Nectar Sound - "The Bee" - a planar

Of course. Loaner tour thread.

 

Nectar Bee Loaner Impressions

I’d like to thank SBAF for the loaner tour, ChaChaRealSmooth for organizing it, Philimon for introducing us to the Nectar Bee, and Sajeev for lending them to us. I very much appreciate this opportunity!


Preferences, caveats, and where I’m coming from
I’m in my mid-40s and have suffered some hearing loss. I can’t hear much above 14 kHz. I’m sensitive to too much emphasis in the upper-mids and lower-treble as well as fussy about wanting headphones to be free of congestion, veil, and a closed-in headstage. Excess warmth bothers me, especially when there’s too much mid-bass humpiness, and I grouse a lot about a lack of treble air. I lean more towards the HD 600 than the 650.

I should add a disclaimer that while I do love my bass, I’m not a fan of bass cannons. The Bee reminds me of the Campfire Audio Vega 2020 in that it has an exaggerated bass and something of a bump in the upper mids or lower treble – I’m not sure where – to boost vocals. This isn’t a tuning for me, so please understand that my impressions are inevitably skewed, to a certain extent, by this.

The Bee also reminds me somewhat of the Focal Clear Mg, which had a similar upper-mid/lower-treble emphasis and then a roll off in the mid- to upper treble, which made for a lack of air and a darker, more closed-in sound.


Chain
Mac Mini with Roon (Qobuz and FLAC/ALAC files) via USB --> Yggdrasil A2 (balanced) --> V281 | LAuX | Ragnarok v 1.5 --> The Bee


Pad rolling
The perforated pads add too much emphasis to upper mids/lower treble and make the Bee, for me, unpleasantly bright and fatiguing. They’re a bit more open sounding, but not by much. The bass also seems to be slightly looser. I prefer the solid pads, which make for a better balanced sound, one that’s not as bright, and interestingly the solid pads don’t make the headphones more closed in.

Also, I preferred the Bee without the foam pieces on the outside of the ear cups.


Amp rolling
Paying heed to ChaChaRealSmooth’s advice about using a powerful amp, I tried the following:

Violectric V281 – in its standard setup, i.e. without the gain boosts being applied
There’s not enough power here; the macrodynamics are too soft and the overall sound is a bit too flat and dull. This pairing also has poor synergy beyond (or because of?) the power issues. The amp further emphasizes the upper mid or lower treble emphasis, to the point where it becomes unbearable. Female vocals are really forward and pianos sound disjointed as they go up the scale. Electric guitars have good bite.


Monoprice Cavalli Liquid Gold X – high gain
There’s still some upper-mid/lower-treble emphasis, as with the V281, so it’s not the best pairing. The LAuX is plenty powerful and, like the Ragnarok v. 1.5 on medium gain (see below), it improved the staging while also adding to the bass strength and boominess.


Schiit Ragnarok v. 1.5 – medium gain
This is much better than the V281. Where the staging was small and closed-in with the Violectric, now it opens up nicely and, besides having more height and depth to the staging, the overall sound becomes more spacious. As a result, there’s better instrument separation and layering. The bass is way stronger and tighter as well as snappier. It’s still big and booming, though.

A fun quality of the Bee is that the bass also has a really big sound to it, as though it fills up sonic space. I think someone called it “cavernous” above. That’s exactly right.


Schiit Ragnarok v. 1.5 – high gain (using all due care and attention with the volume pot)
Well, the Bee certainly loves its juice. The Bee now sounds even better: female vocals are less forward and better balanced with the overall tuning; there’s a more cohesive and coherent sound, and the bass is now much tighter and leaner and faster. It’s less boomy or big but still strong and authoritative, with excellent sub-bass depth.

The following impressions, then, are from the Rag on high gain.


General Impressions
The bass is outstandingly good, if a bit too boomy and loose at times. Alas, the bass does bleed into the lower mids, so it becomes the defining attribute to the Bee’s tuning (although that upper-mid/lower-treble emphasis does remain a nuisance for me). The lack of upper treble makes for a closed-in, slightly muffled sound, one that’s oddly small even though the bass has this big, cavernous sound to it. The treble roll off is severe enough that cymbals are too recessed and faint.

The staging pans quite hard to the left and right, although the center image is solid enough. There’s decent enough separation and layering, and while the staging is on the smaller side, it’s not overly so. Imaging is decent. Resolution is pretty damn good for the price. I just wish there was more of a sense of air and space.

Macrodynamics are good. Slam is great. And the bass is glorious. It goes incredibly deep, to the point where it’s authoritative in the sub-bass registers. Whereas some headphones struggle with the sub-bass and have a kind of wheeziness to them, the Bee sounds as strong down here as it does elsewhere in the bass regions. The mid-bass is satisfyingly punchy.


Comparisons with LCD-2C - from the Ragnarok in high gain, using only rock and electronic music
Please note the considerable price difference between these headphones; this is an unfair set of comparisons, then. I'm including them just to provide a point of reference.

The Bee:

• bass is much stronger and more prominent and much boomier
• females vocals are more up-front; male vocals less so but still forward
• less resolving
• a bit muddier or woollier
• more congested (re. separation and layering and air and space)
• the drums fade into the background somewhat, with snares and cymbals having less energy
• the staging is more up-front generally, i.e. right in front of eyes, although pans to sides well

The LCD-2C:

• is more open and spacious and has a lighter tonal weight, one that’s not as thick or rich
• drums are much more realistic and sound tonally correct
  • snares have more snap and cymbals more zing
• much better separation and space and air between and around instruments
• bass is way weaker, no longer the dominant characteristic of the sound
• more depth to stage

Quick, fun comparison of the Hans Zimmer Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack and Trentemoller’s Chameleon, both of which have ridiculously deep bass: the Bee’s bass is more open and spacious bass; it’s looser but has more rumble; the LCD-2C, by comparison, fares less well and is less authoritative. The Bee goes impressively deep and, well, is just a hell of a lot of fun.


Conclusion
If you’re looking for a general purpose pair of planar headphones with a [edit: well-balanced but] fun sound, these could be for you, with a few caveats. If you crave certain kinds of bass response, these could be a dream come true.

[edited because, on reflection, "well-balanced" might suggest "neutral" and these are definitely dark headphones]

 

First, I would like to thank SBAF for doing this loaner. This is my first loaner and it's been fun to try out gear without having to buy it. I've been blind buying for well over a decade, and this is definitely preferable.


Build, Comfort, & Accessories

The Bee is quite light and comfortable and I found no problems wearing it for hours at a time. Take this with a grain of salt, though, because I don't have comfort problems with most headphones.

It came with two pairs of pads, but I mostly just used the solid pads because the perforated pads emphasized some upper mid harshness that I did not enjoy. The Bee also came with foam discs that you can put on the outer back of the headphone, and I preferred to use the headphone without the discs because it sounded more open and natural to me.


Amp Pairing & Chain

Chain: Roon -> HQPlayer -> Yggdrasil+ OG -> [AMP] -> Bee

I tried the Bee with my ECP DSHA-3F and my Monolith Liquid Gold X. The LAuX was a better pairing, as the 3F made the transients sound mushy and slow, and the bass became ill-defined. The LAuX tightened things up and made the Bee sound a bit more alive, which I felt it needed.


General Sonic Traits

Overall, the Bee is a warm and relaxing headphone with a notable emphasis on the lower mids and the bass. The upper mids and treble are definitely recessed, but I didn't detect peakiness, so the overall timbre is relatively realistic, if a bit overly polite. With regard to the Bee's tuning, there are sins of omission rather than sins of commission. The notable exception were the cymbals, which sounded too muted, small, and distant in the mix.

Besides the dark tuning, the other standout trait to me was the transient response. The Bee has a muffled quality to its transients that makes it sound like vocalists are singing through a thin layer of fabric. I noticed this the most when I used the Bee to watch YouTube videos. This trait reminds me of the ZMF Aeolus, but the effect is even more pronounced with the Bee. It is likely exaggerated by the tuning, which is darker than the Aeolus. This makes the Bee a relaxing listen even though it has above average punch and macrodynamics.

Interestingly, while the bass and mids have slow, muffled transients with good decay, the upper mids and treble had sharper transients with less decay. This was most notable with the perforated pads. This made the headphone sound a little disjointed—almost as if there were two different drivers handling different parts of the frequency response. This may be why the Bee was tuned to have recessed upper mids and treble.

To be honest, the Bee's resolution and separation were a bit disappointing. The different instruments tended to blend together a bit too much, which was exacerbated by the dark tuning. I don't currently have my HD6XX in the house, but from memory they scaled better and were a little more resolving with better microdynamics than the Bee. Resolution and separation aren't my primary concern with headphones, but the Bee is below my threshold, and it impacted my enjoyment of the headphone.

I know that several other people have highlighted the Bee's bass, but it didn't wow me. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was certainly above average, but I think I'm really spoiled. I currently use the Utopia, Verite Closed, and Atrium as my primary headphones and they all have top-tier bass. Also, I had pre-fazor LCD-2s that had mind-bendingly good bass and my modded T50RPs are bass monsters, so I'm pretty hard to impress in the bass department.


Comparison to ZMF Aeolus

Of all the headphones in the house, the Nectar Bee sounds the most like the ZMF Aeolus to me. They both have a warm tuning with a slightly muffled character that makes the transients sound a little fuzzy (especially if the Aeolus has the suede pads). Both are laid back and punchy at the same time, and both have recessed treble and emphasized bass. They both have higher-than-average decay that adds a bit of romance to the sound. The Aeolus has more presence in the upper mids and lower treble and so it sounds much more vivid and present, especially with vocals. The Aeolus also has better resolution and microdynamics than the Bee. Overall, the Bee takes the unique traits of the Aeolus and turns them up to 11, but with slightly worse technicalities and a slightly less natural tuning. But the Bee costs less than half of the Aeolus, so it could work for someone looking for that relaxing, laid back, but punchy and bassy sound signature.


Conclusion

Overall, the Bee is not a headphone for me because of the muffled transients, overly polite tuning, and modest resolution, but I could see someone else liking it. If you want a comfortable, warm, bassy, relaxing, but somewhat punchy headphone, then it could work for you.

 

I also found them pretty muffled with certain music. My headphones are not nearly as high end as yours, but I really do like the bass on these. I think it is pretty strong and clean. I had initially been thinking about selling them on at a loss, as usual.

Then I remembered a thought I had when testing them. I might put the effort into making a Bee playlist. I have about 7,500 pieces of music, but I suspect only 1000-2000 would sound great with these headphones. Might be worth all the work.

 

Source: Yggdrasil A1
Amps: EC Black Widow, Cavalli LPx

Lightweight enough, like the wide comfort band at the top. Very comfortable. Make sure you get the pads aligned correctly with the 4 velcro pads. Some line guides on the cup and the pad would have helped here. The outer foam is not very secure and seems like it could fall out any second.

These are dark tilted, nearly rolled off on the highs. Very syrupy. The perforated pads just lift the upper 2k mids, but do nothing for the highs and really the leather pads sound the least offensive.

They don't seem that hard to drive, maybe just a bit harder than LCD-2.2, but they have no sparkle at all and seem to have some comb filtering going on in the upper highs that never really sounds natural. This is why it gives the impression of needing more power. The highs just sound muffled, like behind a curtain somewhere.

Normally I can take a headphone without a perfect FR and sometimes our heads can kind of fill in the gaps, and everything below 1K seemed to be okay. Maybe some gentle roll-off and not like the extension of HFM or Audeze, but the lows were punchy and clean. You can tell it is a planar with that planar clarity and lack of grain and good transients. But seriously it sounded like a speaker with a blanket covering the tweeter - you can hear the tweeter working, just not enough and very filtered. These are marketed as a "darker, layered presentation" and I believe it.

Even the review published on the website says, "...it is also interesting to play other genres of songs that wouldn’t normally pair very well with the bee’s sound signature. While they don’t excel with rock, metal, jazz and the sorts." Well...I guess I listen to too much rock, metal, jazz, and the sorts.

Maybe you need a seriously powerful and bright chain for these, but I doubt that can save them.

 

Opening
I've always wanted to hear amazing planar bass. It's the stuff of legend for me. I've never heard an Audeze or anything that ever had a following for planar bass impact. I might go so far as to say I've never heard a bassy headphone because given what people say about the Sony MDR-Z1R compared to my reference headphone, the KH-100 (Yamaha YH-100 drivers in a Sony MDR-ZX700 frame, link to sbaf review), I can't even imagine what real bass sounds like (makes my headphones sound anemic). But I am happy with bass light headphones. I started out with the AKG K701, went to Sony CD3000, and then moved onto vintage orthodynamics and never really looked back (I owned HFM Arya v2 and HFM Sundara for small periods of time as well). Still, I was interested in hearing Nectar Bee given what people were saying about the bass. This could be my opportunity to hear the legendary planar bass.

Associated Gears
DAC - Theta DS Pro Gen V
Amp - Nakamichi TA-2A (speaker amp, consumes ~40W)

Sorry, I do not roll amps, never really have. I mainly listen to planars and typically one decent SS amp at a time has been enough to suit my listening needs.


Build Quality and Initial Impressions
Build quality isn't exactly top notch, imo, plastic abound, but I really really like the build, good consumer-grade product, better than Hifiman, imho. Build quality is breath of fresh air just because it's a new design I haven't seen before and functions very well. The right hinge creaks a tiny bit but everything seems sturdy and smooth, seems very comfy, height adjustment seems to hold position, clamp is adequate, light weight for me, very nice, creaking does not bother me while on my head.. This is a headphone where I don't use it on the absolute smallest setting, I actually need to adjust these for my head. So, small headed people unite and buy these headphones.

Yes they are scooped out in the upper-mids and treble. I started to EQ them with MathAudio Headphone EQ and then I was like, "Wait, the Treble knob on my amp boosts upper mids, too." So I defeated all EQ and then turned on tone controls and cranked treble alllllll the way up. Holy crap, so much better, these actually sound mostly normal now.

Bass is... not crazy? I thought these would be bass monsters with crazy impact. They are not. Good bass extension, but not exactly elevated sub-bass or even elevated mid-bass... I hear linear planar bass, nothing out of the ordinary. With bass boost it gets interesting.

Bee's are very hard to drive. Harder to drive than KH-100's by a large margin which are already hard to drive, and believe it or not Bee's are harder to drive than HE-6se v2 by fair margin, too. I'm not talking Amps vs Volts requirements, SS vs Tube, or anything, just clearly stating I have to turn my amp higher for Bee's than HE-6se v2.


Comparisons to other headphones

HE-6se v2
These are pretty bold, not washed out like HFM (a big deal for me). When I say washed out many many headphones to me sound like there is extraneous low level noise within the signal that fades their boldness and this destroys the realism for me. HE-6se's sound a little shouty and thin in comparison to Bee's. Bee's are fairly resolving, but not crazy, I'd say comparable to vintage ortho's and HE-6se. Imaging is large'ish due to driver size although HE-6se v2 ekes out a slightly larger image. Bee's imaging is fairly pin point sorta like HE-6se v2 with good left-right delineation, fairly wide, imho, with a close-ish center image and not much verticality.

KH-100
KH-100's have more mid-bass. KH-100's accept more bass boost, I can actually max it out, whereas with Bee's the diaphragm (I believe) bottoms out and it sort of farts. Whether or not my amplifier is to blame for the "farting" by not being able to supply enough current, I am not 100% sure, but given that this amplifier is basically a speaker amp with a resistor inline with the headphone output, I doubt it's a current limitation of the amp. Anyway, bass is so much different from KH-100 bass. It's more focused on sub-bass and sounds a bit cleaner than KH-100's with better texturing in sub-bass, but KH-100's have what I call "breath region bass" (pressurization of the earcup, upper impact mid-bass region) which makes it sound so much fuller like it's pressurizing the ear chamber and has some guts to it. Also upper-mids and treble don't need to be as pronounced as they are in KH-100's, so an upper-mid/treble tuning somewhere between the treble boosted Bee and KH-100 would be ideal for me. Their particular timbre/texturing is slightly off from what I'm used to, KH-100's can sound a little tizzy/wishy-washy whereas Bee's sound a bit thicker, down-tilted, and sweeter. Bee's can have a little midrange peakiness/glare, however, (I heard this on track Odyssey - Native New Yorker). Sometimes midrange glare can get out of hand with boosted treble knob so need to be careful, possibly due to pads. I kinda prefer the extra zing KH-100's have in the treble and mids but sibilance is slightly more out of control. Bee's are very tame in sibilance regions from what I can tell, just a sweet sibilance region.

Final review words
I'd say these are daily drivers with treble knob anywhere from 1/2 of the way up to maxxed out depending on mastering. With treble knob maxxed out I do not find treble or vocals that withdrawn or hazy, everything is adequately sharp and realistic for me, I'd say on par with HE-6se, personally. At times I would just like even a little more upper mids and treble than what my amp is willing to give me.

Measurements
My measurements were taken with the MiniDSP E.A.R.S. I compare channel balance and then stock tuning to tone control'ed FR.

Disclaimer: Please note MiniDSP E.A.R.S. limitations. The blame for the imbalance may lie with the Bee's or with my measurement rig

Channel balance:


Tone Controls:


Comparative measures

HE-6se v2 / Bee:


KH-100 / Bee:




Conclusion
So, yeah, if you have a beast of an amp that also has tone controls (or something like a Loki?) I can highly recommend the Bee's. They have a boldness and fluidity of sound that is hard matched imho. I have heard transplanted NAD RP-18's, Hifiman Arya v2's, Hifiman HE-6se v2's, and none could really touch the vibrancy and pure signal saturation of the Bee imho. If you happened on the right pad combination -of which I have something in mind- I'm sure the Bee's could be all stars with a little EQ. I'm a fan and will be looking forward to future Nectar headphones.

 

Oh no I shouldn't have found this thread. Just the other day I was thinking fondly of the olden HE-500 and how I missed the subterranean bass that orthos can muster, took a look at the Audeze website and saw the cheapest are still $800 and figured I'd be fine without something that expensive.
These dudes look like some real beasts, maybe the Koss lectrostats have had their day! Magni/Modi got me into this and I'm sure they can get me out of it too!

 

There are lots of other options for lower budgets. Keep researching.

Lots of headphones can go deep and loud, and for much cheaper.

 

Nice write-up. I haven't used the Bee's in a while and was thinking about a compiling a bass themed playlist where the Bee's could excel.
But this weekend I am thinking Hard about re-buying the Liquid Platinum. It is stupid cheap and I do kind of miss the sound. Your review got me thinking about what the power of the LP and the magic of the Loki could do for my Bee's.
I have some stuff up for sale and thought I would wait to see if I could drum up some space and money. Now I am jacked about trying a new combo with the Bee's.