Audioquest NightHawk Carbon

AudioQuest Carbon Nighthawks.


What Best describes their sound :

Like holding satin sheets against your body.

As if headphone sound could be rich dark chocolate but better..

Have you ever felt a cool relaxing breeze on a mild Spring afternoon ?
The wind, the air, the breeze, as you feel it float past you and wrap around you and meld into you, its an ahhhhhhhhh.....
Well, that is how the Nighthawk's sound.
Its what they deliver.
Its what they are designed to do.
They are designed to rescue your ears from faux treble response, and wrap them instead in golden honey-sound.
This specific sound is the sweetness of sound that discerning ears love regarding "earlier" Audeze gear, while presented in a spectacular highest of tech set of "carbon" headphones.

When i first saw them, i fell in love with the fact that they look in person like a gleaming midnight black Porsche 911 Turbo.
Simplistic aesthetic design, yet the sculpted futuristic lines of the headphone's design are elegant and refined.
Interestingly, the HE1000 & Ananda (and similar) copied the same shape, yet, all of these are much much larger.
These are pretty headphones, and their comfort as provided by their fit, is to make $3000 USD headphones, envious.

Ok, all gushing aside, let me respond to what you are curious about, if you are thinking about a purchase.

It seems that all reviews, nearly all that you will discover, refer to their treble response as being soft, recessed, rolled off, lacking.
And the other reviews say their bass is just not balanced, it could be, too much.

Ok, well, here is the reality........we live surrounded by a hifi world of headphones which are created by, driven by, and immersed within this unfortunate idea that treble is the main reason for headphone sound.

"""i dont care about how good they sound, just tell me about the TREBLE !! """"""

Many are affected with this obsession, regarding how they assess the quality of a headphone's sound.
And we as long term tone-addicts - headphone-users have become use to this, ourselves... and have adjusted our listening criteria-preference to relate to this concept.
These headphones deny all that.
They rebuke it.
They are the polar opposite of that agenda, criteria, as their reason to exist.
They create a velvety sound, smooth, rich, tonally quite accurate, but they do not qualify as a "modern" sounding headphone.
"Modern" is : too much high end, too much separation of instruments, too much over-focus on resolution, and not enough focus on overall beauty.
The AudioQuest NightHawks are, according to MY ears... entirely created to push back against dry, bright, sterile, cold, $3000 USD headphone "analysis sound".
They gloriously succeed by offering all the sound and not of the shrill.
Soundstage is wide, mids are plentiful, treble is accurate but not sharp-edged, and the bass is in full bloom.

What do they sound like?
They sound, (first impression).... a bit like.... > early Audeze sweet deep tone married to the Aeon C, is what came to my mind upon first encounter within their sound.

Treble addicts, will not love these.
Bass addicts, wil not love these.
Beautiful sound addicts, .... = give them a try.

There is one more thing i can tell you, if you have found this review and own these or are thinking about a purchase.
There is a simple 10 second mod you can do to these headphones that will change their dynamic presentation substantially, and basically recreate their sound as "modern", including increasing their resolution and treble response.
When i tried this, i realized that these good headphones, would have been great if they had been simply designed exactly as they are, but closed.
Here is the MOD. Get 2 pieces of wide clear plastic tape that you would use for shipping, and put them over the open part of the headphones.... right over the grills, and you'll have all the treble you want and a tighter and actually better sound.
One thing tho......because you are now compressing the sound and sound pressure inside the headphone, you have to adjust your volume LOWER, or things will get weird inside the headphones.......
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[Updated 11/08/18 - See Addendum]

Shortly after learning of AudioQuest's intentions of exiting the headphone space, I noticed many vendors were clearing out remaining inventory by offering exceptional deals on the AudioQuest NightHawk Carbon. Not being one to pass up a good deal ($299 + free shipping), I jumped at the chance to try AudioQuest's most recent (and unfortunately last) offering first hand. What follows are my initial impressions of AudioQuest's follow-up to the original NightHawk, the new and improved NightHawk Carbon.

Note: These impressions come after only 48 hours of burn-in (rather than the 150 hours recommended by AudioQuest).

Initial Impressions

With a much warmer presentation than I would typically look for in a headphone, the NightHawk is surprisingly detailed, but at the same time offering a softer non-fatiguing sound. The NightHawk's relaxed presentation combined with its ability to extract subtle details, allowed me to hear into the venue of the recording more than other headphones in this price range. Listen to the liveliness of the venue as the horn is played on The Move by Matthew Halsall. In other words, the NH can give you a better sense of size, space, and acoustics of the venue by allowing ambient clues to come through without an additional layer of harshness often imposed by other more lively or detailed headphones.

I believe much of the warmer presentation of the NH's can be attributed to what I perceived as recessed treble, with the treble being much softer than I like, but still presenting a fair amount of detail. Interestingly enough, I discovered I could find the treble that I felt was missing, by increasing the volume to levels much higher than I was usually accustomed. At higher volumes, I was able to achieve treble sparkle approaching what I would expect from a well-balanced headphone. However, sustaining this level of enjoyment for a prolonged period would mean risking permanent hearing damage which obviously I would not want to do.

As an aside, I believe that the design measures taken to reduced overall distortion in the NightHawk allowed me to attain comfortably sustained higher than normal volumes levels from this headphone without added fatigue.

With the supplied protein leather ear pads, I found the NH rarely bright. Vocals are a bit forward, but always smooth and some may feel a bit thick as on Shelby Lynne 's Just A Little Lovin'. The bass, although slightly heightened relative to the rest of the frequency spectrum, is tonally articulate with a strong sub-bass signal down to 20Hz. But this heightened low end can be overwhelming especially if the music already includes exaggerated bass like Rhythm & Sound's King in My Empire.

And speaking of something that could very well be king, I found that the NightHawk's four-point cup suspension system consistently provides an outstanding level comfort, easily providing hours of listening pleasure without any undue clamping pressure or discomfort of any kind. This headband and ear cup suspension system is among the best I've experienced.

Conclusion

It's easy to understand why some find the relaxed sound of this headphone seductive. As some find the warmth of tubes alluring, many will find the sound of the NightHawk equally as attractive. Even given the sonic imbalance in the overall character of this headphone, there is still much to like about the NightHawk Carbon. The NightHawk's warmer nature may not appeal to everyone, but with respect to detail retrieval (in terms of hall reverberation and instrumental attack and decay) what the NightHawk Carbon is able to reproduce demonstrates a level of refinement that approaches other flagships, albeit at much lower volume levels.

At its current heavily discounted price, the soon to be unavailable AudioQuest NightHawk Carbon represents a unique value in an era of ever-increasing flagship prices.


Addendum (11/08/18)

Post-Burn-in Impressions

Per the Audioquest Headphones Pre-Flight Guide “we recommend at least 150 hours of active play before making any critical assessments.” Not being one to second guess the recommendations of a manufacturer, I proceeded to burn-in the Nighthawk Carbon for roughly seven days or over 168 hours.

I make no claim that my ability to recall nuanced audio clues is particularly reliable. That said, the following comments are based on comparisons of previous observations made over five days ago.

After seven days of burn-in, the Nighthawk Carbon still maintains its original warm but resolving character. However, I did notice some minor but perceptible differences in tonality and detail after completing the recommended burn-in period. Using the same tracks as I had in my initial 48 hours test, I’ll briefly describe the detected differences:

• Matthew Halsall ‘s The Move – not much change, still warm and thick

• Shelby Lynne 's Just A Little Lovin' – Vocals are about the same, or slightly more open. Reverberation detail might be slightly improved, and the bass is little less pronounced but is still not a tight as it should be. Treble extension may be a bit more noticeable but is still a bit soft.

• Rhythm & Sound's King in My Empire – bass is arguably somewhat tighter, but still loose in absolute terms. For another sub-bass workout try crapbox by Noisia - see screenshot.

• On Jimmy Cobb’s Emily on the Jazz in the Key of Blue album, cymbals are good but not exceptional, being slightly rolled off and at times sounding a bit subdued as opposed to having a more immediate shimmery metallic attack. The cymbal decay detail on the other hand, is better represented.

• The hauntingly rhythmic vocals of Angus & Julia Stone on Draw Your Sword on the Down The Way album again sounded warm and slightly veiled, although now with a bit more reverberation.

Note: As mentioned in my initial review, I detected issues with the Shelby Lynne track. As an experiment, I purchased a copy of this album from HDTracks for comparison. I found the FLAC 192kHz 24bit digital download of this track to be vastly superior to streamed Redbook 44.1kHz 16bit FLAC file from Tidal, and the HDTracks download did not contain the defect I noticed with the streamed Tidal file.

Conclusion

I was unable to detect a significant change in the overall character of sound after 168+ hours of burn-in. What I did notice were subtle changes like slightly tighter bass and, in some cases, improved detail retrieval. However, these perceived differences could also be attributed to expectation bias.

I found the AudioQuest Nighthawk Carbon’s seductively lush, but sometimes overly thick presentation is easier to listen to than other tonally accurate headphones which, at times, can be strident and fatiguing. The Nighthawk Carbon can be impactful (albeit with a less than accurate portrayal) if the music demands it, all while allowing layers of detail to seep through. Try Limit To Your Love by James Blake.

In closing, I should mention, all of my criticisms of this comfortable winter sweater like headphone must be tempered by the fact that we are discussing a headphone that can be had for the heavily discounted price of $299. Given that context, the overall performance of the Nighthawk Carbon is very high indeed, or to put it another way; it would be hard to find a two-channel speaker for under $3000 that comes close to the resolving power of the AudioQuest Nighthawk Carbon.


Equipment
Windows 10 PC (Tidal/FLAC) --> iFi micro iDSD DAC (in Nornal mode) --> AudioQuest NightHawk Carbon

Music
Demo music playlist on Tidal (Subscription required)

Caveat emptor: Not all FLAC files on Tidal are perfect. For example, distortion can be heard around 3:03 on Shelby Lynne 's Just A Little Lovin'.