The AudioQuest NightHawk Wood along with the closed-back NightOwls are some of my favourite headphones to use while I’m chilling. I know they get a lot of hate but I am definitely in the camp of loving them. Sure they don’t sound the greatest but their sound is lots of fun and they are insanely comfortable. Any other fans of AudioQuest headphones out there?
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Not yet, but I have been seeing reviews on them. I’m interested in the carbon edition as well…
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I heard AudioQuest don’t make any headphones anymore: too bad…
I don’t know if it’s official yet, but it seems to be the case. The NightHawks were a neat design.
Unfortunately they lost their headphone designer, Skylar Grey.
The NightHawks and then the NightOwls were either a big or big miss among headphone enthusiasts so that coupled with the cost of R&D and promotion most likely played a factor.
Cables can pretty much sell themselves and it is AudioQuest’s main business.
It’s a shame because I quite like their headphones despite their flaws. I could see then continuing with the USB DACs / Amps though. Maybe an upgraded Dragonfly with some more features.
I have a pair:
I’ll be honest I think they’re not really unlike fancy Beats Solo 3’s, and actually have similar FR measurements. The bass has really, really low distortion which is incredible, but it’s so elevated that it somehow gets muddy anyway. I definitely get liking these as something you don’t really analyze, but the bass stock was too distracting for me. I did some mods which helped the bass a little, but they were still overwhelming for anything with vocals. They’re fun for my bassy music though.
I did try swapping out the pads, which is something I’m generally against because it’s almost always led to bad results on other headphones, to the Shure SRH1540 pads, expecting the already dipped treble to be dipped further. To my surprise they stayed measured mostly similar past 1kHz but the bass dropped considerably. The main problem now was that the mods I did increased upper mids, specifically 3kHz, which makes them sound pretty artificial. It’s been a fun project though.
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