Following the slow hype train, I got myself a DCA E3 as a Christmas present and have been using it for about a month now. And I have mixed feelings about it.
My use cases for it include background listening while working at a desk and late focused listening sessions on a couch. I don’t want to disturb my family or get disturbed in both cases, hence the idea to buy an expensive close back.
This is not a review but rather a summary of my personal experience on top of what has been mentioned in the reviews many times, as some of these things are not so apparent.
Build and comfort
The build quality is great. It did feel like unpacking and holding a premium product when I first got it out of the box. The foldable design, relatively light yoke-less construction with a wide self-adjustable strap is quite impressive. This has been regarded many times.
I have a relatively small head by audiophile standards, I think my hat size is M. And while I’ve seen several people complaining that E3’s clamp is too high or the headband is too small, I have the opposite issue with them. For me the headband is a bit loose while the strap is in its tightest position. The clamp force is low, and because the cups themselves are quite big and heavy, the pressure mostly goes onto my jaw rather than onto my temples.
As a result, the cups don’t “hug” my head as they are supposed to and it takes some effort to find a comfortable position. After a couple of hours the jaw muscles get tired from extra weight/pressure, and that can even lead to headache. Plus, I have a suspicion that I may be getting imperfect seal which is critical for DCA headphones. It gets better after some time, as the memory foam of the pads “breaks in”.
Tonal balance
The E3 is great for its tuning. I can’t say it’s perfect on my head out of the box though. Without EQ I hear it as clearly shouty and with a bit of sibilance. So I have to reduce 3.9KHz and 8KHz by a good amount (-3-4dB). Then I can enjoy it fully.
The EQ also helps getting rid of “plasticy” planar timbre, so that the timbre gets spot on. The vocals sound clear and natural, the hihats tick, and the guitar strings pluck delightfully.
Fun fact: I can listen to my OG Clear without EQ as long as I want and its jagged treble response doesn’t bother me, but I can’t listen to the E3 without EQ for a longer period of time despite it measuring much smoother on the rig.
Presentation
The imaging capabilities are great and sound staging effect projects space that is not enormous but is accurate. I was pleasantly suprised to hear how it can project images in different vertical positions as well as at different stage depth. Overall, E3 is good at putting the music “out there” rather than making it “intimately whisper in your ears”, which you may like or not.
Dynamics are pretty good. It depends largely on a record, but it can slam and bite pretty good. Not Focal Clear good but still satisfyingly good.
All of that comes with two caveats:
- Positional variation. At least on my head the imaging and frequency response changes drastically if a cup is shifted just by a centimeter in any direction. Sometimes I ask myself “why is all the sound coming from a flat plane on the right side?”, then I shift the earcups a bit and “ooh, everything is as it should be now”.
- Quality of a recording. This is a very revealing headphone. Great recordings sound great, good recordings sound good, mediocre ones sound mediocre. It doesn’t play any special tricks to make a track sound better than it is, which sometimes comes across as disappointing. “Why does my favorite track sound mushy and flat?” Well, because it is recorded mushy and mixed flat, I just didn’t notice it on other headphones so much.
If the recording is good then detail retrieval is very good and I can see why people put it in line with best of $2k open-back headphones. I can hear more things in my music than I could hear with my Focal Clear even after EQ. All of that without elevated treble to “enhance the detail” (I am looking at you, Hifiman).
Music genres
With those caveats mentioned above I tend to disagree with a popular opinion on the internet that E3 is a great generalist, a jack of all trades.
I find it great for instrumental music such as Jazz, Classical, etc. Those genres just shine on these.
Well-mixed Electronic and Pop tracks sound great if your intention is to listen rather than to dance to them. The imaging and layering and tonal clarity in the Electronic tracks can be quite captivating. Though if you listen to a dance track and you want it to pump, this is not the best headphone for the job. It may be enough, but there are better ones. Same is with vocal pop: if the track is mixed with vocals in focus, it may sound intimate and breathtaking. Or it may just sound OK.
Rock music is complicated. It’s not just the quality of recording that matters. Some releases are good on these headphones, some are just meh. What E3 generally lacks is engagement, it just doesn’t pull you in or scream in your head when you may urge it.
That’s why for most of Rock, Dance, and Vocal-focused music I prefer my Focal Clear. For instrumental and electronic soundscapes I prefer the E3.
All of that leaves me with mixed feelings as a long-time owner. On one hand, it’s legitimately an S-tier close-back headphone worth $2k of sound. On the other hand, the comfort issues prevent it from becoming my daily driver. And I am not the one who can afford a large collection of headphones to sit around and collect dust waiting for that very special moment I reach out for that specific headphone.
So I’m thinking of maybe selling it and getting an Azurys for the same use case. The problem is that I heard Azurys in Munich and it didn’t impress me in any way except for sounding “normal” across the board while being lightweight and comfortable. There is now also the new Noire X, but I really don’t like the sound signature of the original Noire, and that makes me skeptical. At least until I can listen it at a show.
