Dan Clark Stealth Review (State of the Art Headphone)

[MRC01]

We are talking about the driver.
You are talking about your room.

With headphones, we should also be talking about resonances/ringing in the cup. One of the members here measures headphones and provides on his web site CSD waterfall plots with a 5ms window. Here, FR and CSD are closer in most of the plots, as expected with a shorter time window, but still don't always move together in lock step as you imply. Some do, some do not. For example, the Dan Clark Aeon Closed:

ÆON Closed

back to MrSpeakers back to measurements home Published: Nov-2-2017 NO SMOOTHING is applied to the shown plots. Most measurement sites have some smoothing applied which ‘irons flat’ sharp peaks and …

diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com

Here's a better example: the Pioneer SE-300 has a big CSD ringing spike at 6k but FR through that region is flat.

SE-300

back to Pioneer back to measurements home published: Aug-25-2018 NO SMOOTHING is applied to the shown plots. Most measurement sites have some smoothing applied which ‘irons flat’ sharp peaks and ‘w…

diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com

 

[DualTriode]

Since EQ cannot add damping, you're mostly stuck with this attribute, similar to a loudspeaker's radiation pattern.

This is in error, I am not sure if it is intentional misinformation or just excited arm waving.

For the very headphone this thread named for, engineered meta material is included to provide frequency specific damping to equalize the headphone Frequency Response.

Thanks DT

 

[staticV3]

This is in error, I am not sure if it is intentional misinformation or just excited arm waving.

For the very headphone this thread named for, engineered meta material is included to provide frequency specific damping to equalize the headphone Frequency Response.

Thanks DT

That's gotta be an interesting headspace that you're in to twist and misinterpret my words like that.
Ridiculous.

 

[MRC01]

For the very headphone this thread named for, engineered meta material is included to provide frequency specific damping to equalize the headphone Frequency Response.

Yep, Dan Clark's meta-material does for the earcup what tube traps, bass traps, resonators, etc. do to a listening room. And you can see the effect in the measurements, one of the cleanest group delay curves we've seen in Amir's measurements with none of the hashy reflections seen even in some well engineered headphones. This is also seen in other Dan Clark headphones using meta-material.

Dan Clark's meta-material is like correcting a room with room treatments instead of with EQ. It kills reflections at the source instead of putting a Band-Aid over them.

 

[DualTriode]

With headphones, we should also be talking about resonances/ringing in the cup. One of the members here measures headphones and provides on his web site CSD waterfall plots with a 5ms window. Here, FR and CSD are closer in most of the plots, as expected with a shorter time window, but still don't always move together in lock step as you imply. Some do, some do not. For example, the Dan Clark

I hope that you can formulate a coherent message.

If you continue to focus on long Reverberation Times and looking deep into the noise floor you will continue to to find reflections and cognitively tangent ideas. The colorful room measurement plots do not help, they are only a distracting shinny object. You cannot hear the shine.

If you gate your measurements and not set the floor of your measurements down so far you will find that there is a very direct relationship between measured FR and what your hear.

If you continue trying to correct RT60 with EQ you will be an unhappy camper.

You were speaking about the Member that measures headphones on his site. He means well and I leave him alone. He uses a Flat Plane measurement jig (no rubber fake ears) with $0.69 egret measurement microphones. Any measurements are very unlikely to repeat if you happen to put the same headphones on your real head with real ears.

see all next year.

 

[isostasy]

With headphones, we should also be talking about resonances/ringing in the cup. One of the members here measures headphones and provides on his web site CSD waterfall plots with a 5ms window. Here, FR and CSD are closer in most of the plots, as expected with a shorter time window, but still don't always move together in lock step as you imply. Some do, some do not. For example, the Dan Clark Aeon Closed:

ÆON Closed

back to MrSpeakers back to measurements home Published: Nov-2-2017 NO SMOOTHING is applied to the shown plots. Most measurement sites have some smoothing applied which ‘irons flat’ sharp peaks and …

diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com

Here's a better example: the Pioneer SE-300 has a big CSD ringing spike at 6k but FR through that region is flat.

SE-300

back to Pioneer back to measurements home published: Aug-25-2018 NO SMOOTHING is applied to the shown plots. Most measurement sites have some smoothing applied which ‘irons flat’ sharp peaks and ‘w…

diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com

If I understand how to read these graphs correctly, it looks like what you're referring to is happening at -30dB and below the initial measured response so likely isn't impacting on the audible signal much (if at all)?

Also wondering what is relevant in a 5ms window?

 

[MRC01]

If I understand how to read these graphs correctly, it looks like what you're referring to is happening at -30dB and below the initial measured response so likely isn't impacting on the audible signal much (if at all)?

With the SE-300, yes that spike is low enough it may not be audible. My point is how starkly different it is from the FR. With the Dan Clark Aeon Closed, look at the FR dip at 3k. Initially the CSD decays quickly, then rises to what looks like within 10-15 dB of the original amplitude, then drops, then rises again. This might be loud enough to be audible.

I don't claim anything about audibility; that would require ABX testing to determine. My point is to show that while ringing/CSD usually follows the FR curve, especially with headphones and short time windows, FR and CSD don't always follow each other.

 

[Jimbob54]

I hope that you can formulate a coherent message.

If you continue to focus on long Reverberation Times and looking deep into the noise floor you will continue to to find reflections and cognitively tangent ideas. The colorful room measurement plots do not help, they are only a distracting shinny object. You cannot hear the shine.

If you gate your measurements and not set the floor of your measurements down so far you will find that there is a very direct relationship between measured FR and what your hear.

If you continue trying to correct RT60 with EQ you will be an unhappy camper.

You were speaking about the Member that measures headphones on his site. He means well and I leave him alone. He uses a Flat Plane measurement jig (no rubber fake ears) with $0.69 egret measurement microphones. Any measurements are very unlikely to repeat if you happen to put the same headphones on your real head with real ears.

see all next year.

Dial back the high levels of condescension in your posts please .

 

[Benesyed]

Me reading these posts

 

[0800 Dub]

Respect.

On balance, I have realised that 'vegan leather' made out of plastic is not such a good idea because plastic leaves behind microplastics when it degrades. A natural (biodegradable) material would be much better. Maybe upcycled leather, or some sort of cloth made out of organic cotton?

Obviously, there are other plastic components in the construction of the headphones, but every little helps.

 

[JanesJr1]

On balance, I have realised that 'vegan leather' made out of plastic is not such a good idea because plastic leaves behind microplastics when it degrades. A natural (biodegradable) material would be much better. Maybe upcycled leather, or some sort of cloth made out of organic cotton?

Obviously, there are other plastic components in the construction of the headphones, but every little helps.

Unless I'm repeating a factoid that is already on this thread, the DCA leather is made of protein by a Japanese company. I think it is synthesized from the normal constituent organic chemicals in order to avoid harvesting from animals. (It's been a few years since I researched it...)

 

[JanesJr1]

Ringing is another way of saying there's a peak in the frequency response. The EQ diminishes the peak & reduces the ringing.

Subjectively, in my experience this often works pretty well IRL when I'm in EQ-refinement mode and encounter ringing. I don't have much measurement equipment so I have to do it by ear, and that's sometimes finicky. But when I hit the sweet spot with the right Q, a very fine decrement of FR will collapse the ringing neatly. (At least it does often enough to make the effort useful).

 

[0800 Dub]

Unless I'm repeating a factoid that is already on this thread, the DCA leather is made of protein by a Japanese company. I think it is synthesized from the normal constituent organic chemicals in order to avoid harvesting from animals. (It's been a few years since I researched it...)

I think the key question is whether it's biodegradable. If it's bioplastic, it likely is not biodegradable.

Generally, I'm sceptical of these proprietary formulations. Does the formulation contain plastic?

And then there's the issue of people labelling things as 'biodegradable' when they are in fact only industrially compostable (and even then, in the case of many bioplastics, can leave behind microplastic particles).

 

[rluciano]

Fitment on the fixture was somewhat variable. I spent quite a bit of time messing with them and what you see is the best I could get.

I know I'm a few years late to the party, but I found very different response depending on how the headphones were positioned on my head (or my minidsp EARS). I hear a massive suckout at 5-5.5kHz. And I can recreate that on my minidsp EARS. Moving the headphones further down on my head and forward takes this suckout from 10+dB to about 4dB. But that makes the headphones very uncomfortable. They press into my jaw. These will be going back.

 

[Robbo99999]

I know I'm a few years late to the party, but I found very different response depending on how the headphones were positioned on my head (or my minidsp EARS). I hear a massive suckout at 5-5.5kHz. And I can recreate that on my minidsp EARS. Moving the headphones further down on my head and forward takes this suckout from 10+dB to about 4dB. But that makes the headphones very uncomfortable. They press into my jaw. These will be going back.

As long as the same thing happens when it's on your own head, because you can't really take miniDSP EARS measurements at face value as any peaks or troughs measured on miniDSP EARS are less likely to be there when worn on your own head vs if you had measured it on something like Amir's GRAS rig. I'm not saying your suckout is not there in reality as there has been some information out there saying that the Stealth can measure quite differently with different physical placings on your head. It's interesting that you got very different responses though on your miniDSP EARS when you placed the headphone in different positions on it, so that's probably not a good sign. I've got the miniDSP EARS measurement rig too and most of my headphones don't measure much differently when placed at slightly different positions on the miniDSP EARS, so maybe this is a potential negative for The Stealth - as I said there have been some reports that there is quite some on-head variation. As long as you've verified that you have the suckout when worn on your own head though.

 

[rluciano]

Y

As long as the same thing happens when it's on your own head, because you can't really take miniDSP EARS measurements at face value as any peaks or troughs measured on miniDSP EARS are less likely to be there when worn on your own head vs if you had measured it on something like Amir's GRAS rig. I'm not saying your suckout is not there in reality as there has been some information out there saying that the Stealth can measure quite differently with different physical placings on your head. It's interesting that you got very different responses though on your miniDSP EARS when you placed the headphone in different positions on it, so that's probably not a good sign. I've got the miniDSP EARS measurement rig too and most of my headphones don't measure much differently when placed at slightly different positions on the miniDSP EARS, so maybe this is a potential negative for The Stealth - as I said there have been some reports that there is quite some on-head variation. As long as you've verified that you have the suckout when worn on your own head though.

Yeah. The reason I measured was because of what I heard. Snare drums on Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman album had no initial crack to them. And my MiniDSP EARS measure my other headphones pretty evenly despite small positioning changes.

 

[Robbo99999]

Y

Yeah. The reason I measured was because of what I heard. Snare drums on Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman album had no initial crack to them. And my MiniDSP EARS measure my other headphones pretty evenly despite small positioning changes.

You could also cycle through some sine tones to see if you notice a decrease in volume there. (The only thing to bare in mind with that is that you can have natural peaks & troughs in your own hearing even if listening to anechoic flat speakers - hearing damage or your own physiological quirks/characteristics).

The E3 is supposed to have less on head deviation, as a point of interest.

 

[HELIAS]

I know I'm a few years late to the party, but I found very different response depending on how the headphones were positioned on my head (or my minidsp EARS).

Stealth can measure quite differently with different physical placings on your head.

The E3 is supposed to have less on head deviation, as a point of interest.

They seem to be sensitive to not only position but also pinna shape (and potentially ear canal?). With the HD 6XX (known "flat-sounding" headphones) as control group, I compared four reviewers' measurements below and the last one by Super* Review stands out. It lacks 3k~5k and has an 8k peak. Other three curves are close to the Harman curve and the HD 6XX.

Anecdotally E3 has gotten a much more unanimous recommendation from reviewers I listened to compared to Stealth.

Crinacle, KB500X pinna

Kuulokenurkka, KB501X pinna

VSG, Particle GT01 binaural microphone setup

Super* Review, KB006X pinna

 

[Robbo99999]

They seem to be sensitive to not only position but also pinna shape (and potentially ear canal?). With the HD 6XX (known "flat-sounding" headphones) as control group, I compared four reviewers' measurements below and the last one by Super* Review stands out. It lacks 3k~5k and has an 8k peak. Other three curves are close to the Harman curve and the HD 6XX.

Anecdotally E3 has gotten a much more unanimous recommendation from reviewers I listened to compared to Stealth.

View attachment 433819
Crinacle, KB500X pinna

View attachment 433812
Kuulokenurkka, KB501X pinna


View attachment 433816
VSG, Particle GT01 binaural microphone setup

View attachment 433815
Super* Review, KB006X pinna

If a headphone shows a lot of measurement placement variance within a measurement rig and also the same placement variance on real human subjects then it makes it a more tricky headphone to position properly - and it would get you second guessing about how you're supposed to be positioning to get that "perfect Harman sound", so it's not ideal for sure. As for measured variance (between different people) when worn on real subjects heads then that is gonna happen anyway regardless of headphone model and I'm not sure it's a bad thing per say - it doesn't have to mean that the headphone would sound wildly different to different people because it's their own anatomy influencing what is received at their eardrum which would be true for when listening to speakers too. (unless you're not getting a seal & you lose all the bass or something in which case it would sound wildly different) (but still the same headphone unit is not gonna sound exactly exactly the same to everyone so there is still somekind of variable there too which is hard to quantify)