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Dan Clark Stealth Review (State of the Art Headphone)

Robbo99999

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General remark:
Suddenly there is something that makes 4K for a headphone somewhat ok the ASR Community. Why not make the conclusion that it is also ok for others to charge that price even they are not to the taste of ASR. There are plenty other reasons for such a price tack, e.g. handmade in a high price country, use of rare expensive material etc. and others might have a different taste and do not find Harman the end of all possible frequency response curves.

Personally for me there is a mismatch between the optical appearance and the price of the Stealth, to be attracted over the internet, I much prefer the cleaner look of my Aeon Noire. Who knows what would happen when I would test the Stealth for my own. I am not sure, if I should ever try this, 4k is also for me a looooong stretch. :)
That first paragraph is a bit of a can of worms! :) The premise is that each of us has our own perfect Target Curve that would make headphones sound like speakers, and even then you need a little crossfeed on top of that to help emulate it. Smyth Realiser and The Impulcifier Project are two ways to determine your own personal Target Curve and implement that crossfeed, in order to mimic proper speakers in a room effect. But until that point the Harman Curve is the closest thing to a universally liked Target Curve that sounds relatively natural / enjoyable for most people, and I attest to that too from my own experience. But really, to get a perfect Target Curve, you have to "go through a process" (Smyth or Impulcifier) and use the DSP associated with that to properly emulate a speaker listening experience. I totally enjoy the Harman Curve headphone experience though, to an extent that I've not bothered to go to the effort of trying the Impulcifier Project. But to refer to your post, it's not OK to say that any-old headphone can charge the 4K price tag, that's not a good argument......most people find acceptability & enjoyment in the Harman Curve, it's not OK to create some random curve for a headphone and charge 4K for it.....I mean it's OK if they do the research and show it, but until that point there's nothing better as a single target curve for all people - it's always gonna be somekind of a compromise having just one target curve for all people, always. And crazy frequency responses with lots of jaggedness are a no-no, they can't be EQ'd effectively......so I'll temper my argument by saying that a controlled smooth frequency response even if it is a fair bit away from the Harman Curve is ok in my books, on the premise that you can EQ it accurately to the Harman Curve (or indeed any curve you like).......if it's jagged & all over the shop though then you can never EQ it accurately to any curve, so that's the point.
 

whazzup

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BTW, something very interesting about this thread.

Jude, the founder of Head- Fi, started a similar thread, also with some measurements, on the same day, a few hours ahead of Amir: this allows for comparison.

As of now ( the time before I started writing this post), Jude's thread has 282 replies and about 21 000 views.
Now the interesting thing:
Amir thread has 429 replies and about 38 000 views!

This means that:
- Not only has ASR caught up with Head-Fi.
- But it has largely passed it, leaving it in the dust!

This is extremely impressive given that:
- Head-Fi has been around for so long (several decades?) and was seen as the world major headphone forum. It has also a lot of financial resources (coming from companies paying for ads, showtime, right to post in threads, defense of their products...), and several paid staffers.
- ASR started only a few years ago.
- ASR started testing headphones even more recently (less than a year if I am correct).

I see this as a big victory for objectivity against subjectivity and against commercial reviews.
Many congratulations, Amir!

Hahahaha..... I'm probably slow, but just realised headfi is publishing measurements now (Correction: they seem to have done so on and off for last 2-3 years). Now imagine how they're going to deal with or say about products from manufacturers that rely on subjective nonsense...
 
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Daiyama

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BTW, something very interesting about this thread.

Jude, the founder of Head- Fi, started a similar thread, also with some measurements, on the same day, a few hours ahead of Amir: this allows for comparison.

As of now ( the time before I started writing this post), Jude's thread has 282 replies and about 21 000 views.
Now the interesting thing:
Amir thread has 429 replies and about 38 000 views!

This means that:
- Not only has ASR caught up with Head-Fi.
- But it has largely passed it, leaving it in the dust!

This is extremely impressive given that:
- Head-Fi has been around for so long (several decades?) and was seen as the world major headphone forum. It has also a lot of financial resources (coming from companies paying for ads, showtime, right to post in threads, defense of their products...), and several paid staffers.
- ASR started only a few years ago.
- ASR started testing headphones even more recently (less than a year if I am correct).

I see this as a big victory for objectivity against subjectivity and against commercial reviews.
Many congratulations, Amir!

For headfi it is just another 4k headphone (and with the looks of a gam...) so nothing new or something to get especially hyped about.
But here, 4k and amir loves it, that is quite a sensation!
and everyone starts to think about how he can get hold of this amount of money. ;)
 
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Daiyama

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That first paragraph is a bit of a can of worms! :) The premise is that each of us has our own perfect Target Curve that would make headphones sound like speakers, and even then you need a little crossfeed on top of that to help emulate it. Smyth Realiser and The Impulcifier Project are two ways to determine your own personal Target Curve and implement that crossfeed, in order to mimic proper speakers in a room effect. But until that point the Harman Curve is the closest thing to a universally liked Target Curve that sounds relatively natural / enjoyable for most people, and I attest to that too from my own experience. But really, to get a perfect Target Curve, you have to "go through a process" (Smyth or Impulcifier) and use the DSP associated with that to properly emulate a speaker listening experience. I totally enjoy the Harman Curve headphone experience though, to an extent that I've not bothered to go to the effort of trying the Impulcifier Project. But to refer to your post, it's not OK to say that any-old headphone can charge the 4K price tag, that's not a good argument......most people find acceptability & enjoyment in the Harman Curve, it's not OK to create some random curve for a headphone and charge 4K for it.....I mean it's OK if they do the research and show it, but until that point there's nothing better as a single target curve for all people - it's always gonna be somekind of a compromise having just one target curve for all people, always. And crazy frequency responses with lots of jaggedness are a no-no, they can't be EQ'd effectively......so I'll temper my argument by saying that a controlled smooth frequency response even if it is a fair bit away from the Harman Curve is ok in my books, on the premise that you can EQ it accurately to the Harman Curve (or indeed any curve you like).......if it's jagged & all over the shop though then you can never EQ it accurately to any curve, so that's the point.

But what if your customers are crazy about jacked up house sound of your headphone brand and you are selling enough headphones for a good living. Should / would you start tuning according to Harman?

So comming back to the topic. Also with this respect the Stealth is a very interesing thing, because now we can see how the Harman curve is perceived by typical 4k headphone buyer. Will this be something that will make them say "finally, after all these years, who cares about the looks" or will it be "listend to it, didnt't like it, next one please".
 
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welsh

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The temptation of building a D90SE + A90 + DCA Stealth stack is itching
I have the D90 and A90 and I’m seriously tempted by these ‘phones. Also I do a lot of listening in pubs and cafes using a portable DAC and amplifier - I’m always on the lookout for great closed-backs. But I’m in the UK - not sure if there are any importers for DCA products…
 

dfuller

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With respect to ASR:
Prior to this review every headphone above 500 USD was only designed and built to rip off rich dudes and now when armir likes a 4k headphone R&D costs has become a real thing and 4k USD are totally justifiable.
The difference of course is that this headphone has the performance to justify the price. Exceptionally low distortion while having plenty of (arguably more than enough) sub-bass and an utter lack of resonances in the midrange all while tracking the target response extremely well is the big thing. There are other headphones that cost a bloody fortune that don't actually have the performance in any respect to justify the price (see: Abyss) or need a ton of EQ to make any amount of sense but can be justified by the low distortion (see: Audeze, Sennheiser 800s).
 

edahl

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I'd love to see how this stacks up to the Susvara. That and this one is my dream open/closed duo.
 

PeteL

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For headfi it is just another 4k headphone (and with the looks of a gam...) so nothing new or something to get especially hyped about.
But here, 4k and armir loves it, that is quite a sensation!
and everyone starts to think about how he can get hold of this amount of money. ;)
That's not what I got from Jude's review, at all, He talks about Grail territory. He is just as enthusiastic as Amir.
 

PeteL

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Prior to this review every headphone above 500 USD was only designed and built to rip off rich dudes and now when armir likes a 4k headphone R&D costs has become a real thing and 4k USD are totally justifiable.
Many headphones over 500$ got very positive review here. Utopia is a 4000$ one that got a soccer panther.
 

edahl

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Many headphones over 500$ got very positive review here. Utopia is a 4000$ one that got a soccer panther.

Even the "TOTAL CONSCIOUSNESS" got a great review with EQ! Just because this page kills a few audiophile darlings doesn't mean Amir doesn't give credit where credit is due.
 

Dan Clark

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For headfi it is just another 4k headphone (and with the looks of a gam...) so nothing new or something to get especially hyped about.
But here, 4k and armir loves it, that is quite a sensation!
and everyone starts to think about how he can get hold of this amount of money. ;)

Jude call it the Holy Grail of closed headphones... I do think Monty Python anytime I think of a Grail, but the chuckle aside I appreciated that.

I sent it to the two sites with the most reliable measurement systems because I felt it important to address the technical performance up front.

Now that opinion I would be one of the ones agreeing with, 500 bucks will get anyone a terrific pair of headphones more than sufficient to enjoy music.

One of the things I love about my work is making people happy. Having worked in internet security for a decade really left needing to do something nice for people vs effectively doing proactive damage control.

Having a real value product, built in San Diego, that delivers a great experience at $500 was a big deal for us as we wanted to allow anyone into headphones to have access to our products. Its incredibly rare to get a metal construction at this price, let alone driver marching and a nice sound Profile and built in USA.

RT is predictably our highest volume product, with A2 right behind it.
 
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Daiyama

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OK but what was your point? You made it sound like it was lukewarm.

Sorry, I am not a native speaker and I do not get the meaning of lukewarm in this context.
My point was to try to give an explanation why ASR got more clicks than headfi in the respective Stealth threads.

Edit: and probably because the thread is in the high end audio forum section. I personally discovered this section only a couple of months ago (with the purchase of my Hifiman HE1000V2).
 
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Daiyama

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Jude call it the Holy Grail of closed headphones... I do think Monty Python anytime I think of a Grail, but the chuckle aside I appreciated that.

I sent it to the two sites with the most reliable measurement systems because I felt it important to address the technical performance up front.…..

Ah finally, someone with some humor. :D
Sometimes I think ASR is a bit to serious about the whole headphone thing.
As you wrote, this is something that should make people happy.

You have chosen two very opposite websites for your first introduction of the Stealth. ;)
 

Vovgan

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can the extra expense genuinely be justified

After seeing this review my first reaction was that I need to buy these, but then I thought a little bit more and realized that maybe I shouldn’t.

Like most people I have zero patience and inclination to _sit_ and listen to music. I put on headphones when I walk. If I were listening from laptop I could have EQ’ed cheaper headphones. But I want to listen to stuff on my iPhone and thus need headphones with great default tonality. But they also have to be efficient to be powered by an iPhone dongle. And light. And open back because I want to feel the world around me. I need such headphones. Don’t mind cables. For them I’ll pay 5 gran no issue. Although I think most people at least partially justify premium headphone’s higher price by their higher weight, which is unfortunate.
 
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Robbo99999

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Okay, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here with @amirm.

AKG K371 EQ'd $149
Sennheiser HD600/650 EQ'd $400
This product (no ED necessary) $4,000

Please compare and contrast.

Obviously, if you have the money (if you're rich) and you're a headphone lover, $4,000 is probably not that much. If I won the lottery, I'd buy a pair.

But can the extra expense genuinely be justified for people with 'normal' bank balances?

Just how close do those other two, cheaper headphone come to this?
That's why I find it interesting to EQ my headphones to the same curve and compare them. There's always some differences, some are better than others for soundstage or for bringing out nuances/detail or bass definition, etc. Some of that is down to the variances associated with the measurements and some down to the variances associated with unit to unit variation, some of it is down to how different headphones react differently with your own anatomy than they do with the GRAS measurement kit, and finally some of it is down to inherent abilities/limitations of the driver and overall design. So even if you EQ your headphones to the same curve then there's certainly no guarantee of same performance/enjoyment, but for me doing those comparisons is the most interesting part of headphone audio. So when you mention comparing EQ'd versions of all those headphones, then that's right up my street, and something I'd like to see happen on this site......but there's some practical difficulties to partially overcome associated with that which I think I mentioned in my previous post in this thread.

I'm so far a relatively firm believer that you can take the right $100+ headphone and with EQ get exceedingly close to the performance of an expensive and well engineered headphone like this DCA Stealth in this thread......but really I'd have to listen to this DCA Stealth to be sure because Amir was so delighted with it that I feel credence in that.......in my experience I think it's down to channel matching & close adherence to the Harman Curve without any jaggedness in the frequency response......my K702 that I sent to Oratory I did an exact channel matching EQ from 30-10000Hz and then did an exact EQ of the average curve to the Harman Curve and I found the channel matching makes a big difference as well as a close match to the Harman Curve (essentially unit to unit variation as well as driver matching variable was removed by my EQ). I'd personally find it super interesting to compare say this specifically measured & EQ'd/channel matched K702 with this DCA Stealth that already does that all perfectly out-of-the-box.....I think you'd conclude any differences would be down to distortion differences (K702 worse by a large margin) or by specific reaction of a certain headphone model with your anatomy.....I'd love to be able to make that comparison in a personal test.
 
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Dan Clark

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Ah finally, someone with some humor. :D
Sometimes I think ASR is a bit to serious about the whole headphone thing.
As you wrote, this is something that should make people happy.

You have chosen two very opposite websites for your first introduction of the Stealth. ;)

I think the community is best served to have voices of different views and sites where people approach issues differently is a good thing, at least to a point where “mean” discussions start.

Its particularly nice, of course, when both communities can align around technical considerations, and as both sites take this seriously I approached both because I was confident we could stand up to objective and subjective scrutiny.

Sure, no headphone is right or best for everyone but at least the technical Merits are validated.

Although I think most people at least partially justify premium headphone’s higher price by their higher weight, which is unfortunate.

I had a reviewer in Germany tell me to make our headphones heavier to be seen as high-end. I replied that making our headphones uncomfortable wasn’t a design goal…
 

Robbo99999

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But what if your customers are crazy about jacked up house sound of your headphone brand and you are selling enough headphones for a good living. Should / would you start tuning according to Harman?

So comming back to the topic. Also with this respect the Stealth is a very interesing thing, because now we can see how the Harman curve is perceived by typical 4k headphone buyer. Will this be something that will make them say "finally, after all these years, who cares about the looks" or will it be "listend to it, didnt't like it, next one please".
BAH! Well they can keep doing their thing with crazy house sounds if they keep selling them, it's no skin off my nose.....but I don't believe people are getting particularly accurate sound by doing so. As sites like ASR become more popular and more people start getting exposed to "good sound" then the more likely it is that sales will fall away from crazy boutique house sounds (target curves)......so either they'll continue with their crazy if they keep selling them, or they'll see a shift away and realise they need to start doing some proper research & development.
 
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