They’re definitely an interesting sounding headphone. Yeah a lot of headphones do boost upper mids and treble for more detail but once you spend enough time analyzing the drivers sound you start noticing the difference between actual detail and faux detail.
They do and I would say the HD 660 S does to a degree, but that headphone literally made me dizzy listening to it hasn’t happened on another headphone. Interestingly I actually rate the HD 560 S above the HD 6xx series as I find it has notably less grain to its sound and it scales about as nicely in my experience.
I do still keep the Nighthawk around but I learned not to modify or EQ them and to just leave it as is as I get the most enjoyment out of them that way. Yeah the peaks on the Nighthawk driver is what holds the driver back some, if Skylar had more chance maybe on a future headphone he would address some of the drivers issues such as a differently composed bio-cellulose driver, etc. It is sad these headphones don’t have any future versions coming out. Bio-cellulose especially Sony’s is one of my favorite driver materials I’ve heard. The pure aluminum reverse dome with the silk paper(?) surround driver of the DT 48/480 is probably my favorite driver which doesn’t have the issues many other metal drivers often have in terms of timbre and treble, in fact they are one of the tonally best drivers I’ve heard. I haven’t heard the Utopia’s beryllium long enough to make any decisions on those drivers, don’t recall any fatigue or issues though. I wasn’t a big fan of the Elear’s driver didn’t handle treble right at all and felt like I had an odd pressure on my ears. Haven’t heard the Clear’s with the copper voice coil so no idea on them. The Z1R’s driver was really nice and didn’t have any issues with it.
I sadly haven’t heard a planar I’ve liked with extended listening and Hifimans tend to sound prickley and bright to me but don’t recall them sounding gritty like Audeze’s and I also haven’t heard most newer planars. The audeze’s I’ve heard sounded rough and gritty reminding me of the HD 6 series grit but worse. Beyers and older AKG’s just sit right with me, it’s hard to explain exactly why honestly as it’s something subtle. New AKG’s aren’t AKG’s in my book and lost what they had.
There's def a sense of an inherent, smoothness to the timbre of the HD560S compared to the HD600 series and the 800 series, it isn't the smoothest I've heard but then again this is a fairly cheap headphone and the examples I have cost multiple hundreds, thousand more so can kinder forgive it, overall is say it's a fairly smooth sounding headphone with a touch of upper mid forwardness. I am one that doesn't believe price = performance I just believe in good headphones. I'm with you on the Elear, metallic mess with no mids
The way you listen to headphones reminds me of myself, sensitive to dramatic shifts in frequency response and odd timbre jumps out at you, I get that a lot with about 95% of headphones. I think most headphones are just plain awful. The bryll drivers in the Utopia are interesting but I can't get over the odd sound those types of drivers produce, like it's lacking in organic smoothness, there's a rough texture, it doesn't flow but it's very resolving and revealing of small details but then that's not really something I always look for in a headphone. An example is something like the HD650, HE-500 is resolving enough, I want timbre and bass pitch gradients, mid level, vocal detail, a connection to the music that grabs me to me the most important factor then worry about driver plankton extraction which a good tuning will do anyway.
I tend to hear Hifimans are plasticky, they're very open, quick to decay. The Nighthawk for example with their massive hump you can a lingering decay that adds to the stuffiness but you do get natural decay found in the recording; on something like the Arya, the decay disappears almost instantly, it's more unnatural in a sense but planars tend to be known for that with their linear sub bas and instant stop aspect to the driver. I'm a fan of old AKG's, used to own the K400, K500,K501, 601 before all the crazy 701 variants and whatever tosh they make now. Their Galaxy Buds + sound good though for wireless buds.
To my knowledge and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but the Nighthawk uses the same driver found in the D2000, EMU-TEAK, X00 but with a split gap, tesla and modified driver housing for ventilation to prevent driver noise. It's very intelligently designed in that aspect, prob the most attention to detail I've ever seen.
