The former owner of DCA Expanse is here
I bought myself E3 yesterday. Overall, these are very good headphones and probably the first closed design that suits me.
The headphones look pretty good. Not as good as expanse or stealth, but good. The position on the head seems less comfortable from memory, it seems like the pressure on the head is stronger. Also, subjectively, they seem heavier to me than stealth.
I will say right away that their leakage is average. It is not the best and not the worst, mediocre. From memory, stealth isolated better, but it is difficult for me to verify
Comparison with expanse will be from memory, but I owned them for about a year and a half. I am only briefly familiar with stealth, I was not the owner.
When I heard stealth for the first time, I saw what good headphones they are. The sound is clean, the tonal balance is correct, the sound is not slowed down or "nasty", not too sparkling in a bad sense, as I often hear in many other planar headphones. Even though the sound was generally lively, with a good amount of bass, I felt that it was kind of "lightweight". Like there was not enough upper bass. Yes, I have eyes and I can see that Dan Clark raised this range, but it does not work for me. I heard about expanse and decided to wait for them.
When I tried expanse, I immediately realized that they have fixed this problem in some way. Rather, the sound became "heavyweight". Later I applied -2.5dB correction Q=2.6 to them using my RME 2/4 PRO SE, which makes the sound a little more transparent and lighter. Overall, I liked these headphones, they are good, with excellent detail. For some reason, I especially liked listening to an orchestra on them, but they are generally very good. However, I could not shake the feeling that the Expanse sound was kind of soft, as if you were listening to a tube amp. Personally, I did not like it very much, especially on percussion, transients. It did not sound bad, but not how I want it. I'm not sure if the Stealth had the same problem, but maybe it lacks sharpness too. I wonder why I heard it like that.
However, thanks to the E3, I finally found a closed headphone that I like and is not bright. At the same time, I have enough energy in the high frequencies in them. Also, it seems to me that in general the entire upper frequency range sounds different, as if smoother than in the Stealth. The low frequencies sound different too. Despite the frequency response, they no longer seem lightweight. I think the low frequencies are a bit buzzy, but it's not distortion, it's something else. Overall it sounds more natural to me.
It seems that all this together creates a feeling of a more lively sound, with better dynamics. What was done for them is more effective than the frequency response correction like in the Expanse. As far as I remember, the detail retrieval in the Expanse and Stealth is better, but not very much. In any case, you need to set the same volume here and compare, which I can’t do. I was quite annoyed by the softness of the Expanse, although I know people who like it.
Overall, I would say that all three pairs of headphones are close in sound quality, but they may or may not suit someone for various reasons. In terms of ergonomics, I would choose stealth or expanse. Also, the more expensive models sit better on the head. But for me, the E3 sound better in terms of the sum of its parameters.
Interesting note about EQ for them:
Overall I don't feel like I need EQ with the E3. However, I did notice something counterintuitive: +1.5dB around 50Hz Q~1(or maybe 1.1 I don't remember) makes the sound more transparent. I repeat. Correction in +dB makes the sound cleaner! At first I thought I was crazy, but after double-blind testing (just pressing the button many times and trying to guess the result) I realized that firstly it is audible, and secondly I feel it as a cleaner sound. My friend was nearby and he heard it that way too. For me it's just something very strange.
It's also a real mystery to me why some people didn't like the bass in the E3. I tested different music on them, including techno, all sorts of heavy stuff(extreme doom metal as esoteric, black as blut aus nord etc). Everything sounded powerful, lively, with good tonal balance and good punch.
I didn't even feel like I needed some kind of exciter as it often happens. I don't see anything wrong with adding harmonics when they can be removed on demand. My setup is a fairly powerful and neutral RME 2/4 PRO SE. However, at this moment I like the sound in stock, without DSP. Without "room harmonics", changing the Harman curve in the low frequencies or anything else.
For me, these are my favorite sounding headphones from Dan Clark. But DCA has models with better design and comfort, less weight on your head, and slightly different tuning that you may prefer.
With DCA E3 you gets more than enough too, even low gain with via 6.3 jack in.
