Even at low levels, we were able to hear every single detail on a track, and the soundstage took our breath away. On neutral-sounding amps, the NightHawk Carbons have a clear, sharp, detailed quality to them – hardly surprising, given their open-back design, but it’s got a quality to it that we found completely addictive. For whatever reason, the NightHawk Carbons respond particularly well to amplification, more so than other headphones. Plug these into a decent amplifier, and they absolutely sing.
AUDIOQUEST NIGHTOWL SPECS DRIVERS
Then again, these aren’t exactly portable headphones – not unless you enjoy Uber drivers asking you what on earth you’re wearing on your head – and that’s hardly the point anyway. It felt clear, dynamic and natural, with a good range of expression. We spent quite a bit of time listening to them on our smartphone, and the sound was…good. With an impedance of 25 ohms and a sensitivity of 99dB, these can quite comfortably be driven by a smartphone. The Carbons are surprisingly easy to drive. The branding across the board is pretty subtle | The Master Switch Using The Headphones With An Amp It had almost zero distortion from the get-go. We listened to them for around this length of time, and didn’t detect a huge change in sound quality, but it’s not as if listening to them was a hardship, and it’s not as if the sound wasn’t spectacular to begin with.
AUDIOQUEST NIGHTOWL SPECS FULL
In the instruction leaflet, AudioQuest advise a burn-in time of 150 hours for the headphones to reach their full potential. However, like the Grados, there were a couple of issues with bleed, the sound leaking out of the grille while we were listening to music, but it was a minor problem – something you have to be in relatively close proximity to the headphones to notice. If you were to match this up with, for example, a pair of Grado SR325es ( full review here), you would have a vastly different experience. It’s not that it lacks detail: it’s just nowhere near as forward as the bass, meaning that it can often be a little tricky to discern the upper ranges of any particular track. And the diminished high-end definitely feels like a deliberate choice, more than an oversight. Not to the extent of being a poor product - they are anything but.
If there’s one area the headphones really suffer in, it’s here. Audioquest NightHawk Carbon with Perch Stand | The Master Switch High-End (Treble) If you don’t enjoy dark, bassy headphones, then you may want to steer clear of these. It definitely suits genres like hip-hop and dubstep more than it does, say, classical. Bass notes and kick drums are huge and powerful, even overbearing at times, but we found that the sound signature was one we mostly enjoyed. The bass of the Carbons is their real draw - while they’re definitely an acquired taste, they do have plenty to offer. You can hear this particularly in the low-end. For a pair of headphones that costs around $700, the NightHawk Carbons are very good indeed. To see how it stacks up, see our list of the best high-end headphones.ĪudioQuest, unsurprisingly, know their audio. In this review, we break down the sound, design, comfort and fit, packaging and accessories, and specs of the NightHawk Carbon. These cans are still very much available, and we think it’s worth going into why they’re so damn good. For our money, they produced several of the coolest headphones ever made, including the subject of this review: the NightHawk Carbons.
AudioQuest recently announced they’re getting out of the headphones game, which is a real shame.
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