Dan Clark headphones - subjectivists find them "dead" and "flat"

[pablolie]

See, this is the kind of stuff I wanted to avoid in this thread. Glib comments and all. A repeatedly perceived phenomenon for something as impactful to the actual sound as the transducer stage is worth investigating.

It's worth declaring it a personal preference (as in "*I* prefer this type of sound signature"). Claiming "X sounds better" crosses a bridge into a "fact" that can't be defended. Note I am not claiming *you* can't possibly hear a difference (difference headphones can indeed sound very differently) or can't prefer a certain sound signature. Sound quality (which can be measured) is not the same as "personal sound preference". Note I personally prefer certain deviations from what many consider the ideal reference myself.

By all means, DCA seems very respected as far as sound quality goes - I don't own any, but I've seen that written quite often.

 

[Palladium]

I found every IEM tuned to Harman curve are brighter than calibrated speakers myself.

 

[TheEman]

I have now tried the E3, Stealth, and Expanse. And all of them sounded like hot garbage to me. It didn't matter if I was listening on an Apple Dongle, Asgard 2, RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Feliks Envy, HeadAmp CFA3, Mjolnir 3, iFi Pro iCAN Signature, Topping L70, Topping A70 Pro, Topping DX5 II, Benchmark HPA4 or Woo Audio WA33.

The issue? Not surprisingly...it's the seal. I spoke at length with Dan Clark himself about this, and we agreed that all these headphones simply do not conform to my jawline, and that's where I lose the seal. Consequently, I hear very little/no subbass and bass, and that tilts the overall tonality towards the mids and treble. And without low end to counterbalance the sound signature, the spicy treble just murders my ears.

The other issue is how sensitive the DCA cans are with respect to positioning of the ear inside the cup. The smallest adjustment, at least for me, completely changed the sound. DCA even ships their headphones with literature on how best to position one's ear inside the headphone. To me, that's a bit outrageous. I just want to throw on the headphones and enjoy music, not be obsessed with exactly how to wear the damn thing.

I am not the only one who has issues with seal and positioning. Dan Clark acknowledged this, and I know his team worked hard to make the E3 less sensitive to seal and positioning than the Stealth or Expanse. Unfortunately, it didn't work out for me.

I think these guys really need to make headphones that are not nearly as sensitive to seal. Dan Clark and his team clearly have a great grasp on how to design headphones that are excellent from a technical perspective. Now I think they need to focus more on the user experience.

I can't begin to imagine how amazing it would be to hear what is depicted on all these frequency response graphs of the DCA cans showing near-perfect Harman tuning. I happen to enjoy elevated subbass and bass and find most planars too thin with their bass-deficient (with respect to the 2018 over-ear target) linear extension down to 20 Hz.

 

[solderdude]

I think these guys really need to make headphones that are not nearly as sensitive to seal. Dan Clark and his team clearly have a great grasp on how to design headphones that are excellent from a technical perspective. Now I think they need to focus more on the user experience.

The answer could partly be in different pad shapes (anatomically correct for a number of head-shapes) or pads that are so soft and thick enough so they make contact with skin all around and thus can't/won't leak because of head shapes.

Of course ... the glasses problem, hair between pads and skin, position dependency is not fixed then.

When a headphone does not work look for something that does. This is difficult for closed headphones. Open headphones are much more seal resistant.