[inthere]

  Nighthawk scales very well from iPhone to tube amps of varying sorts.
 

How are you liking the Nighthawk with Dave? 

 

[paulchiu]

 
How are you liking the Nighthawk with Dave? 

It was exciting when I heard this combo while traveling.  
My black Dave should arrive next week. Will write about it later.  What was memorable was the air with saxophone in the Jazz at the Pawnshop 24-192 track I had with me.
It had more expansiveness to the sound than what I remember from the Nagra HD DAC.  The original Pawnshop tracks were recorded with Nagra IV tape recorders.
Whether this depiction is true I will never know.  (not having been there, of course)

 

[Darien]

hey can anybody tell me: is the nighthawk cable propreitary or can you u use any cable that is 2.5mm dual to 1/4 ? how much is the replacement cable and ear pads from audioquest? 

 

[Mediahound]

 hey can anybody tell me: is the nighthawk cable propreitary or can you u use any cable that is 2.5mm dual to 1/4 ? how much is the replacement cable and ear pads from audioquest? 

Any 2.5mm ( each ear) cable works such has any Oppo PM-1, Sennheiser HD700 or Hi-Fi Man HE1000 cable works fine.

 

[bettyn]

As a result of my continued problems  with the cable provided by Audioquest for the Nighthawk,I purchased a cable from Moon Audio (Silver Dragon}. Really pricey, but continuing to purchase cables that would fail within a month from Audioquest over and over again was expensive, too. So far, I'm happy to have a sturdy replacement I can rely on. Sounds great, too,

 

[Darien]

Nighthawk scales very well from iPhone to tube amps of varying sorts.

what kind of tube amp is that? Is it otl? I saw nighthawk is low impedance, does that mean it won't be good with otl tube amps but good with non otl tube amps?

 

[paulchiu]

what kind of tube amp is that? Is it otl? I saw nighthawk is low impedance, does that mean it won't be good with otl tube amps but good with non otl tube amps?

 
It has output transformers.  Nighthawk is pretty easy to drive.  Should be easy with any tube amp.

 

[Loquah]

It has output transformers.  Nighthawk is pretty easy to drive.  Should be easy with any tube amp.

You'll want an amp with relatively low output impedance so OTLs aren't a good idea, but a tube amp with output transformer and most solid state amps will sound great with NightHawks. There are a few solid state amps around with unusually high output importance (like the original phonitor), but it's unusual.

 

[disastermouse]

I finally got to try these at the Best Buy Magnolia store nearby.

Overall, they felt blurrier than the PM-3s I wore into the store (playing both right of my iPhone 6+), but there were these weird moments where certain songs sounded a lot more 'speaker-ish' than my planars. I don't know quite how to explain it.

 

[Jackpot77]

I finally got to try these at the Best Buy Magnolia store nearby.

Overall, they felt blurrier than the PM-3s I wore into the store (playing both right of my iPhone 6+), but there were these weird moments where certain songs sounded a lot more 'speaker-ish' than my planars. I don't know quite how to explain it.

There's a good attempt at explaining the "blurriness" you are hearing on the website (the Nighthawk has its own microsite if you haven't seen it) - I won't attempt to paraphrase now, but it's the section with the two pictures of the eagle about half way down, from memory. I have both 'phones at the moment and the more I listen to the Nighthawks, the harder it is to go back to the PM3s.

 

[Loquah]

There's a good attempt at explaining the "blurriness" you are hearing on the website (the Nighthawk has its own microsite if you haven't seen it) - I won't attempt to paraphrase now, but it's the section with the two pictures of the eagle about half way down, from memory. I have both 'phones at the moment and the more I listen to the Nighthawks, the harder it is to go back to the PM3s.

 
I was just about to post the same and I'm happy to provide paraphrase although I recommend reading the info on the Nighthawk site.
 
In short, the distortion that most headphones exhibit, combined with deliberate tuning to create specific "sharpness" in the sound will create an artificial sense of clarity / detail in most headphones. This can seem engaging and exciting at first, but ultimately leads to fatigue over longer periods of listening. Skylar's approach to the Nighthawk was to get the lowest achievable distortion and to tune it without added "sharpness" so the result may seem less detailed at first, but if you give it a little time you might actually find that the Nighthawks are actually more transparent and allow you to hear more subtle details in the sound (across all frequencies) because there isn't the 'masking' effect created by enhanced treble and excess distortion.
 
Of course, we all perceive sound differently, but I'm definitely a fan of Skylar's approach and haven't even thought about buying another headphone since getting the Nighthawk. Now I just need a portable, in-ear Nighthawk (nudge, nudge, wink, wink @SkylarGray)

 

[Jackpot77]

I was just about to post the same and I'm happy to provide paraphrase although I recommend reading the info on the Nighthawk site.

In short, the distortion that most headphones exhibit, combined with deliberate tuning to create specific "sharpness" in the sound will create an artificial sense of clarity / detail in most headphones. This can seem engaging and exciting at first, but ultimately leads to fatigue over longer periods of listening. Skylar's approach to the Nighthawk was to get the lowest achievable distortion and to tune it without added "sharpness" so the result may seem less detailed at first, but if you give it a little time you might actually find that the Nighthawks are actually more transparent and allow you to hear more subtle details in the sound (across all frequencies) because there isn't the 'masking' effect created by enhanced treble and excess distortion.

Of course, we all perceive sound differently, but I'm definitely a fan of Skylar's approach and haven't even thought about buying another headphone since getting the Nighthawk. Now I just need a portable, in-ear Nighthawk (nudge, nudge, wink, wink @SkylarGray
)

+1 to the portable idea - anything in the pipeline, AQ team?

If you are looking for a portable solution with a similar signature (and approach regarding minimising distortion and not emphasising anything artificially) them you might want to check out the Flare Audio R2A or R2Pro iems if you haven't come across them already. I owned a pair of R2As (and my girlfriend still does) and they are very similar in sound signature to the NH, despite being about the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil.

 

[Loquah]

+1 to the portable idea - anything in the pipeline, AQ team?

If you are looking for a portable solution with a similar signature (and approach regarding minimising distortion and not emphasising anything artificially) them you might want to check out the Flare Audio R2A or R2Pro iems if you haven't come across them already. I owned a pair of R2As (and my girlfriend still does) and they are very similar in sound signature to the NH, despite being about the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil.

 
The Noble K10s are doing a fine job for me right now, but I can't help wonder if Skylar is going to cook up something that will completely change my perspective on in-ears in the same way that the Hawks have changed my perspective on headphones
 
Actually, the K10s are tuned quite similarly to the Nighthawks in many ways, but they're still not quite as effortlessly smooth as the Hawks

 

[inthere]

I finally got to try these at the Best Buy Magnolia store nearby.

Overall, they felt blurrier than the PM-3s I wore into the store (playing both right of my iPhone 6+), but there were these weird moments where certain songs sounded a lot more 'speaker-ish' than my planars. I don't know quite how to explain it.

 
 PM-3s are great headphones with similar tuning to the NH. They should be louder coming out of a smartphone than a NH, but if coming out of a good amp the NH is going to have an edge in clarity-my Nighthawk has more clarity than my PM-1s, which are sensational headphones and also very flat. 

 

[all999]

I love my Hawks and would be awesome to get portable NH sound.

Also my balanced hybrid cable just arrived