Dan Clark Expanse Headphone Review

[solderdude]

I am very much looking for that 'tube warmth'

I suggest to use EQ instead and listen to music in a candle lit room... that'll fool your brain a lot better than thinking an old technology can actually do that.

 

[Grobbelboy]

The stock tuning of the Expanse already offers lots of "warmth" to boot, with its significant midbass bump. Can't imagine wanting even more excess in that region, but to each his own of course.

 

[DualTriode]

You will end up with VERY different measurements and will have to compensate both to a similar target. I assume Harman or want to have a go with other targets as well ?
How are you planning to calibrate the FP ?

Panning to do seal measurements too ? When you do they won't follow Harman anymore.

In the end you will have 2 FP measurements. One made acc. to a standard and one not adhering to any standard using a mic that was not intended to be used that way.

Why not buy the 4128/5128 and see what you can do with that

Hello,
In this exercise of looking at headphone measurements of the Expanse headphone with the GRAS 45CA Hammer and a home grown Flat Plate "Test Mallet" I am not going to mention the H C words.

The Expanse headphone is the new standard for this brief exercise. The microphones are calibrated, suitable for pressure, directional and omni measurements, the 1701 transducer interface is calibrated. The 45CA is the standard headphone measurement tool.

Picture, every head and every ear is different.

Also picture, every headphone is different: the headphone cups are different shapes, different volumes and have different resonance qualities. Yet we have the expectation that every headphone should have the same frequency response measured by a standard set of rubber ears.

Sure the measurement plots will be different than we are used to seeing, that is expected and is the goal.

The Expanse Headphone is the standard not the frequency response plot.

There will be no ears, golden ears or otherwise involved in this brief exercise.

Thanks DT

 

[solderdude]

What do you expect to learn ?
And why would the Expanse be THE standard (golden) headphone ?
Just because it measures closely to an overly smoothed target (the Harman target) on a specific test fixture and circumstances ?
Or.. do you like the sound as is (and thus the Harman target) and that's what makes it the standard. In the latter case how can one not involve the ears ? After all the Harman target is based on preference (ears).

 

[DualTriode]

Much like putting a microphone in a speaker enclosure. Purifi uses this method MIB. (Google "microphone in a box").

https://techtalk.parts-express.com/...icrophone-in-box-technique-for-lf-measurement

I want to see and learn about what is going on inside the headphone ear cup without putting my ear in there. Step response, frequency response, waterfall and such. I would like to do this without all the stuff about personal ears being different and head transfer function.

Why Expanse headphones. Over 1000 posts tells me that there is a following and the number of people complaining of the headphone quality will be mostly limited. Low distortion and a good candidate for experimentation.

Thanks DT

 

[solderdude]

I want to see and learn about what is going on inside the headphone ear cup without putting my ear in there. Step response, frequency response, waterfall and such. I would like to do this without all the stuff about personal ears being different and head transfer function.

Ah.... that was the reason I measure that way. This way you do not have to 'compensate' for the changes made by the pinna/ear canal but as the pinna is also direction dependent a bit, not nearly enough as sounds coming from the front, you introduce yet another error.
Depending on what the goal is for the measurement one method may be better in some aspects than other methods.
I have not seen succesful 'merging' of methods to create a 'better' squigly. Plenty of attempts have been done AFAIK.
Of course the ear does take up some space and due to its shape interacts with the position of the driver opposite the ear (mic should not be dead-center of the driver) as in reality the ear entrance is not in the 'middle' of the cup.
This can have a substantial influence on the measured FR, highly driver break-up mode dependent as well.

In any case... ALL headphone measurements are kind of wrong. Those that adhere to a standard, at least, should be comparable to copies of fixtures adhering to the same standard.

Have fun, expect to also need a 'target' for the 'mic in plank' when correlating it to perceived sound (is what Harman is mostly about)

The Expanse is semi-open (sealed front volume) so the bass response is likely to be seal dependent. Fully open headphones may make an easier test subject.

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

Meanwhile I also have the opportunity to listen to the Expanse. It actually sounded the way,
i imagined it would. To me, the Expanse sounds like a studio monitor with bass boost, in a room with no reflections. Nothing for me.

 

[Henreid]

The Expanse sounds like a studio monitor with bass boost, in a room with no reflections.

Your assessment is immensely helpful to me. I own a well-regarded headphone model that remains almost completely unused. That's not due to poor performance - I just find the soundscape to be uninvolving. So, I've been considering an upgrade. My problem is that I've listened to classical music for years through good-quality loudspeakers, and orchestral/choral/organ music sounds too diminished over headphones. The Dan Clark Audio Expanse seem superb on paper, but this is not the first time I've read that they have a "dead room" aspect. (I'm also at a loss to understand why $4,000 headphones would have an artificial 100Hz-300Hz bass boost intentionally dialed in, which most owners would want to remove immediately with equalization, in conformance with the Harmon curve). That's not the type of performance I've been hoping to find. I should probably face reality and admit that when I wish to hear music reproduced with an impact similar to loudspeakers, I'm probably asking too much of any headphone...

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

At first I found the Expanse to be quite good.
But the longer I listened to it, the more I got the impression described above.
When I switched to the he-1000 V2, it was all over...

 

[Snoopy]

I'm also at a loss to understand why $4,000 headphones would have an artificial 100Hz-300Hz bass boost intentionally dialed in, which most owners would want to remove immediately with equalization, in conformance with the Harmon curve).

Because most people are used to distorted bloated bass from Headphone with dynamic drivers. To compensate for the "lack" of bass (the absence of distortion) there is that bass boost.

 

[IAtaman]

Because most people are used to distorted bloated bass from Headphone with dynamic drivers. To compensate for the "lack" of bass (the absence of distortion) there is that bass boost.

I'd argue most people who are interested in buying a $4K headphone are not used to distorted, bloated bass from headphones. In any case, if I remember correctly I think the point Dan Clark made was that he felt the elevated bass is matching live performances of bass guitars and kick drums and such better.

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

Dan Clarks explanation about this hump

 

[IAtaman]

Not sure what he is saying in the above video, I suspect something similar to what is transcribed below.

Here is what he says to Jude of Head-Fi in an interview.

(...) when I got Stealth which follows that curve very closely through the base, it feels like the upper bass is slightly recessed. And that works really well for a closed headphone because that helps with the sound stage. But, with an open headphone it felt like to me like when I was listening to base scales they were not quite linear enough, and so because I was not fighting the trade-off of the cup, I felt like putting more energy in there so that it became what I call experientially flat was a good idea. What I mean by experientially flat is, if you go listen to acoustic bass, it has a thrum to it; a kick drum has a pulse to it where you feel it in your chest. Headphones, you miss that. And that region from 100 to 250hz will do that. And by putting that extra energy here, I feel like drums are more dynamic, and bass lines are a little more complete. (...)

 

[Henreid]

Thanks. That's intriguing information about Dan Clark's preferred frequency response curve. Speaking for myself (and perhaps a few other potential buyers) I'll say that I'm not exactly enthusiastic about paying $4,000 to experience the unique frequency bump that gives the greatest personal pleasure to Dan Clark's ears. I also wonder if that bass boost succeeds in improving the sonics for all types of music. But those are just my individual concerns (and as I mentioned earlier, I've been listening to music over loudspeakers almost exclusively for so long that It's likely I have unreasonable expectations about the performance characteristics of any headphone model).

 

[DualTriode]

The current state of the art in headphone design and recording playback is making the headphones sound as much as possible like loudspeakers playing in a standard listening space. This is well documented in the Harman AES papers and other publications. This is also supported in the Dan Clark presentation posted above.

Recordings mixed to be played back over speakers in a standard listening room is the standard stuff we listen to with our headphones, even state of the art headphones. (This is where people will say, "yes but".)

This is where audiophile headphones leave off.

The limiting factor for headphones is realism , closing you eyes and having the sense of being there. I much prefer my mini bench speakers with sub-woofer at near or direct field distances for sound stage and being there realism. (Details if you like.)

For fun take a look at the recent AES papers, two monthly editions dedicated to 3D space with headphones for Augmented Reality and Artificial Reality headsets. These are not top dollar audiophile headphones, they are not needed for 3D "sound stage" effects. There is a lot of recent research into Augmented Reality and Artificial Reality 3D rendering for headphone convolution.

Low distortion and the ability to be equalized is required. Look at headphones like AKG 712 as an example.

There is a distinct lack of convolved mixes for audiophile headphone listening.

Thanks DT

 

[IAtaman]

Thanks. That's intriguing information about Dan Clark's preferred frequency response curve. Speaking for myself (and perhaps a few other potential buyers) I'll say that I'm not exactly enthusiastic about paying $4,000 to experience the unique frequency bump that gives the greatest personal pleasure to Dan Clark's ears. I also wonder if that bass boost succeeds in improving the sonics for all types of music. But those are just my individual concerns (and as I mentioned earlier, I've been listening to music over loudspeakers almost exclusively for so long that It's likely I have unreasonable expectations about the performance characteristics of any headphone model).

In general paying for tuning makes no sense in my opinion in an age in which tuning can be easily manipulated by equalization software. Even if that bump is the best thing that has ever happened in sound reproduction, I do not need Expanse to experience that. I can tune it with a simple filter on the EQ and Bob's my uncle. I suspect this is one of the reasons why it is so hard to get headphone manufacturers to ditch their "house curves" and agree on a standardized tonality - you can not create much of a "unique selling proposition" out of something everybody can reproduce at home I suppose, and the Circle of Confusion continues unfortunately, at least for head speakers.

 

[DualTriode]

Floyd Toole took the book from the wrong shelf that day.

This is circle of confusion first and always.

 

[babar]

Absolutely, Amir did his review with the RME ADI-2 Pro and report a level of -6 on the volume with plenty of headroom. You should be good to go with the Expanse and RME pairing as that is what Amir used. The Expanse is rated at 23 ohm impedance by Amir and the RME spec says 3.4 watts in balanced with 32 ohms so you are more than good.

Hi, I have a RME ADI-2 DAC connected to my Expanse using Hart Audio 1/4".
I have the RME set to HIGH.

this setup does not go to an extremely high volume for my ears. Sure it's loud when maxed out but nothing like my Topping A70Pro.

do I have something wrong?

(love having bass and treble controls on the DAC)

 

[Jimbob54]

Hi, I have a RME ADI-2 DAC connected to my Expanse using Hart Audio 1/4".
I have the RME set to HIGH.

this setup does not go to an extremely high volume for my ears. Sure it's loud when maxed out but nothing like my Topping A70Pro.

do I have something wrong?

(love having bass and treble controls on the DAC)

Do you have something reducing input volume to the RME somewhere? Preamp adjustment for EQ? Loudness normalisation/ replay gain? Volume slider in your player/ source device?

If not then you must just be listening pretty loud but I doubt anything is wrong. I can max my RME easily with insensitive headphones like the HE6 especially with some input reduction.

 

[babar]

thanks for your reply.

I am using Tidal directly from the Mac to the RME using USB.

I just did a reset of the RME and set it to High again. It did get a lot louder. enough to be unbearable. This is such a good combination for me compared to the Topping A70 Pro which I had paired with an RS8+CR08 and an Eversolo DMP-A6.

listening in the -30 to -10 range.