ALRIGHTY guys, finally finished writing up my impressions on the Dharma for your reading pleasure...enjoy!
Let me start by saying that this is my first official review of a headphone on Head-Fi and I’d like to thank Todd at TTVJ for the opportunity to review the Dharma! I’m generally considered to be a man a few words, so I apologize in advance if parts of it don’t go into enough detail–if you want me to elaborate on any areas, I’d be happy to do so in subsequent posts. All impressions will be made relative to my current benchmark, the HD600.
I want to say 2 things up front:
- The set I auditioned were fresh from the factory and were not properly burned in and unfortunately I didn’t as much time as I personally would have liked to burn them in before listening.
- I am extremely treble-sensitive, so please keep that fact in mind when reading my impressions.
MUSIC SELECTION FOCUS
Female Vocals (Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Purity Ring)
Progressive Metal (Volumes, Veil of Maya, Tesseract)
Ambient (M-Seven, Aerocity, Owsey)
Alt/Rock (Slaves, Emarosa, Pierce the Veil)
EDM/Dub (Zomboy, Krewella, Skrillex)
SETUP
FLAC/256k+ MP3 via MPD on Ubuntu Server (14.04 low-latency kernel)
Pangea Audio USB Cable
Schiit Wyrd
Stock JDS Labs USB Cable
JDS Labs ODAC RevB
Signal Cable Silver Reference
Mayflower O2 / G1217 Project Polaris / G1217 Project Horizon III
BASS
If I had to pick one area where the Dharma simply walked all over the HD600, this would be it. I personally find the 600’s bass quite satisfying…quick, tight, very well-placed and blended into the music. The Dharma takes that quickness and precision, adds cavernous depth, more punch…and still somehow conveys this in a way that never felt bloated or overstepping frequency bounds. The Dharma’s lows are simply addictive, and will definitely be the aspect I miss the most after I ship them out.
MIDS
When it comes to mids, the HD600 is far from a pushover regardless of a competitor’s price bracket. Switching back and forth between the Dharma and Senn, I often found myself preferring the 600’s slightly more forward presentation. Vocals and guitars seemed to have a bit more bite. To me, it seemed that the mids took a back seat to the highs/lows on the Dharma. This wasn’t always pronounced, but did stick out in a few tracks. Overall, I think I could live with the Dharma’s mids with few regrets…perhaps a bit on the dry side but I’d call this nitpicking.
HIGHS
Given the Dharma’s design, I had fairly high expectations when it came to treble performance. When I first plugged them into my Project Polaris, I was taken aback with how shrill and glassy they sounded. I decided to let them play for a few hours and came back to them. There was definitely an improvement…much better realism, great extention and air but (coming from a long-time HD600 listener) I felt that they were still a bit too forward and somewhat fatiguing after a while. Something I noticed was how much the highs seemed to change jumping between amps. On the Polaris, they seemed to always be the focus of the sound signature and sounded quite aggressive at times. With the Horizon, the aggressiveness was tamed a bit, but the Dharma/Horizon is simply a poor match resulting in quite a bit of background hiss. My preference in listening was actually with the O2 on low gain. I felt that the highs were pulled back just enough to give a good sense of space and air without the aggressiveness displayed with the Polaris. Switching the O2 to high gain brought back just a touch of the shrillness at times, even at similar volume levels. I even purposefully played at slightly higher volume on low gain to see if volume matching was the issue causing high gain to sound more rough around the edges…even at higher volume, I found low gain to be smoother and more lifelike. All that said, I’d have to assume that the pair simply isn’t burned in yet as I have no doubt the Dharma is capable of better treble performance than I experienced.
SOUNDSTAGING/IMAGING
The Dharma is my first experience with angled drivers. I’d have to say that I’m not quite sure what to make of the experience. With the HD600, I feel as though the sound is coming from a fairly coherent arc-shaped stage in front of me. With the Dharma, it was a bit different…it was almost as though there were 3 distinct areas from which sound was emanating: A narrow, flat area out in front and 2 angled areas to each side, each extending behind the front area and coming out to meet my ears on each side. This stage is noticeably deeper than on the 600, and perhaps a touch higher as well. I’m really not sure if this type of soundstage is typical of angled drivers, someone with more experience may be able to elaborate more on that. Imaging with the Dharma was quite good to my ears from a technical perspective, but as I said, everything seemed to be falling on one of those 3 clearly defined soundstage segments. Overall, I always found myself preferring the 600’s staging as I felt it presented the total musical image as a whole very cohesively…everything just seemed to flow naturally and I never found myself
focusing on the staging or imaging. On the Dharma, I always found myself noticing those 3 defined stage areas and in a sense paying more attention to where the music was coming from more than the music itself. The fact that the Dharma was able to so clearly and convincingly convey those 3 sound sources may be a technical achievement on one hand, but a distraction from the music on the other.
OVERALL / TL;DR SUMMARY
Overall, I feel that the Dharma is a well-built headphone that could appeal to many buyers. At first, I was a bit concerned about the weight, but I can’t say that comfort was ever a serious concern for me over 1-2hr listening sessions. While I felt that the treble could be a bit peaky at times and the mids didn’t have
quite as much body as I’d like, the bass was simply phenomenal…cavernous when called for, tight when needed, never overstepping its bounds. Soundstage and imaging were, I believe, technically impressive, just not quite my cup of tea. Overall, I believe I will be sticking with my HD600s, but I could see many people (indeed, possibly most) not sharing that decision.
