Audioquest Nighthawk Headphones

Discussion in 'Headphones' started by The Alchemist, Dec 14, 2015.

  1. Ryanr1987

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    I sometimes prefer them to the 650 and other times not. The 650 have always been that old blanket that you just keep because it's comfortable and you know it so well. The Nighthawk is superior in it's driver quality but again, it's that old comfy blanket.

    I ended up giving up on the velour pads, they became too bright and rough and now the stock pads are perfect.
     
  2. joeq70

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    I used a little bit of EQ on the Nighthawks--completely changed my opinion of them from bad to really good.
     
  3. Ryanr1987

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    I keep going back and fourth with these headphones. I think if you own these headphones as an only set and don't experience anything else they are fine because your brain just filters out that weirdness.

    Problem is I game with other headphones and I have portable headphones as well as fully open headphones. The issue is the cups, the mid bass and the upper peak it just sounds weird when you don't listen to them for a while and return but I suppose you can get used to anything really.

    You can absolutely mix with these because you get full bass and a full treble and they do not sound natural like a HD650. I used to like the Velour pads on them but they removed some faults and made more become evident! I must of been death that first week I tried them.

    I love them because they are different and have fantastic bass but I'm always back and fourth with them lol
     
  4. Besnia

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    I received delivery of my Nighthawks today. They're very clean and cool sounding headphones. They sound like good fullrange speakers in a big back-loaded front-firing horn, but without the typical lower midrange and midbass phase mess. There was something marvelous with these horns, particularly how the elevated midbass and lower midrange flowed into the room. This headphone is taking me back ages ago when me and my friends were DIY-ing horn speakers in the garage. Later on I never looked back at classical BL horns as I went on puruit of the ultimate clarity... And I'm not sure this has brought me tons more enjoyment. It's more like a trade-off, gained something, but lost something on the way as well. Well, back to the Nighthawk... the treble - uneven, but very clean. Upper treble is elevated relative to the midrange. The midrange - elevated at the lower end, subdued at the top end. The transition is smooth, the sound is cohesive. The midrange is good. Very clean too. I'm intentionally avoiding the word "transparent", as people may draw the wrong conclusions. The bass is excellent. It gets overwhelming at louder levels, but I listen at 80db tops. I can understand why people are bashing these headphones. If you went into the audiophile crazy house via the headgear entrance, you probably won't like these. If you, however, are a full-range, big-ass back-loaded horns, tube-gear, silver-wiring crackpot, you are going to like these.

    I'm doing A-B with the HD800 and I really ain't liking them a bit anymore, not that I ever liked them much. Even the HD650 with the cobalt magnets in comparison sound like they're tuned after the Fostex FE drivers series. The Nighthawks sound like floorstanding speakers in a typical 20m2 room. I'll tell you what I THINK they sound most like... like Coral Beta 8 in big front firing horns... with a subwoofer.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2017
  5. Besnia

    Besnia Facebook Friend

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    I tried the Nighthawks directly out of my iPhone SE, Macbook, Xonar U7 and AQ Dragonfly Black 1.5. The lower mids are quite loose; I'd describe them as honky, boomy and a bit moo-ey. The treble also becomes a tad sharp and gritty. I'm otherwise running them out of my PCM58 tube dac + amp combo. It produces clean, crisp and very tight sound. A have auditioned a few commercial products at hi fi shows and all tube dacs & amps seemed quite mushy, stuffed sounding. I don't think the Nighthawk will sound good with these. I am sure there must be some tube amps and DACs with a tube stage that surely sound great, but I haven't come across them. And they'll probably cost a lot of dough. My point is, I believe reasonably priced high quality solid state gear will pair a lot better with these headphones than the "average" audiophile tube rig. The Nighthawks are smooth sounding, so it's unlikely any solid state rigs will make it sound harsh. That's as much of a of consumer advice as I can offer.
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2017
  6. Besnia

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    Okay, I eventually got bored of the horn-y sound, so I damped the driver on the backside. Unlike @Marvey though, I decided to increase the pressure by sealing the vent under the dome completely. I cut a disk out of very rigid cardboard and placed it on top of the vent with the help of double sided adhesive tape.

    [​IMG]

    After the mod, the overall signature is a little cooler but not drastically different. However, Sade doesn't sound like a transgender anymore, so I think I can safely say the upper midrange is now more closely aligned with the lower part of the spectrum. The midbase/lower mids reverb sensation is gone, no more front-firing horns sound. The clarity is up a few notches all across the board. There's more focus and layering to the sound. The distortion is, well, surprisingly low now.

    The mod is very easy to do. Just make sure you cut the disks out of something stiff, so that the pressure isn't released through the vent under the dome. Don't use soft stuff like tape, foam, etc.

    I can't do measurements and I'm listening to music in bed out of my phone right now, but my ears are telling me this is one of the best headphones I've heard... and I've heard very many. Honestly, I am not drunk and I haven't smoked anything funny. I'm totally sober making this statement ;-) Would be great if someone else can do the mod, measure and share some subjective impressions.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Interesting. I didn't spend very much time tweaking it, but I can see where you are coming from. There are some fantastic characteristics: clarity, resolution, but the tonal balance of the stock unit was just so far off.
     
  8. Besnia

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    I don't disagree, the lift in the mid bass and lower midrange was fun, but a little too much. I'm more surprised by the improved clarity after the mod. Would love to hear your thoughts, if you have time to do it.
     
  9. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I don't have the headphone anymore.
     
  10. Besnia

    Besnia Facebook Friend

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    I understand, each of us prefers a different poison. And I bought it only because I read somewhere it was getting discontinued :) Hopefully someone else who can measure owns a pair.
     
  11. joeq70

    joeq70 New

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    Are you still enjoying the sound of this mod? Do you think the double sided tape will rip the paper behind the magnet if you ever wanted to reverse it?
     
  12. beemerphile

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    ^ I have never been happier to say that about a headphone than with the Nighthawks. ^

    YMMV: My Nighthawk experience is what proved to me that someone else's take on a headphone had little bearing on whether I liked it. ...even (especially?) if they are part of a cheering mob. That is also where I learned the danger of boarding the Hype Train and the importance of waiting until the hype has settled. The Nighthawk hype has clearly settled, but unfortunately for me I didn't wait. From my own tilted point-of-view, I am not surprised it is being discontinued. I'm thinking maybe they have decided they could charge more for a tweaked and renamed version that people knew less about - get the hype going again. Hype is a free service that hobbyists perform for manufacturers and they knowingly avail themselves of it. It takes me a long time and multiple data points to learn whose preferences might coincide with my own. My own opinions are discountable or ignorable by others for the same reason. Even the widely acclaimed cognoscenti in the hobby may have quite different hearing and preferences. When I know what else someone likes (and why) and what else they don't like (and why) I begin to have enough information to determine whether their experience might be useful to me. I have found that matching up a reviewer's likes and dislikes is more important than whether they are a credentialed guru in the community. For reference, I love modded speaker-amped HE-6's; like modded HD-650's; and am trying to make an HD800 suit me. I like the clarity of HE-560's but find them bass-light and thin sounding. I've never met a closed headphone I liked but am still looking (nix to Ether C and Paradox).
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2017
  13. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    [​IMG]



    I feel you there, Broseph Stalin. Might I suggest hitting up @sorrodje for his excellent pre-built SDR mod? Then try plugging them into a reasonably friendly tube amp, and throw Sonarworks at them (I prefer the flat preset, personally). They sound almost sane, then- and become a lot more enjoyable and less tiring to listen to.

    (SDR mod is nice and cheap, and there's a free trial of Sonarworks, so it's not a difficult or costly experiment)
     
  14. beemerphile

    beemerphile Friend

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    <snip scary picture...>
    (apologies for the hijack)...SDR on the way from @sorrodje and I have a well-sorted Cavalli Liquid Glass that I enjoy with most HP's. I have the FR data for my HD800's on the Sennheiser supplied jump drive, but the Sonarworks solution is a problem because my source is an Auralic Aries Mini and I don't think it can make use of it. I put going back to personal computers for sources right up there with going back to my ex-wife. The world could use a good analog EQ set that doesn't just turn frequency response errors into time domain errors. For many years I had a set of White 4100A pro transformer EQ's that came out of a sound room at NASA in Huntsville, AL when they upgraded the system. They did fine until the pots and caps started dying. I dumped them rather than taking on a complete rebuild.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2017
  15. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    Likewise, sorry for the continuing threadjack..

    Pretty sure you can use your Auralic box, actually. It's a UnPnP renderer. Grab the JRiver trial and the Sonarworks trial. JRiver can work as a nice stable VST host for Sonarworks, and you can have it play out to a UnPnP renderer. Once it's set up, JRiver even has a web interface, so you don't need the computer in the same room, if you don't want to. If you only do it quickly to listen to how the HD800 could sound, it might be worth trying.

    Given that most sane people, probably you included, just keep their music on a network share so that any device in the house can play it, that makes the whole thing pretty easy to set up as an experiment.

    </threadjack>

    We should probably discuss this elsewhere if you're curious.
     
  16. Besnia

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    Sorry for the late response, things were pretty hectic at work lately.

    Well, a "yes" answer would be valid at the time I wrote the original post. I made further improvements since then. The double-sided tape won't rip the paper on the vent. I've placed and removed the cardboard disk many times. I actually got rid of the original tape, tried putting the HD650 spider foam rings there as well.

    Here's what I've done so far...

    1. I sealed the baffle vents with pieces of the same rigid cardboard I used for sealing the driver central vent. I don't like "short-circiting" the baffle. This may not necessarily be your cup of tea though. The vents are there to mix (roughly speaking) the lower part of the frequency spectrum and create a sense of spaciousness, ala in-room reflections. This, however, comes at the expense of sound clarity in the mids and lower mids in particular. The other purpose of the vents is to equalize the pressure between between the front and back chambers, so that the driver doesn't pound your ears.

    [​IMG]

    2. I covered the grill with hot glue. With the baffle vents sealed, I needed to raise the air impedance in the back chamber. Stuffing with polyfill didn't do the trick, as the base/sub-base was still loose. The hot glue isn't ideal, it's rubbery and "leaks" bass and lower-mids, but I couldn't seal the grill with something thick and rigid, as the upper edge of the magnet of the driver lays only about 2 mm from the grill. In this configuration the bass is excellent, very tight and deep. Upper mids are in-line with the lower mids and mid-base. Sub-base is strong, but not pounding. The upper treble (above 5-6khz), however, becomes more elevated relative to the lower frequencies. It's very directional, you can put some thin foam on front of the driver (like the one from HD650) to attenuate it and difuse it, but it will inevitabely attenuate the lower treble as well, so this wasn't a solution to me. I like it this way, but I can imagine many other people won't.

    [​IMG]

    3. Placed some polyfill in the back chamber. The original AQ padding doesn't work well in this configuration. It absorbs some of the upper mids energy, while it's also effectively decreasing the volume in the back chamber. I tried with different volumes of polyfill and settled on the one that was sufficient to clear up the mids reverb, but not enough to thicken the sound.

    [​IMG]

    That's all. All of the mods are reversible, even the hot glue can (fairly) easily be removed from the grill. One of the benefits of having both front and back chambers completely sealed is that the driver is forced to move less, so it more accurately reproduces the signal. Despite that, you may or may not like the sound, YMMV. If that will help shed some light, my priorities in terms of headphones sound are:

    1. Clarity/resolution - this is paramount to me. I can easily tolerate an oddball tonal balance, if the clarity is good enough. I need the headphone to sould real clean. I'm referring to it as the "creak" quality, but there's no way I can explain it, I can only demonstrate it :)

    2. Tonal balance - every man is pursuing ideal tonal balance, but each man may have a different interpretation of "correct" tonal balance. I'm trying to tune all my headphones after my speaker system. I've failed every time, but I can get somewhat close.

    3. Soundstage & dynamics - I don't care about soundstage at all. Headphones at best can only mimic a pair of good in-room floorstanders. After a session on my speakers the HD800 sound like IEMs. I'm not referring to layering and depth, these are results of good sound reproduction abilities, regardless of whether the sound feels like it is in your head or around. As for dynamics, all dynamic and especially electrostaric headphones are capable more or less of pretty decent dynamics. Some headphones can trick you into thinking they're more dynamic due to their tonal balance. Other headphones, with loose cone suspension would also sound more dynamic. Headphones just can't match the dynamic range and spaciousness of good speakers, the sound is simply always too much in your head.

    And finally, I'm now running the Nighthawk out of the Dragonfly Red (not a bad dac/amp considering it's size, but that's another story). Out of the computer or phone it sounds quite noisy/edgy, but plugged into my Raspberry Pi2 box, it sounds very good. The Pi2 box is powered by my power filter, and its own power supply is super. It provides rock solid USB voltage and the noise on both the power and data lines is very low. I was really surprised how good it sounded, when I first plugged it in. The only downside with it is that I have to use the software volume control in MPD (using stipped down Linux), instead of an analog attenuator. The combo is great overall. If you listen to music at below the neodymium "noise" threshold, the treble is excellent. However, using any of my computers as sources, or even the iPhone, the treble come across as a bit tin and edgy, and since it's a bit elevated relative to the lower frequencies, this could be somewhat troublesome to sensitive ears.

    [​IMG]

    I hope this post will be helpful to you and other modders.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2017
  17. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophileâ„¢

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    Wow. One year has passed since the last post here.

    I owned NH two years ago, but sold it after one month of use, mainly because its quite unusual tonality and excessively dark/thick sounding without heavily EQed. Taming NH with peq was rather easy and straightforward (NH has very, very good linearity. Perhaps the most linearly responding hp to eq on the market to date.). However sticking to Foobar+VST EQ (the only available free solution to me those days) was too much. I wanted to use various digital sources - non-foobar windows apps, macbook, digital transports, and so forth.

    Anyway, several days ago, I was surprised that NH was being sold at HALF ($300) of the original MSRP ($600). Tempted to give them another try.

    ... And got the 2nd NH today!

    AQ NH.JPG

    I already knew NH's potential when properly eqed. So it's not surprising NH immediately took off after three hours of break-in. Very detailed, delicate, fast, and clean sound was just lovely to my taste. NH scaled very well with much better gears - I mean rme adi2 dac - than two years ago (I used O2+ODAC then haha).

    Tonality-wise, to my ears, EQed NH sounds very similar with Mrspeaker's AFO - just 5% less bass slam but 15% more un-muffled mid to treble. Indeed my favorite dynamic bio-cellulose implementation.

    AQ NH eq.JPG

    All my impressions are based on the above eq though.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2018
  18. M3NTAL

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    Can you post your EQ settings? I use Marv's settings from time to time. Low Shelf 800hz Q1 -4db and F 7K 2.5Q -4db
     
  19. Ice-man

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    There is some good potential in the NH driver. It does improve fairly remarkably with good EQ and offers some scale with better gear. I've kept a pair around for the reasons and being "semi open" offers me some modest isolation when I need it.

    At the end of the day though, the 650 sounds considerable better, is lighter/more comfortable and is cheaper in the form of 6xx.
     
  20. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophileâ„¢

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    @M3NTAL

    Very similar configuration indeed, because I started from his suggestion, too.

    Low-shelf at 800hz with Q=1, Gain=-5db
    Peak at 7000hz with Q=2.5, Gain=-4.5db
     

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