As I said though, for me the Nightowl and Hawk are just a little too smoothed over and they end up being, for me, not very engaging. And just to finally tie things up, I do not like bright headphones either, some smoothness is often in order because a great deal of music isn't really that well recorded and some smoothing may be beneficial, especially at louder playback volume which I tend to prefer. We all gravitate to and enjoy things through our personal lens so while these aspects of the Audioquest signatures for me became a detriment they may be a positive for others. You lose a great deal of transient information with this smoothing, IMO. It is non-offensive, but it is too smoothed over and while warm and comforting, there is a great deal of detail that is either hard to perceive due to the smoothing, or it is still audible, but changed. It took a little time to get my hearing brain used to better balanced frequency relationship/presentation than you get from these headphones, but when I started using objectively better balanced headphones and tried going back to the Audioquest offerings I couldn't really enjoy them very much again. However, once the sound gets too smoothed that becomes too much of a good thing.Īs much as I enjoyed Nightowl and to a lesser extent the Nighthawk, eventually my brain was craving what was missing. Just to be clear, I am not a proponent of neutral is best, not at all, I like some colour to my headphones, a little more warmth than neutral and with bass impact. You get used to the sound and of course you don't get sibilance or harder edges, which is like prozac for the ear, but you certainly are not hearing everything in the intended balance. Had both of these headphones, and absolutely they have a pleasant presentation, but make no mistake, they are quite coloured and rolled off sounding. Even if maybe not optimal in measurements. Combine this with single driver speakers, or a good headphone like the Nigthowl, and you have very good sound, to my ears. The Jade only has two tubes, a very classic design, a small 12ax7 driver tube, and a big 6as7 output tube. Maybe, a main factor is that good tubes tend to reduce disharmonic distortion. It may still be, that running the digital input through an OTL amp, improves the listening experience, the engagement with the music. Do I hear much of that, from the Teac? No. I am somewhat subjective - I am allergic to "solid state" and also "digital" sound problems. What is great, is that the headphone serves both amps very well. But also - more human, listenable, engaging in the longer run? I thought, yes. Yes, not quite as clinically informative, more mud, ok. I actually thought: there goes the OTL! But then I returned to the Jade, and was no longer so sure. Wow, a quite different experience - and very good! Using the same Krieger / Zappa track, which is useful as test recording.Īt first, through the Teac, I thought, this is clearer, the bass is tighter, and the musicians / instrument are more evenly portrayed, the piano is now clearer, etc. Next I tested the owls on the Teac NT-505. Not much news, I like both, hawk is more relaxed. First I tested owls vs hawks on the Jade (both single ended).
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