Dan Clark Audio Stealth

Testing was done with V222 and V850.

Comfort:
Comfort is pretty spot on, and I'm being picky here. Clamping force is a bit too much for my taste, headphones apply some unnecessary pressure to my jawbone. Headphones can slide down on your head after a while, and you might have to lift them up from time to time. Despite these you can easily wear these for a longer gaming or listening sessions.
Highs:
Highs are the least attractive point in these headphones to me. The good thing is that highs are far from being sibilant, and one can listen these without fear of violins causing teeth grinding. But this safe tuning also makes string instruments and female vocals sound a bit too laid back for those who want excitement.
Mids:
I tend to think mids as part of the sound spectrum where the vocals are. So male vocals sound as they should, lifelike and detailed. Female vocals on the other hand can lack some soul, maybe because of the laid back high end. Some headphones have forward mids, some recessed, these in my opinion are dead center in that spectrum.
Lows:
Sub bass is the best I have heard so far, bass extension goes deep. Mid bass could use some snap in it, it feels slightly blunted in the impact part. Bass detail is excellent, no distortion or bleeding in the mids.
Detail:
I dont hear anything that I can't hear with other headphones, but then again I dont think I'm missing anything. Electric guitars could use some detail tough. So okay I guess, these don't strike me as a detail monsters.
Imaging/Soundstage:
Soundstage is wide for a closed back, I could not tell these are closed based on the size of the stage. To me the stage is natural, and excellent. Now imaging is something that these excell: With songs instrument separation is easy, even tough there is not much air between instruments. The imaging also can be seen in gaming, in COD I can easily hear enemy directions,Much better than Elites, slightly better than ADX5k, and the same as with CA-1a.

In the end:
Great headphones,excellent build and isolation. You probably need a powerful amp to get these going.
Also I swapped pads, not as easy as in the DCA video, glue is much harder to pull off. If you have compressed pads, I do recommend changing those to a new, it will reduce the darkness of the headphones and add a bit of clarity to high end.
I like to do a price to preformance, so here it is: sub 2800e 5/5, 2800-3200e 4.5/5 , 3200-4000 4/5, 4000-5000 3.5/5

EDIT: Pad swap cleared the mids some, still the sparkle is missing, but the quality imporved enough for me to give these 4.5 stars from the original 4/5 rating.

Opening​

When Stealth was first announced and released last year, frankly speaking, I was not very interested not only because I was rather underwhelmed by the previous MrSpeakers/DCA products (Ethers/Aeons) I owned, but also because I did not fully understand benefits of Harman target-driven developments. Later I realized I overlooked technological progresses Dan and his team accomplished with the Stealth. Here is my understanding of major points. I also recommend watching this interview video for more details.

First, as per DCA, Stealth employs larger radiating space (1.2x bigger than Ether 2) and stronger magnets (roughly 2x). This is a welcome change to me as I always thought DCA products were dragged by weaker driver controls.

Second, Stealth uses a very unique front damping material -- programmable array of resonators as well as waveguides, which is called Acoustic Metamaterial Tuning System (AMTS). Knowing how powerful the Helmholtz resonator was to the HD800S to tame treble, Dan’s claims that AMTS can do many good things (diffusion control, frequency smoothing, etc) make much sense to me.

Finally, AMTS enables Stealth to conform to the Harman AE target very closely, which was verified by early analyses. I was simply curious what Harman-compliant products would sound like. I was once a hater because none of the popular “Harmanzing” equalization filter presets worked for me. But given that parametric equalization filters might be more subject to personal variance in highs (largely due to exogenous filtering frequency), I wanted to give a shot to inherently Harmanized product.

All the points above seemed to cohesively linked and piqued my interest strongly. Plus, my recent listening often got interrupted by noisy parties held in neighborhoods. I ended up snagging a well-used pair for myself nearly half a month ago. I have thoroughly used Stealth as a main reference/monitor for critical music listening since then.

So, you may wonder. Does its advanced technology result in sonic excellence? Is it worth 4k usd in msrp? Well, let’s find out.

Listening​

My listening was primarily done with SMSL M500 Mk3 as a dac and SMSL HO200 as a headamp. I also tried out the combo of Gustard X18 dac and Topping LA90 2ch integrated amp. I found the former combo was slightly more synergistic with Stealth, which was interesting to me because I preferred the latter with Susvara by a healthy margin.

Having been enjoying my Stealth pair so far, it was immediately apparent that Stealth was different from any other planar magnetic headphones I’ve heard, including Susvara. I was easily convinced by the name “Stealth” as its sound seemed to appear from nowhere, fully untethered to the two drivers around my ears. I’ve witnessed this disappearing act several times among 2-channel loudspeakers such as Spatial Audio’s open baffle speakers in my house. But probably the first time in headphones. After more listening, I realized it might be attributable to multiple reasons I’d describe below.

The Stealth is utterly colorless in a couple of ways I hear. Its tonality is highly neutrally balanced in perception. Very low, almost zero, audible harmonics or resonances were induced by the headphones, too. I am inspired to say it has virtually no sound of its own.

Bass extension, heft, and texture are exemplary. The bottom end has clarity, definition, and articulation. Slightly shelved lower bass nicely compensate for loss of low-end physicality in the headphones listening (as opposed to loudspeakers/subwoofers). Moreover, Stealth resolves and reveals fine details of timbre, dynamics, and pitch in bass instruments, which is unexpected from my prior experience with Ethers or Aeons. I somehow feel like Stealth’s bass technicality benefits from its accurate tonality balance rather than drivers potential though. Moreover, this trait is cohesive and continuous over the entire bass region, even extends to mids without bass per se bleeding into midrange.

The Stealth sounds clean and pure. Maybe subtly clinical or analytical (which is indeed spot on to my liking). There is a good amount of liquidity. The Stealth’s freedom from coloration and grain, coupled with its clarity, allows natural tone colors and textures to be rendered with convincing realism. I enjoyed lots of piano music through the Stealth, from recitals, to jazz trios, to the instrument within larger orchestral contexts, and heard some consistent and unmistakable qualities that even summit-fi headphones don’t necessarily get right, and when they do, not to this degree.

The treble is the show’s highlight. With the aid of AMTS, it has taken another step forward in smoothness and absence of hardness, except I occasionally hear upper mids are tad shouty (not overly by any means). Even when a large wind band plays at full tilt, the Stealth’s top end does not exhibit glareness. Almost always I could hear a sense of ease, clarity, and lack of confusion. On small jazz groups, cymbals were reproduced with a delicacy and resolution in terms of fine inner details. Easily one of the best cymbal sounds I heard from headphones.

Soundstage is very open and accurate. Unbelievably so for closed-back headphones. The Stealth's headstage is not the widest or deepest I've experienced. But not wrap-around enveloping, either. Producing a fine spread, the soundstage is very stable and the images presented on it are precise, holographic, and solid all the time. Zero distracting diffusion, too.

There’s one more aspect of the Stealth to report in this review. The Stealth’s transient in attacks lean more towards rounder and softer sounding. While its total macrodynamics per se -- the difference between the quietest and loudest parts -- is much better to my ears than any DCA/MrSpeakers prior offerings (particularly with its high isolation capability/low noise floor), this transient character in leading edges, combined with a little subdued upper bass, could be associated to perceived notions of less slamming or more boring sound for some. Personally it was not a show stopper for my taste. But please be careful if you look after slamming sound over others.

Comparisons​

Compared to my HD650, Stealth is better in every possible way. This might not be surprising for the price difference. But I’d like to make clear that even summit-fi headphones have a hard time justifying themselves against HD650 in terms of midrange purity and timbral accuracy, which is one reason why I kept revisiting HD650 whenever I wanted to check with normal and standard sounding. Stealth outperforms HD650 in those areas, too. ABing both side by side, I found both 650 and Stealth were surprisingly similar in tonal balance for the whole midrange. However, HD650 is hindered by its excessive upper bass energy slightly bleeding into mids as well as veiled highs making sound timbre inaccurate by comparison. Please note that I didn’t realize these until I heard Stealth. Raw midrange resolution is far better with Stealth, too.

Susvara draws more meaningful comparisons regarding price and performance matches. After many back and forths, I still maintain that Susvara is more capable of various technicalities. But Stealth definitely holds its own well. To be specific, Susvara has a more slam coming from edgier transients. Bass is better textured. Soundstage is wider and more open with Susvara. Susvara also feels livelier and airier by comparison. On the other hand, Stealth is more neutral in tonal balance over the entire spectrum. This also forgives some patterns of excessive energines in certain frequencies (usually between upper midrange and presence regions) found in harsh recordings. Vocals are generally more articulate and less laid back with Stealth. Front to back imaging/staging localization is more accurate and convincing with Stealth.

Measurements​

My measurements were taken with the MiniDSP EARS at 95db SPL@300hz with the homebrew hybrid compensation target curve that mixed HPN, HEQ, and additional adjustments based on B&K Room Curve. I also attached B&K 5128 measurements taken by Jude for further references (particularly useful for distortion measurements due to the high quality isolation chamber where his measurements were taken).

In addition, I reported Stealth’s noise reduction strength and comparison to Sennheiser HD650 and Ollo S4R (v1.1). S4R is included to demonstrate the passive noise reduction level of studio mixing/recording headphones. Higher values mean stronger reductions/isolations.

Highlights below.

• It turns out my own target curve with MiniDSP EARS (note: target curve is only meaningful where it is derived) is not much different from Harman AE target with IEC911 couplers. Deviation from my target on EARS was surprisingly similar to the deviation from the Harman's one on Gras 43AG. Overall, frequency response conformed highly well to my target as well.
• Low bass shelf (+5db@20hz) was neither excessive nor as evident in my perception as the graph suggested. I confirmed this by canceling it with a de-shelving filter.
• Slight recession between 200 and 300 hz did wonders to soundstage and image. This greatly improved clarity at the cost of small loss in perceived notion of bass slam.
• Slightly nuanced upper mids around 3 khz was associated with improved presence and attacks of piano, vocal, and other major instruments.
• Neither sibilance nor over-brightness in the brillance zone (6khz~) was heard/measured.
• 5128 measurements revealed Stealth’s harmonic distortions were extremely low for non-electrostatic headphones.
• Spectrogram was very clean and did not suggest any hint of undesirable resonance or weird quirk.
• For audiophile headphones, Stealth exhibits good noise reduction ability contestable to studio mixing headphones. As per my results, Stealth is even better than Ollo S4R by 3-5 db over the entire spectrum except for upper mids.

Conclusions​

I may be a touch jaded after experiencing various disappointments in high-end audio. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been disappointed in super expensive audio products, for one thing or another. But there are still moments to discover gems, which let me not quit this hobby. I’m glad that Stealth joins such an exclusive club of products.

Overall, I have to say that the Stealth is the most impressive pair of headphones I’ve heard, needless to say it’s also the best closed-back headphones Money can buy today. Dan’s new direction (over Ether 2/Voce) and all his endeavors in research and engineering have finally paid off. By demonstrating colorless/neutral sounding, open/accurate soundstages, and summit-fi level technicalities, Stealth really redefines to me what a normal and standard sound in reproduction should be.


PS. I did not include comparison to Expanse in this review because I only briefly auditioned once. I will follow up with more in-depth comparison if I can borrow Expanse for meaningful period of time.

*redacted*