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Dan Clark Stealth Review (State of the Art Headphone)

bidn

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Very interesting headphone.
Original price in Germany will be 4099€.

To the review I would add the following:

there are glued fake leather pads mounted...

Thank you very much for this essential info, are the fake leather ear pads are not even detachable!

Then the design is the more so absolutely not acceptable for me at this very high price point!
How many months before the ear pads fall apart,
and since they cannot be replaced, one has to throw away into the garbage bin this headphone for which $ 4000 were paid? For me this is really crazy.

I can only hope that they (DCA) will very quickly fix these fatal (in view of the price...) design flaws re. the ear pads...
 

Jave

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I tend to break every seal regardless due to a combination of my glasses, head shape, facial hair, and hair length. How does this headphone behave when the seal is broken? Every other DCA headphone I've tried rolled off from the mids. Does this one have a higher acoustic impedance design like that or does it behave like a low acoustic impedance design? This headphone looks amazing but I wouldn't be able to get one if they roll off.
Unfortunately I experience the very same. Bought C Flow 1.1 recently and still didn't manage to find a way to get a good seal, with or without my glasses. The effect is very pronounced, getting less bass even from HD650 (relative to 4-6kHz).
 

m8o

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Sure the price is ridiculous for the average consumer but if it’s the best there is why should it be ridiculous for someone who bothered to leave 7K+ comments in an audio forum?

Almost spit out my coffee. Now that's frig'n funny! :D
 

aandres_gm

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It's a stiff material that creates little to no resonances. And it's especially popular for headphones because it's lightweight.

The Stealth is a minimalistic headphone and puts 415g on the scale. If you'd take wood cups instead, I'm sure it would weigh twice as much.
D.C. probably made some estimations whether the Stealth will be a more attractive product at 700g for 2k (cough, HEDDphone) or 400g at 4k. Personally, I think he made the right decision.
Perhaps a good polymer could've fit the bill and brought the price down a few hundreds? :p
 

anphex

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Wow. If I didn't hate the feeling of headphones on my head no matter what these would definitely be my choice of endgame headphones. ASR headphone reviews are over guys. Well played everyone, time to go home. :D
 

Coin3

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I don't have a provable answer but will comment that we routinely boost certain parts of the response in other headphones and thereby increasing their distortion. This headphone gets superlative distortion ratings without any need to further boost the response.
For comparison purposes it would be nice to have a post-EQ distortion measurement. I know that it can be roughly interpolated based on the distortion levels at each volume, but as you know actual data is more convincing and easy to compare side by side.
 

MRC01

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Interesting interview with Dan Clark about the Stealth engineering ...
That 1/4 wave resonator insert is a brilliant idea, especially the way you can selectively block off passages to tune the response. I wouldn't be surprised to see people 3-D printing their own to tune responses of other headphones they own.
 

Dro

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Thank you very much for this essential info, are the fake leather ear pads are not even detachable!

Then the design is the more so absolutely not acceptable for me at this very high price point!
How many months before the ear pads fall apart,
and since they cannot be replaced, one has to throw away into the garbage bin this headphone for which $ 4000 were paid? For me this is really crazy.

I can only hope that they (DCA) will very quickly fix these fatal (in view of the price...) design flaws re. the ear pads...
If it works like the other DCA headphones besides the Ether 2, there will be replacement ear pads. They are removable, but being attached via glue means that once you take the pad off, it is done for. It's not great, but generally good enough because you can replace the pads after all.

I do hope they will release a fully-removable upgrade conversion like with the Ether 2, where you can remove and reattach pads many times.
 

Koeitje

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So the earpads aren't replaceable? That's nuts, because PU leather will break down over time.
 

6sigma

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Congratulations, @DanClark & coworkers! So happy to see (some of :)) the results of the equity placement and all the hard work that has gone on through the pandemic. These new patents are going to be foundational in audio for years to come. The application of fabulous new machine tools & materials in the hands of true artisans is always fun to observe. There is obviously a lot of engineering know-how in these meta material inserts. I'm very eager to see where this takes the audio industry! Great work!
 
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Jimbob54

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If it works like the other DCA headphones besides the Ether 2, there will be replacement ear pads. They are removable, but being attached via glue means that once you take the pad off, it is done for. It's not great, but generally good enough because you can replace the pads after all.

I do hope they will release a fully-removable upgrade conversion like with the Ether 2, where you can remove and reattach pads many times.
It's worth remembering the destructive glue approach is also used by audeze. Right pain in the ass as you wave goodbye to £50 or so just on a pad experiment.

They are salvageable but never found the double sided tape rings to re-attach again.
 

Morpheus

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Looks like there is a patent linked to it tough, but I don't know the reach.

I hope there isn't or its workable from a different angle...This seems to open big new avenues for headphone and loudspeaker drivers, and box damping /sound absorption and acoustic treatment..
 

BrokenEnglishGuy

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I saw mr speakers (dan clark audio) as a good company that for 1700~ you can get the best of them.
Now its the typical hi end company with high prices, at 4k its a big no for me.
They could set the price at 3k and offer this to the alternative to the voce (3k), but they want 4k, there is a lot of people who buy headphones at 1000-2000usd but very few of them gonna buy these 4k headphones, id prefer to sell more and lower the price instead of sell few of them and very high price.
Speakers are big and very high in weight. This is not the case
 

Morpheus

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I don't mean this as a Dan Clark rip off in any way, and Kudos to him for coming up with this awesome head phone and ingenious application....Its just that I can't afford them, and really don't want to wait 20 or something years for the patent to expire to get this quality at "attainable" prices, by then I"ll probably be semi functionally deaf, if there is a patent that prevents using this concept I hope he licences it at a reasonable price..
 

hex168

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Dan Clark's planar drivers were developed with Bruce Thigpen of Eminent Technology. (Eminent Technology also makes speakers. Hint!)
 

Bow_Wazoo

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So the earpads aren't replaceable? That's nuts, because PU leather will break down over time.
DCA:"The contact surface and inner wall are an airtight microfiber that's more durable and comfortable than our Italian leather pads, they don't get damp or sticky. The outer wall is our standard Japanese synthetic. The synthetics also give us better dimensional consistent for tighter tolerances."
 
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