contacted Dan several times to inquire about a more compact headphone design, because I like him, his company and his headphones - but like many good headphones, they are to large and cumbersome on small, narrow heads. Few beautifully designed headphones suit headphone listeners with small, narrow heads. Like trying to find decent, satisfactory men’s 36S suit/jacket - requires lots of often fruitless searching. There are many suit/jacket sizes in 40R, and headphones for most “normal” size heads readily available, but woe be to those outside normal. Excuse my pet peeve, but weighing-in on one of lives aggravations for us “little” headphone users.

 

[phoenixsong]

Actually Solo2 and Studio 2 are quite good headphones (not overemphasising the bass like 1st and 3rd Beat headphones are doing), hope Amir will measure them sometimes. I use Solo 2 for critical listening, due to the good fit on the ears and neutral sounding.

Beats EP seems decent too

 

[amirm]

Can you now start measuring headamp output performance for 12 ohm loads? Now that your favourite headphones are 13 ohms

And can you measure your RME ADI-2 into 12 ohms?

My latest reviews have 12 ohm tests.

 

[Music1969]

My latest reviews have 12 ohm tests.

Noted but can you ask measure your RME ADI-2 @ 12 ohms?

 

[Music1969]

 

[Veri]

View attachment 106210

Looks very good in black, IMO

 

[Ilkless]

https://headphonedatabase.com/oratory?ids=248

Oratory measurements look really nice for the Noire.

 

[Matias]

Noted but can you ask measure your RME ADI-2 @ 12 ohms?

As usual the manual is awesome. Included the balanced of the ADI-2 Pro a well.

 

[Feelas]

Not that it would be strictly a bad thing to have something that generates a "live sound" effect. I would assume there's not much research on that subject.

What would the name of that study be - "A study on the averaged effects of live music performance equipment and environments on deviation from the Harman target"?

"A new headphone preference rating model based on resemblence of live performances"
There we go, now I'll just apply for AES Fellowship; I already have the paper's name, that's a lot!

 

[Music1969]

Looks very good in black, IMO

But especially the comment about Harman preference curve

 

[bobbooo]

https://headphonedatabase.com/oratory?ids=248

Oratory measurements look really nice.

View attachment 106212

Closer to the Harman target than this Aeon RT model that's for sure, which isn't particularly close, evidenced by the latter's mediocre ~60/100 predicted preference rating, due to mostly failing to account for pinna gain, around where our hearing is most sensitive and important for correct tonality. Pretty poor for the price really.

 

[Lero]

View attachment 106210

A pleasure for the eyes, I would like to try them to say the same about the ears...

 

[Music1969]

If amirn answers yes to my question, you dont even neeed a headphone amp
Cheers!

These headphones have sensitivity of 80 or 90-something dB per 1 mV... and 13 ohm impedance.

I don't think speaker amps are suitable...

 

[Feelas]

Closer to the Harman target than this Aeon RT model that's for sure, which isn't particularly close, evidenced by the latter's mediocre 63/100 predicted preference rating, due to mostly failing to account for pinna gain, around where our hearing is most sensitive and important for correct tonality. Pretty poor for the price really.

Did you mean that it fails to activate the pinna, or to emulate the pinna gain?

 

[Tks]

These look pretty good.

Though, if anyone here knows, I was wondering. What's up with this low impedance facination everywhere you look these days? I know for dynamic headphones, it's pretty trivial to switch up the impedance to a prefered value. But for planars, it seems universal, that they're all quite low. Is there a reason to have all of them go so low?

I heard the only reason high impedance headphones exist was due to studio use. Where plugging headphones in various sources benefits you (the user) from having your ears blown to pieces in case another source around the studio was left with higher volume output. With something like 600 ohm headphones, there's not much chance you're going to get something extremely loud from one source to another around the studio. But something like modern day IEMs for example, I can imagine plugging into something very loud and being greeted very rudely.

Now I don't want 600 ohm headphones, heck even 300 is plenty from the Sennheiser line. Something like 100 seems like a decent compramise between the two extremes no? So I'm wondering, is this not simply possible in Balanced Armature IEM designs, and Planar Dynamic drivers for some reason? Or is it manufacturers making cell-phone usage a top priority so no one complains their headphones can't get loud running off of their phones under any circumstances?