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Dan Clark Stealth Headphone Review: Best in the World? (Video)
- Thread starter amirm
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As for Darko reference, you may have noticed a few headless and unimpressed panther reviews since. So no danger of me turning into him.
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LoL good to know that!!!! Obivously Darko reference was a sarcastic joke only. You are a serious and professional guy. Not a marketing person like Darko. This is the reason why I admire and respect your work and contribution to this audio world. Nothing wrong to make money on promoting things. The point is some influencers cross the line with their hocus pocus/snake oils tricks and naive people eat that...
I'm also an electrical engineer, my area of expertise is industrial, though. So, I really enjoy your technical reviews. Keep it up!
As for Darko reference, you may have noticed a few headless and unimpressed panther reviews since. So no danger of me turning into him.
[/QUOTE] LoL good to know that!!!! Obivously Darko reference was a sarcastic joke only. You are a serious and professional guy. Not a marketing person like Darko. This is the reason why I admire and respect your work and contribution to this audio world. Nothing wrong to make money on promoting things. The point is some influencers cross the line with their hocus pocus/snake oils tricks and naive people eat that...
I'm also an electrical engineer, my area of expertise is industrial, though. So, I really enjoy your technical reviews. Keep it up!
This video review is one of the best I have ever found on YouTube. I would be VERY interested in seeing an amirm Audio Science Review of the Dan Clark Aeon 2 Noire headphones. At $899 the Aeon 2 Noire model is within the purchasing budget of many more buyers than the Dan Clark Stealth, and the Aeon 2 Noire headphones seem to possess quite a few of the same characteristics that make the Dan Clark Stealth so superb. I'd love to find out how these two models compare.
Subjetively I found the Stealth surpisingly different compared to the Noire, even when EQing the (for me) intolerable treble of the Noire. So i highly suggest trying the Noire for yourself before buying it. Silently i am hoping for a meta material tuning kit by Dan Clark for the Noire, but i don´t know if this is realistic.
I would like to see a review by Amir of the Noire, too, although we at least have the FR already, by @oratory1990
Unfortunately, Oratory didn't have the Stealth yet, so you can't directly compare it to the Noire inside the Grapher-Tool.
PS: After directly comparing the Noire to the Stealth i almost did not use the Noire anymore since and bought a Sennheiser HD800S instead
Oratory has measured the Stealth, just for some reason it's not in his Grapher Tool:Subjetively I found the Stealth surpisingly different compared to the Noire, even when EQing the (for me) intolerable treble of the Noire. So i highly suggest trying the Noire for yourself before buying it. Silently i am hoping for a meta material tuning kit by Dan Clark for the Noire, but i don´t know if this is realistic.
I would like to see a review by Amir of the Noire, too, although we at least have the FR already, by @oratory1990
Unfortunately, Oratory didn't have the Stealth yet, so you can't directly compare it to the Noire inside the Grapher-Tool.
View attachment 209583View attachment 209584
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PS: After directly comparing the Noire to the Stealth i almost did not use the Noire anymore since and bought a Sennheiser HD800S instead
Dropbox
www.dropbox.com
Thanks for your observations concerning the Noire. It's disappointing to hear that the treble response of the Noire is unpleasant. The lack of acoustic matamaterial in the Noire may very well be why these less expensive headphones compare poorly to the Stealth. I've been hoping to find planar headphones that perform admirably without costing a fortune, but I'm beginning to wonder if that is an impossible quest.Subjetively I found the Stealth surpisingly different compared to the Noire, even when EQing the (for me) intolerable treble of the Noire. So i highly suggest trying the Noire for yourself before buying it. Silently i am hoping for a meta material tuning kit by Dan Clark for the Noire, but i don´t know if this is realistic.
I would like to see a review by Amir of the Noire, too, although we at least have the FR already, by @oratory1990
Unfortunately, Oratory didn't have the Stealth yet, so you can't directly compare it to the Noire inside the Grapher-Tool.
View attachment 209583View attachment 209584
View attachment 209585
PS: After directly comparing the Noire to the Stealth i almost did not use the Noire anymore since and bought a Sennheiser HD800S instead
I only said it is unpleasant to ME (without EQ). I´m just saying try for yourself. These things are subjective. I think a lot of people like the Noire.Thanks for your observations concerning the Noire. It's disappointing to hear that the treble response of the Noire is unpleasant. The lack of acoustic matamaterial in the Noire may very well be why these less expensive headphones compare poorly to the Stealth. I've been hoping to find planar headphones that perform admirably without costing a fortune, but I'm beginning to wonder if that is an impossible quest.
Main Problem with headphones is probably the Seal of the pads.
I've read reviews where people say the Noire are "amneic, no bass" and best one was "not good enough for real music" because they sound "compressed".
Other people don't like the treble.
For me they just sound simply perfect with EQ in roon.
Not sure if I will ever be available a luxury item like the Stealth without my wife divorcing me but I like everything about the Noire. And the other Dan Clark headphones definitely look interesting as well.
(Open back headphones are definitely not for me. Way to much noise around me to enjoy the music.
I use my headphones when my wife wants to watch one of her TV shows, or when my neighbours decide to turn the whole house into a disco.
Or when it sounds I'm living below a construction company.)
How do you EQ the Noire?
Seal and bass are good for me.
Maybe my treble issues have something to do with the size. My ears are rather big and don't fit too well in the small cups of the Noire. Similar problem with the Stealth btw...
When I heard you talking about your ear size I was gonna ask if you've tried the HD800s, because I always thought they've got some of the largest earcups around, and looking in your sig I can see you own them already! To me I think a large earcup that you can't feel against you ears is a large positive when it comes to comfort as well as sound, to me a larger earcup helps create a better soundstage, along with the phenomenon of angled drivers or angled pads.....so I see earcup size as one of the important variables. Mind you the inner cup dimensions of the Stealth are pretty big according to Amir's measurements: "It has an inside height of 74 mm and width of 50 mm. Maximum depth is 29 mm." That's pretty big and maybe a touch smaller than the HD800s in some places (depth font = 21mm, rear = 30mm, Width = 60mm, height = 75mm. from diyaudioheaven), and larger than that of my HD560s which is probably my roomiest headphone for ears. It's tough if you have big ears, and they keep growing with age, so I wonder when my ears will no longer fit in my headphones! (They fit fine now, maybe I'll have to buy the HD800s equivalent in 10 - 15 yrs to allow my ears to fit inside!)
Yes, Stealth's cup are bigger in diameter than Noire's (enough for my ears), but they are not deep enough for my ears. I think the Stealth has less deep cups than the Noire. I tried the Stealth only for an hour, so i don't know how much of an issue that would have been if i bought them.
Focal Clear is also too small for me. HD800s is of course very comfortable, but it is a bit more difficult to get a good seal with HD800s on my boney head, because of the large cups.
Ha, yeah, headphones can be difficult!
I own Noire headphones, and bass is definitely not a problem. I think some people may under-power these hard-to-drive phones, and others may not have a good seal. I have power and a good seal, and the Noire, when EQ'd to Oratory/Harman curve, had too much bass for me, down to the sub-bass. I knocked it down 2 or 3 dB with EQ. And it is clear, undistorted bass down to 20 Hz.
Dan Clark has also stated that planar phones, which have less distortion than many dynamic drivers, may sound like they have less bass to ears that are used to dynamic drivers with large amounts of harmonic distortion. When that distortion is present, as Amir and others have often stated, it is often interpreted by the ear as part of the fundamental bass response, not so much as extraneous distortion, thus exaggerating the subjective bass response. As a result, with both the Stealth and the Noire, Dan Clark adds a "bump" of several dB in the 60-160 Hz band to offset what may appear to be reduced bass with low-distortion planars, or perhaps reduced "slam", in a frequency band critical to percussion transients like drum strikes. I edit the standard Oratory/Harman EQ, which deletes this bump, to instead allow the bump to stay, since it provide some modest, marginal benefit to my ears, without bleeding up toward the mids.
(My experience with two sets of low-distortion planar phones is that using them can educate the ear to the unadulterated bass tonality, compared to the resonances common to higher-distortion phones. I now much prefer low-distortion bass, which I had not experienced prior to owning another pair of DCA phones.)
If you listen only to electronica or metal, where the music is synthesized or at least often exaggerated in some frequency bands (esp. bass), then the "right" level of bass is mostly a matter of preference, not so much of fidelity to live music; so you can more or less just tune to taste with EQ. If you listen to acoustic sources like classical, folk, jazz, and much of R&B/Rock, a natural level in relation to other parts of the FR spectrum is more important to fidelity, and will affect whether the bass or sub-bass sounds believably integrated into the larger sonic picture. That's why I toned down the Harman curve bass a bit, because that curve's bass is already a bit north of neutral and these headphones deliver the bass without any strain at all.
The Noire phones have plenty of bass even if not EQ'd, although the bass droops mildly at the very bottom. They sound pretty darn good overall right-out-of-the-box, but may be a little hot in the treble for some, without either using the included filter pads or providing a little EQ. The commentary about anemic bass may be sincere, but does not reflect the capability of the phones when properly powered, with a good seal, and perhaps a little EQ. Third-party measurements (like Oratory) confirm this.
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I had same experience. It was very difficult to EQ the treble. I did not keep my pair of Noire.
I have 2 of these insert things in the Noire.
Reduces the treble nicely with a little bit of EQ
In what respect was it difficult to EQ the treble?
EQ so that it would sound pleasant or at least not ear piercing at moderate to loud volume.
I briefly had the same experience, but resolved it. I will share what I found without any assumption that it is the same issue that you are dealing with.
The Noire headphones sounded kind of hot in the treble. I futzed with EAPO/PEACE to tune down the treble but was unsuccessful. EAPO/PEACE was, on the face of it, functioning normally. But it was not adjusting actual frequency response according to the settings I entered.
When Windows updates, it sometimes disables EAPO in this manner. I uninstalled both EAPO and PEACE, then reinstalled them and restored PEACE settings. It now functions normally, and in 10 seconds I can (if I want to) blunt Noire treble to sound like it is buried six feet down. Or, of course, I can instead tune the treble down to a nice normal tonality.
If you also use PEACE, PEACE indicates that it is only necessary to reinstall EAPO, not PEACE, if EAPO is hobbled by a Windows update. Not knowing this, I had re-installed them both.
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