AudioQuest Nighthawk

I'm not even joking about this, but go to the makeup aisle with your Nighthawk Carbon and look for the closest matching nail polish. Ask for help as needed. Especially with Halloween coming up, you should be able to find a matching sparkly black.

 

Resonance and reflection control is goal of mod. Two methods is weight and filters. Another strategy is to possibly overdamp the driver to reduce its bass output. Ive attempted some of the above as seen in pics.

So not mold. I wasnt sure but wife inspected and concluded mold. She’s a liar. Smell is something else then. Cleaned with a commerical anti mold solution, vinegar, and borax. Smell I feel has been significantly reduced. That or overpowering chemical fragrance instead.



^ The white film on cups is dried borax.







So how’s the mod with stock hybrid pads? The weight added feels like a thousand bucks. Initial impressions is the sound is without complaint. I call it the placebo mod or PISS mod.

Measurements later. CSDs would be awesome. Ill send @purr1n stock and modded sets.

 

^ mod8 = mods from last post above. Probably very close to what @E_Schaaf had back on page 5.

Going to try damping driver more by sealing the cup vent. Still a little u-shaped, "listenable", fun with unfamiliar music.

 

Damping driver more. Testing from exterior. Next would be sealing up edges of cups where meets front baffle as there are air leaks there. Micropore tape was used.





^ Does it look like an improvement? See attached comparison. Will need to listen for a bit before I comment, not sure.

 

A friendly person on HF reminded me that sealing the Nighthawk would be same as a Nightowl. Micropore tape is not exactly sealing but you get an idea of where its heading.:



I dont know what pads Nightowl uses here.

And my comments about leaky front baffle is wrong. Yes there are major gaps but they are covered by the pads so not sure if there is any leak. I once accidentally didnt install the pads all the way and it made for a big drop in bass. I dont think that the bass drop was because the leaky baffle was now exposed. We saw in @E_Schaaf ’s no cup measurements that bass was hardly effected. So that means the subjectively lost bass was from the leaky pads (they were not coupled to front baffle). Adding an intentional leak there might be worth trying. Like a layer of felt or foam. I guess porous pads might achieve the same thing, but cant be 100% since ETA (and Focal etc) use a gap in between front baffle and pads. ETA did it I assume to control air flow without having to find the perfect pads (an otherwise expensive process). But Focal uses the same technique and they can design their own pads to spec. Maybe the gap technique has other positives like an open baffle speaker effect as mentioned by E_Schaaf. Ive seen @stratocaster use this mod trick long ago with great success but used it in that case to effect treble response with planars (maybe it dropped bass as well to better balance). Nighthawk has rerverberitis and may benefit from such a mod treatment.

I listened to that mod9 and I think it caused fatigue from bass. My ears are ringing this morning and I have a headache. I could feel the pressure vacuum upon placing headphones but wanted to give a chance. After half an hour I removed the micropore tape and was relieved.

 

No me gusta. Bass too rolled off. Prefer stock hybrids.

 

^ mod10 = mod8 and removal of 1 baffle vent filter

My biggest complaint of modded Nighthawk is the closed-in sound. It sounds more closed-in than actual closed headphones that I own! Besides smaller pads, I remember removing the baffle vent filters were best at removing this closed-in soundstage cave feel. So, mod10 is 1baffle vent removed. The measurable differences are very small. And immediate subjective impressions is ... I'm not sure of a difference (my memory sucks). But Ive grown to like these more than my Fostex T30 due to prodigious bass (which I listened to T30 this morning to a variety of genres). mod11 will be 1more baffle vent removed, and so on.

 

Awesome. Subtracting some ruinous enclosure from the equation. Used stand off screws. Bass fatigue and overwhelming bass feel reduced immensely without losing bass volume.







Yeah, mod15... I was doing some other things in between that didn't quite work out. Mod15 has one baffle vent filter removed. I found one and two baffle vents removed were pretty identical (when cups were sealed properly), but 3 was too far and impacted negatively frequency response.

Driver damping will be reduced due to this mod. Damping the driver more I think will give back some more upper mids but as-is its not bad at all - the highs are acceptable but could use improvement. So, will go back and try modding some more. Right now just going to enjoy for a bit.

 

So this is basically mod15 but with all driver baffle vents closed and 1 extra layer of foam inside cup and moar damplifier pro on driver baffle and magnet. Not a big difference but enough to be noticeable. The 8kHz peak is somehow a little less stark / annoying in this configuration. I would say the difference is that the transition from lower to upper treble is smoother so 8kHz peak is less prominent in relation to rest. And the other difference is the driver baffle vents closed maybe masks with warmth or reverb since measured bass is the same but it sounds different (more closed in, warmer). These are totally enjoyable as such and I've been listening for a couple hours this evening and are pretty much fatigue free especially vs stock. Would be happy to have 8kHz reduced a couple decibels but its not painful/piercing, Ill use eq with Lokius later. These still isolate pretty decently, and combine perhaps with sound profile (loudness contour curve) its good for low volumes.

Bored (mod22!) and ready to move onto another headphone mod (NAD RP18) while I enjoy these in background ... Comparative review vs THX00 and ETA Supra later.

 

Just out of curiosity could you share spectrum decay of the latest mod v stock? The changes to FR are meaningful esp with how it un-warmpoos the lower mids by comparison but I wonder at how bass decay is affected by all this. Stock Nighthawk was a bit slower than the TH-X00 from memory but more controlled overall, wondering what it might look like now.

 

When I first got EARS I had read that it wasnt reliable for anything other than frequency response and even then its not the most accurate. Ill look up how-to as well as noise floor concerns. If noise floor is problematic then I can redo measurements in a more stringent environment. And I still have the other Nighthawk in stock form so itll be easy.

THX00 does sound quite open which is one of the reasons why its great. Noise isolation is weak though for such a ginormous closed headphone.

 

Yeah, I definitely don't take the CSDs generated by EARS at face value (except maybe for IEMs where there's less weirdness on account of bypassing the silicone pinnae). It's more that I wonder how the measurements are comparatively speaking as I imagine the foam and mass loading may be going a ways towards tightening up the bass and abbreviating the decay.

Squiggles from DIY Audio Heaven show that bass on the Nighthawk decays more slowly, which would contribute to the sense of muffledness and slowness:

TH-X00:


Nighthawk:


SOURCES:
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/brands-j-r/th-x00-mahogany-massdrop/
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/audio-quest/

As for the X00, they're more semi-open headphones than semi-closed IMO both in terms of how they sound as well as how poorly they isolate from within and from without haha.

 

I was trying not to use the word “decay” in description of Nighthawk warmth / reverb. Decay to me is a characteristic of detail that is either natural or unnatural in how swiftly a sound stops. Nighthawk reverb is an echoiness of bass swamp, a prevalent pressure that is fatiguing and enveloping in a bad caustic way that is not the equivalent of an ethereal large soundstage that is likeable even if unnatural.

 

Terminology is one of the weirdest parts of this hobby, aye, sorry about that haha.

The frustrating thing is that I use decay in that sense as well, e.g. how long plucked strings persist or when air stops moving after a snare drum thwack, and I can't well use bass rolloff since that's cemented as defining low-frequency extension. Blergh.

Eh, I'll stop crapping on the thread but thanks for the investigation! I maintain that I really do not care for the stock Nighthawk voicing but that it's otherwise a technically good and very a e s t h e t i c headphone. Fully agree that the low end is overmuch even speaking as a moderate basshead. If you want a challenge sorting the Campfire Cascades might be fun since that's even more obnoxious than the Nighthawk-- can't even remember much about technicalities, just that the sound signature was BASS with a low-treble bump that was likely meant to balance things out but came across as hard and grating.

 

Looking back at my definition of decay its indecipherable even for our resident linguist @Lyander .

Decay at its base is the signal produced by the driver and how swiftly it stops. Long decay can sound super natural and detailed, or bad if its too long like treble ringing or boomy bass. Decay too short can sound fast and controlled but unnatural like limp bass and lost dynamics. Reverb is that driver signal amplified by enclosure resonance and echo?. I guess decay is a culmination of all those things. You'd expect an open baffle speaker to sound fast, and a poorly designed ported sub to sound slow. Decay I think of more in terms of that pure sound from driver, but that is false since there is an enclosure. My point is ... I dont know. Nighthawk bad! Measurements coming.

 

This is hard. Found the “decay” tab and sub-menus but default settings produce graphs that look much different than the standards used here. AND comparing decay measurements of the same headphone can vary quite a bit so I am worried about noise floor and input/output settings at time of recordings. Ive reading to do and will redo measurements so everything is consistent. Just have to find readings, Im searching sbaf, then will check changstar, then will try rew forums. I spent last hour researching and fiddling with rew, so taking a break.

 

^ mod24 = mod22 + shure pads + a layer of micropore tape over rear driver venting

Vocals a little recessed, a little bright, bass a little light, crispy! Its okay.

@Lyander I'd still like to figure out how to produce the decay graphs but its slower going than expected. If you want I would upload my mdat files so you could configure.

edit: Fatiguing (3kHz?). A couple more attempts then throwing in towel.

 

Feel free! It's honestly been a long while since I've measured anything since things are still somewhat stalled where I am (blergh), but I could probably bring the old laptop back to life temporarily and then share the settings with ya. No need to go through a lot of trouble though, was just cool to see that the Nighthawk getting a more accessible voicing.

Also, I don't actually use the "Decay" tab for headphones as much as I do the "Waterfall" and "Spectrogram", since those are a fair bit easier to parse. Perhaps not the most intuitive naming there but hey it's something XD

Forgot about this: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...tive-terms-used-on-superbaf.3400/#post-100490

I guess the ADSR visualisation might be the fastest way to try and standardise things haha. I am definitely guilty of using "decay" to refer to "sustain" when I'm not particularly mindful since 'trailing decays" seems an easier thing to visualise even though "slow release" might make more sense given context.

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@Lyander Very useful info thanks. I'll upload mdat files but Id like to retake measurements so that I am more certain of measurement variables.

I found that the most fatigue free experiences were from lifting a filter(s) from driver baffle as well as making the cups extra leaky with distancers. Shure 1540 pads were unlikeable at first because it was before I had tried these other fatigue freeing things in combination. In the end Shure pads linear treble combined with mods is the most fatigue free experience and final mod for me. I'd like to do a stock vs mod25 vs TRX00 comparison as a personal challenge. I dislike writing reviews because I'm lazy, but I need to get better at it if I want to contribute meaningfully because otherwise I'm mostly spamming graphs and unsharpened subjective opinions.





mod10 was last mod pre-distancers (stand off screws that added huge gap to make leaky cups, thanks @M3NTAL and @E_Schaaf for the idea). mod25 is basically mod10 but with moar damplifier, distancers, and shure pads.

mod10 gives you the closest to stock sound with minor improvements most due to loading with damplifier pro and removal of one driver baffle vent to relieve some pressure. mod25 is most fatigue free, but 8kHz peak is still a problem and requires eq. Can't say I'd recommend AQ Nighthawk. My assumption is that ETA Supra will be an exceptional headphone and not for much more dollars. TRX00 with TH500RP cups is more enjoyable, much smoother, fat soundstage, bass less controlled but still not bad like a 6XX.

 

edit: Id recommend staying away from Nighthawk and its godforsaken enclosure and instead recommend risk trying building a headphone yourself with Foster style drivers from aliexpress or alibaba (lots of drivers in that style to choose from) and like a ATH AD500x enclosure for example (see Philphone). Itd be less than $200 in parts and youd probably have a headphone nicer than Nighthawk or TRX00. Would require some tuning so not for everybody. ETA Supra hopefully the final answer for many people including myself.