Audioquest Nighthawk Headphones
I must begin this review with an admission – I’ve always been a speaker man at heart. It’s the way I grew up. I’ve always most enjoyed listening to my stereo via my speakers more so than via headphone. Not that I don’t like headphones because I do, and have a nice collection of both over ear and in ear headphones that I’ve use regularly. But given my druthers I’ll usually choose to listen to my system via loudspeakers most days. Well, at least that was the case until the new Audioquest Nighthawks arrived for an audition. It’s the story of that audition and what it did to my listening habits that makes this review something special, at least to me (and hopefully to you too).
For a far more comprehensive listing of the Nighthawk’s build quality and measurements than I can list here easily, click the link to Audioquest’s web page devoted to the Nighthawks and you can wallow in all the technical detail about these most interesting headphones that your heart desires.
http://personal.audioquest.com/nighthawk#nighthawk-page
Suffice to say, these are the most unusual headphones I’ve ever listened to. Each aspect of the headphones has been thought out and designed from the ground up to be both acoustically enjoyable and long-term sustainable. I will say that the Audioquest Nighthawks are both the best looking headphones I’ve ever seen (I absolutely love that liquid wood look) and far and away the most comfortable. And believe me, the comfort factor is nothing to be sneezed at. I’ve heard some excellent sounding headphones that were so heavy, so uncomfortable to wear, that despite their wonderful sound they simply weren’t conducive for long listening sessions, so the fact that the Nighthawks are easy on the head means that should they turn out to be as good sounding as they are good looking, you may find that the time you spend with them on is far longer than you’d ever anticipated.
One thing to note, DO NOT listen critically to these headphones until they have at least 150 to 200 hours on them. And you need this time on both the included cables – the one they call their mini Castlerock, which is the one I’m betting that most will use the majority of the time, and the smaller cable designed to work well with portable devices. Both come standard with a 1/8’ plug that will fit any portable device (like an iPod, iPhone or other cell phone) and a clip on 1/4’ adaptor for use with any full sized headphone amp.
I began this review by reaching for discs I know well, having used them often for reviewing purposes. But I also love the music on these discs, so I’m listening not only for how they sound, but how the music moves me. I used mostly my Original Electronics Master Headphone amp for the bulk of this review, but the Nighthawks also saw time with the headphone amp in my Parasound Zdac V.2, my Audioquest Dragonfly, and my Headroom Micro Amp w/DAC (playing my iPod music library). But since, as I say, the Original Electronics Master was the main amp used, let me state up front that this headphone amp does tilt a bit towards accentuating the lower frequencies, and I could clearly hear this through the Nighthawks. Not that this was a bad thing to me, as most of the music I listen to both for review purposes and for pleasure (jazz, classical and rock) can use a slight boost in the bass to make it more a part of the music.
However, I began by grabbing the Opus 3 SACD Tiny Island (Opus 3 CD 19824) due to its abundance of acoustic instruments along with its pleasurable musicality that tells me all I need to know about any products midrange capabilities. The Nighthawks passed this test with flying colors. I heard each instrument as a separate entity with a unique tonal sound all their own. I heard plenty of both micro and macro detail. But what really captured my attention was how the Nighthawks keep all of those aspects within the confines of the music. The Nighthawks presented the music as of a piece. Nothing sounded forced or highlighted. Instead, it was as if I were listening to them play live.
One of my favorite discs is the DVD-A of Michael Oldfield’s remake of his classic Tubular Bells 2004 (Warner Music R9 60204.) If I hadn’t known better I would never have been aware that there wasn’t multiple musicians playing, the music was presented as a whole piece of cloth. All of the different instruments Oldfield uses, from acoustic to electric sounded as close to real as I’ve heard. Percussion and bass was deep and powerful, guitars were easily identifiable as acoustic (with their softer, slightly woody sound) or electric (with that sharp, crunchy sound), and oh my lord, when those tubular bells rang I heard both the size of the bells as well as the initial transient strike and how those strikes created sound of varying frequencies that had just the right amount of decay. All of the audio spectrum was presented equally, with none giving the impression of being boosted or sucked out. Another aspect this disc taught me about the Nighthawks was how they created a realistic sense of soundstage. Most headphones keep the sound locked between your ears, but the Nighthawks gave me a sense of instruments coming from all directions and spots in space – exactly as my loudspeakers do – and this was a welcome and wonderful surprise and kept me listening far longer than I’d originally intended.
I’ve read many people who feel the Nighthawks veer more toward the dark side of neutral, placing a bit too much emphasis on the lower frequencies over that of the balance of the audio spectrum. I couldn’t disagree more. To my ears, the Nighthawks were far more neutral. What they did was offer a better look at the amp they are connected to than being themselves dark. As I’ve noted, my Original Electronics Master Headphone amp leans slightly toward the lower end of the frequency spectrum, and that’s what the Nighthawks reveled. But when I used the Dragonfly, the Parasound, or my Headroom Micro, that emphasis was nowhere near as pronounced. I found that the Nighthawks are so free of coloration that they will easily reveal aspects of the headphone amp you partner them with. So if you’re not sold on what you hear when you first listen, ask to try a different headphone amp and see if things change for the better for your ears as they did for mine when I switched amps.
The Nighthawks showed me they were up to any type of music I threw at them. Steve Davis SACD Quality Of Silence (DMP SACD-04) is based on the silence between notes and how much can be said by both those silences as well as the notes played. Davis is the drummer, and I thoroughly enjoyed how well the Nighthawks reproduced his drum kit. I heard excellent snap to snare drum, good wallop to the kick drum, and oh my goodness, the cymbal work was heavenly. I could not only hear the drumstick striking the brass cymbal, but I could almost see where on the cymbal Davis’ stick struck. Plus the Nighthawks showed how Davis use of space enhanced the music he played. On the other side of the musical speed spectrum was the Doobie Brothers song “Listen To The Music” from the SACD Crank It Up (Audio Fidelity AFZ 178). This song wants, nay demands, to get up and boogie. The Nighthawks placed no barriers in front of the sound. The song rocked right along just as I’ve heard it do a thousand times before.
Classical piano is a very demanding test of any piece of audio gear, and maybe more so with headphones as there is nowhere for mistakes to hide. Pulling out the Esoteric SACD of Clifford Curzon playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto’s #’s 20 & 27 (Esoteric ESSD 90014) backed by Benjamin Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra, Curzon’s piano was a full sized instrument placed just left of center. I could get a real sense of what the Nighthawks did well. What did they do well: They offered the full power and sound of the piano and orchestra, even when at full throttle. They offer great dynamics. But they didn’t skimp on detail in order to produce that powerful sound. I could hear musicians shuffling papers and moving their chairs as well as Curzon’s fingers on the keys if I wanted to listen for them. But to me, the cool point was that this detail was never thrust at me, just a part of the overall sound. It was there if I wanted to hear it, and not if I didn’t. And there was a solid foundation set to these concertos as both the bass and cello were given their proper place in the mix. Now, based on what I’ve heard, what didn’t the Nighthawks do well? Truthfully, to my ears, almost nothing. About the only nit I can pick with these headphones is how revealing they are of both source and headphone amp. If either are off center – that is, if they are adding or subtracting from the sound – you’ll hear it, whether you want to or not. So keep in mind that while the Nighthawks will play fine straight out of the headphone jack of an iPhone (and yes, I tried this too), the better the amp, the better the sound. And the Nighthawks deserve the very best you can give them, as they’ll reward you with better and better sound.
Besides piano, vocals can tell you a lot about how good a set of headphones are. Again, via my Original Electronics Master (with its slight boost to the bass) male voices were very, very realistic. The combo gave them enough chestiness to give a realistic impression of a man singing. But while male voices seemed to benefit, female vocals also got a dollop of that added chestiness which took a bit away from the ethereal quality of, let’s say, Alison Krauss’s angelic voice. Not that she didn’t sound like herself – for she did – but there was an element of sparkle that I’ve heard to her voice that was MIA. Still, I think that how you react to the Nighthawks vocal presentation will be more of a personal choice rather than an indictment of the Nighthawks. For me, it was mostly a non-issue.
I’ve listened to top end headphones from Audeze, HiFIMan, and Oppo as part of my job as a reviewer for The Audio Beat. And I also own a pair of AKG K701’s that have always been my go-to phones for what headphone listening I did up until the Nighthawks showed up on my doorstep. While I loved the sound of the planar headphones, but then, I’m a planar man at heart, I was never given the feeling that any of these were THE headphones I could live with long term. And lord, all of those headphones were on the heavy, bulky side when I put them on (the Audeze most of all, with the Oppo’s being the lightest), so despite the wonderful sound, I usually found I couldn’t listen for long periods before I just needed to take them off. The Audioquest Nighthawks on the other hand offer sonic goods equally as good and a comfort level that had me listening to entire discs when I’d put them on for one, maybe two songs. I would get so wrapped up in the sound that I just didn’t find myself even contemplating stopping my musical enjoyment at what the Nighthawks were giving me until the disc was over. In comparison to my K701’s, the Nighthawks had a more even frequency presentation from top to bottom with real weight on the bottom end. The AKG’s lacked the fullness in the bass that the Nighthawks reproduced so easily, even with a headphone amp that adds a slight boost to the bottom frequencies. And the Nighthawks offered all the top end sparkle that is the hallmark of the AKG’s as well. When I look back in both my memory and my notes, I find that the Nighthawks had a more even presentation than any of the planar models I’d heard. Those headphones seemed, from what I remember and wrote down, to lack the overall evenness that is a trademark of the Nighthawks. Detail, both macro and micro, were less a part of the music and a tad more emphasized via the planar models than what the Nighthawks offered.
To wrap up, for the $600 asking price of these groundbreaking headphones that Audioquest has created, the Nighthawks should be considered right at the top of the headphone pack, and a definite bargain. Sure, personal choice (and budget) will go a long way in deciding what pair of headphones become your long term companions, but most of the Nighthawks competition will come with a significantly higher cost and comfort level. DO NOT let their modest (by high end headphone standards) cause you to dismiss them as not being among the best available. Not only do the Audioquest Nighthawks offer sound that I found to be among the very best I’ve ever heard, but their comfort level as I wore them made me listen to entire albums when that wasn’t my initial plan – I just couldn’t stop myself. The music reproduced was simply too enjoyable to make me want to stop until the disc ended. And finding a top of the line headphone for the asking price of the Nighthawks, to me anyway, makes them a huge bargain and a must-audition before making any sort of final decision. Skylar Gray (the man behind the design of the Nighthawks) and Audioquest have created, with their first entry into this market, a unique pair of headphones that can compete with any on the market, and have done so in a way that is both totally different and yet eco-friendly. I think my search for my new reference headphones has ended. Suddenly, I’m grabbing my Nighthawks fully as often as I switch to my speakers when it comes to listening to music, so enjoyable are these new headphones from Audioquest. And that, my friends, was something totally unexpected, but a happily welcome outcome of this review. Kudos.
I must begin this review with an admission – I’ve always been a speaker man at heart. It’s the way I grew up. I’ve always most enjoyed listening to my stereo via my speakers more so than via headphone. Not that I don’t like headphones because I do, and have a nice collection of both over ear and in ear headphones that I’ve use regularly. But given my druthers I’ll usually choose to listen to my system via loudspeakers most days. Well, at least that was the case until the new Audioquest Nighthawks arrived for an audition. It’s the story of that audition and what it did to my listening habits that makes this review something special, at least to me (and hopefully to you too).
For a far more comprehensive listing of the Nighthawk’s build quality and measurements than I can list here easily, click the link to Audioquest’s web page devoted to the Nighthawks and you can wallow in all the technical detail about these most interesting headphones that your heart desires.
http://personal.audioquest.com/nighthawk#nighthawk-page
Suffice to say, these are the most unusual headphones I’ve ever listened to. Each aspect of the headphones has been thought out and designed from the ground up to be both acoustically enjoyable and long-term sustainable. I will say that the Audioquest Nighthawks are both the best looking headphones I’ve ever seen (I absolutely love that liquid wood look) and far and away the most comfortable. And believe me, the comfort factor is nothing to be sneezed at. I’ve heard some excellent sounding headphones that were so heavy, so uncomfortable to wear, that despite their wonderful sound they simply weren’t conducive for long listening sessions, so the fact that the Nighthawks are easy on the head means that should they turn out to be as good sounding as they are good looking, you may find that the time you spend with them on is far longer than you’d ever anticipated.
One thing to note, DO NOT listen critically to these headphones until they have at least 150 to 200 hours on them. And you need this time on both the included cables – the one they call their mini Castlerock, which is the one I’m betting that most will use the majority of the time, and the smaller cable designed to work well with portable devices. Both come standard with a 1/8’ plug that will fit any portable device (like an iPod, iPhone or other cell phone) and a clip on 1/4’ adaptor for use with any full sized headphone amp.
I began this review by reaching for discs I know well, having used them often for reviewing purposes. But I also love the music on these discs, so I’m listening not only for how they sound, but how the music moves me. I used mostly my Original Electronics Master Headphone amp for the bulk of this review, but the Nighthawks also saw time with the headphone amp in my Parasound Zdac V.2, my Audioquest Dragonfly, and my Headroom Micro Amp w/DAC (playing my iPod music library). But since, as I say, the Original Electronics Master was the main amp used, let me state up front that this headphone amp does tilt a bit towards accentuating the lower frequencies, and I could clearly hear this through the Nighthawks. Not that this was a bad thing to me, as most of the music I listen to both for review purposes and for pleasure (jazz, classical and rock) can use a slight boost in the bass to make it more a part of the music.
However, I began by grabbing the Opus 3 SACD Tiny Island (Opus 3 CD 19824) due to its abundance of acoustic instruments along with its pleasurable musicality that tells me all I need to know about any products midrange capabilities. The Nighthawks passed this test with flying colors. I heard each instrument as a separate entity with a unique tonal sound all their own. I heard plenty of both micro and macro detail. But what really captured my attention was how the Nighthawks keep all of those aspects within the confines of the music. The Nighthawks presented the music as of a piece. Nothing sounded forced or highlighted. Instead, it was as if I were listening to them play live.
One of my favorite discs is the DVD-A of Michael Oldfield’s remake of his classic Tubular Bells 2004 (Warner Music R9 60204.) If I hadn’t known better I would never have been aware that there wasn’t multiple musicians playing, the music was presented as a whole piece of cloth. All of the different instruments Oldfield uses, from acoustic to electric sounded as close to real as I’ve heard. Percussion and bass was deep and powerful, guitars were easily identifiable as acoustic (with their softer, slightly woody sound) or electric (with that sharp, crunchy sound), and oh my lord, when those tubular bells rang I heard both the size of the bells as well as the initial transient strike and how those strikes created sound of varying frequencies that had just the right amount of decay. All of the audio spectrum was presented equally, with none giving the impression of being boosted or sucked out. Another aspect this disc taught me about the Nighthawks was how they created a realistic sense of soundstage. Most headphones keep the sound locked between your ears, but the Nighthawks gave me a sense of instruments coming from all directions and spots in space – exactly as my loudspeakers do – and this was a welcome and wonderful surprise and kept me listening far longer than I’d originally intended.
I’ve read many people who feel the Nighthawks veer more toward the dark side of neutral, placing a bit too much emphasis on the lower frequencies over that of the balance of the audio spectrum. I couldn’t disagree more. To my ears, the Nighthawks were far more neutral. What they did was offer a better look at the amp they are connected to than being themselves dark. As I’ve noted, my Original Electronics Master Headphone amp leans slightly toward the lower end of the frequency spectrum, and that’s what the Nighthawks reveled. But when I used the Dragonfly, the Parasound, or my Headroom Micro, that emphasis was nowhere near as pronounced. I found that the Nighthawks are so free of coloration that they will easily reveal aspects of the headphone amp you partner them with. So if you’re not sold on what you hear when you first listen, ask to try a different headphone amp and see if things change for the better for your ears as they did for mine when I switched amps.
The Nighthawks showed me they were up to any type of music I threw at them. Steve Davis SACD Quality Of Silence (DMP SACD-04) is based on the silence between notes and how much can be said by both those silences as well as the notes played. Davis is the drummer, and I thoroughly enjoyed how well the Nighthawks reproduced his drum kit. I heard excellent snap to snare drum, good wallop to the kick drum, and oh my goodness, the cymbal work was heavenly. I could not only hear the drumstick striking the brass cymbal, but I could almost see where on the cymbal Davis’ stick struck. Plus the Nighthawks showed how Davis use of space enhanced the music he played. On the other side of the musical speed spectrum was the Doobie Brothers song “Listen To The Music” from the SACD Crank It Up (Audio Fidelity AFZ 178). This song wants, nay demands, to get up and boogie. The Nighthawks placed no barriers in front of the sound. The song rocked right along just as I’ve heard it do a thousand times before.
Classical piano is a very demanding test of any piece of audio gear, and maybe more so with headphones as there is nowhere for mistakes to hide. Pulling out the Esoteric SACD of Clifford Curzon playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto’s #’s 20 & 27 (Esoteric ESSD 90014) backed by Benjamin Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra, Curzon’s piano was a full sized instrument placed just left of center. I could get a real sense of what the Nighthawks did well. What did they do well: They offered the full power and sound of the piano and orchestra, even when at full throttle. They offer great dynamics. But they didn’t skimp on detail in order to produce that powerful sound. I could hear musicians shuffling papers and moving their chairs as well as Curzon’s fingers on the keys if I wanted to listen for them. But to me, the cool point was that this detail was never thrust at me, just a part of the overall sound. It was there if I wanted to hear it, and not if I didn’t. And there was a solid foundation set to these concertos as both the bass and cello were given their proper place in the mix. Now, based on what I’ve heard, what didn’t the Nighthawks do well? Truthfully, to my ears, almost nothing. About the only nit I can pick with these headphones is how revealing they are of both source and headphone amp. If either are off center – that is, if they are adding or subtracting from the sound – you’ll hear it, whether you want to or not. So keep in mind that while the Nighthawks will play fine straight out of the headphone jack of an iPhone (and yes, I tried this too), the better the amp, the better the sound. And the Nighthawks deserve the very best you can give them, as they’ll reward you with better and better sound.
Besides piano, vocals can tell you a lot about how good a set of headphones are. Again, via my Original Electronics Master (with its slight boost to the bass) male voices were very, very realistic. The combo gave them enough chestiness to give a realistic impression of a man singing. But while male voices seemed to benefit, female vocals also got a dollop of that added chestiness which took a bit away from the ethereal quality of, let’s say, Alison Krauss’s angelic voice. Not that she didn’t sound like herself – for she did – but there was an element of sparkle that I’ve heard to her voice that was MIA. Still, I think that how you react to the Nighthawks vocal presentation will be more of a personal choice rather than an indictment of the Nighthawks. For me, it was mostly a non-issue.
I’ve listened to top end headphones from Audeze, HiFIMan, and Oppo as part of my job as a reviewer for The Audio Beat. And I also own a pair of AKG K701’s that have always been my go-to phones for what headphone listening I did up until the Nighthawks showed up on my doorstep. While I loved the sound of the planar headphones, but then, I’m a planar man at heart, I was never given the feeling that any of these were THE headphones I could live with long term. And lord, all of those headphones were on the heavy, bulky side when I put them on (the Audeze most of all, with the Oppo’s being the lightest), so despite the wonderful sound, I usually found I couldn’t listen for long periods before I just needed to take them off. The Audioquest Nighthawks on the other hand offer sonic goods equally as good and a comfort level that had me listening to entire discs when I’d put them on for one, maybe two songs. I would get so wrapped up in the sound that I just didn’t find myself even contemplating stopping my musical enjoyment at what the Nighthawks were giving me until the disc was over. In comparison to my K701’s, the Nighthawks had a more even frequency presentation from top to bottom with real weight on the bottom end. The AKG’s lacked the fullness in the bass that the Nighthawks reproduced so easily, even with a headphone amp that adds a slight boost to the bottom frequencies. And the Nighthawks offered all the top end sparkle that is the hallmark of the AKG’s as well. When I look back in both my memory and my notes, I find that the Nighthawks had a more even presentation than any of the planar models I’d heard. Those headphones seemed, from what I remember and wrote down, to lack the overall evenness that is a trademark of the Nighthawks. Detail, both macro and micro, were less a part of the music and a tad more emphasized via the planar models than what the Nighthawks offered.
To wrap up, for the $600 asking price of these groundbreaking headphones that Audioquest has created, the Nighthawks should be considered right at the top of the headphone pack, and a definite bargain. Sure, personal choice (and budget) will go a long way in deciding what pair of headphones become your long term companions, but most of the Nighthawks competition will come with a significantly higher cost and comfort level. DO NOT let their modest (by high end headphone standards) cause you to dismiss them as not being among the best available. Not only do the Audioquest Nighthawks offer sound that I found to be among the very best I’ve ever heard, but their comfort level as I wore them made me listen to entire albums when that wasn’t my initial plan – I just couldn’t stop myself. The music reproduced was simply too enjoyable to make me want to stop until the disc ended. And finding a top of the line headphone for the asking price of the Nighthawks, to me anyway, makes them a huge bargain and a must-audition before making any sort of final decision. Skylar Gray (the man behind the design of the Nighthawks) and Audioquest have created, with their first entry into this market, a unique pair of headphones that can compete with any on the market, and have done so in a way that is both totally different and yet eco-friendly. I think my search for my new reference headphones has ended. Suddenly, I’m grabbing my Nighthawks fully as often as I switch to my speakers when it comes to listening to music, so enjoyable are these new headphones from Audioquest. And that, my friends, was something totally unexpected, but a happily welcome outcome of this review. Kudos.
