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AudioQuest NightOwl headphones

AudioQuest NightOwl headphones

AudioQuest used to be best known for a vast range of high-performance audio cables. It still makes those cables – covering every base from ‘cheap as chips’ to ‘I’ll collect them in my Friday helicopter’ – but has recently diversified its range significantly. First came the Digital Critters (the DragonFly DACs and the JiitterBug, alongside the Beetle that’s still floating around the digital aether), but this was followed by the company’s first headphones, the NightHawk. These, too, were followed by the NightHawk Carbon (a revised version of the original, with the most obvious change being a move from wood-ish ear cups to carbon-ish). As night follows day follows night, the NightOwl Carbon followed in the NightHawk’s clawprints. The next saga in the AudioQuest story moves back to traditional audio, as the Niagra power conditioners roll out.

The easy and over-simplistic way of looking at the NightOwl is it is a (mostly) sealed version of the open-backed NightHawk. NightOwl is apt, because the stealthy, silent type that doesn’t leak sound into the environment so you can listen to music to your heart’s content while the rest of the family is watching TV or tuning into kittens on YouTube. NightHawk being open-backed never had that option.

As with the first two designs, the NightOwl’s ear cups are made of ‘Liquid Wood’, an eco-friendly sustainable material that combines real tree with reclaimed plant fibre, all of which gets heated, liquefied, and processed so it can be injection moulded into shapes that would be almost impossible to make with traditional woodworking, all the while offering acoustic properties superior to those of conventional synthetic or plastic materials. The original NightHawk’s Liquid Wood ear cups a wood-effect finish that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike wood, but the process has developed allowing an elegant, none-more-black carbon finish into the mix.

, AudioQuest NightOwl headphones

Also like its open-backed stable-mate, the NightOwl ear cup housings are shaped like human ears. Perhaps not the biggest surprise around, this makes for a very comfortable fit. There is a lot more to this than meets the eye, however. Literally. If you took the AudioQuest headphone apart, you’d find the inside of the earcup sporting a series of radial ribs. These are the result of a lot of Finite Element Analysis to find the optimum size, number, and placement of these ribs. No ribs and the earcup sings along with the music. Too many, or the right number in the wrong places, and there’s some odd resonance at the worst possible place. AQ nails this!

There are two sets of ear cups – Protein Leather (which is another way of saying ‘not leather’) for the best isolation and Ultra Suede (which is another way of saying ‘not suede’) for longer listening – these are supplied in the textured pleather case. Although there are strong arguments for lambs-leather earcups and fancy leather pouches, I feel sightly less bloodthirsty knowing that only a handful of Pleathers were slaughtered for their plasticky hides.

Earcups aside, the headphones are extremely similar in design and execution. The minimal, but effective, single bar headphone (wrapped in the same kind of black braided sleeve found on many AudioQuest cables… nice touch!) with a stretchy pleather headband makes the headphone light and comfortable on the head, and these attach to the ear-cups through a variation on a theme of a microphone shock-mount. This is great for placement on the head, but paradoxically, there is some transmitted ‘clanking’ if you touch the headband. Both the supplied cables (minijacks to the headphones, 3.5mm TRS stereo jack with a 1/4” jack adaptor supplied) and the inside of the earpads are clearly marked for left and right channels. The Y-shaped cable  has a simple in-line phone/DAP controller at the point of contact, and is solid enough to be no-tangle. The connector at the source end is gently curved, too, making it equally suitable for devices that prefer straight or 90°  insertion.

 

As before, AudioQuest fits the NightOwl with a 50mm, high-excursion dynamic driver equipped with a biocellulose diaphragm and a compliant rubber surround. This diaphragm provides a combination of rigidity and self-damping said to offer a more “accurate and musically pleasing” sound than that of today’s more common Mylar (or metal) diaphragms. In turn, the driver uses a patented split-gap motor to reduce, “intermodulation distortion to provide a clean, well-defined broadband response.”

The diaphragm itself is mounted on a series of baffles around the base of the earcup, each with their own support rib arrangement. These make a staggered, interlocking arrangement. Couple that with the gently angled drive unit (in effect, running parallel with your ear) and a considerable amount of further anti-resonance, anti-vibration treatment throughout the headphone, this makes for a surprisingly sophisticated design.

AudioQuest first recommended listeners give the NightHawk a 50+ hour break-in, but that has been revised up to 150 hours of shakedown before critical listening commences. In truth, I’m not sure whether this is as much down to conditioning the listener as it is conditioning the headphone, because my feelings after a lot of listening are different, even if the findings are similar.

NightOwl, like its stablemate, sets out to make a lower distortion design than its rivals. And that’s how it bears out after a lot of listening. Other headphones sound tonally bright and forward, with a harsh, almost stark top end. Sibilance is a real issue with similarly-priced headphones, too, it transpires.

However, if I cast my mind back to the original hours of the review, those rivals were neutral and accurate, and the NightOwl was a little too dark and brooding at the top. The bass remains a constant – it was powerful and deep when first taken out of the box and it’s powerful and deep now. But the change in perception around other products is so significant that there are three possible outcomes: AudioQuest is right and the others are wrong; AudioQuest is so wrong I’m trying to find the right in this, or AudioQuest hires hypnotists.

, AudioQuest NightOwl headphones

OK, so let’s be clear on this. The NightOwl is dark sounding (although not as ‘moody’ as the ‘Hawk). Its treble is the opposite of ‘exposed’ and no matter how easy and satisfying it is to listen to, if that brooding midrange and top are discomforting to the listener, no amount of run-in will overcome that. But, the more you listen, the more you listen into the music.

I found the NightOwls perfectly fit the bill. You can put them on at night and lose hours to listening to music at low levels. You can thrash them, you can play them as a morning commuter, but they are your perfect partners for some end-of-the-day relaxation. Slip into a bath, slip into a gin and tonic, slip into the NightOwls. That’s what they do best. This is an abstraction from the usual discussions of frequency response or dynamic range, but that’s where the NightOwls take you. I stuck on ‘Take The Night Off’ by Laura Marling from Once I Was An Eagle [Virgin] because it seems so appropriate, and was rewarded with an outstanding rendition of female voice and guitar. Her Martin D28 guitar can sometimes almost sound like a dulcimer thanks to the recording, but here it had all the richness of tone and resonance you should expect from the guitar. Yes it was still dark, but let’s be honest about this – her voice was open and extended but not screechy, not suddenly baritone. More importantly, I found myself drifting away on those four first songs on the album cycle, not caring about how good TIDAL was or whether there is a better high-res version. At which point, I went back to some of my old favourite headphones (like the HiFiMAN HE500 I still use) and found them overly bright and arch-sounding. Once again, I am not sure whether that’s down to distinctiveness and personal reconditioning, or that the AudioQuests are doing something no other headphone can. The last time I was this taken with something so ‘different’ I ended up buying a pair of Rehdekos!

What’s strange about the comparison between ‘Hawk and ‘Owl is there is little to compare. Skylar Grey and the AQ team have worked wonders to give the two headphones almost the same voice (the ‘Owl less moody than the ‘Hawk) and the same degree of openness. The closed ‘Owls never sound ‘shut in’ or oppressive, even if they don’t have quite the same ‘illuminated’ quality of the ‘Hawks. But otherwise, the two have so much in common, you can tell they are siblings. They both have that same powerful bass underpinning, and the same tonal darkness. If you like one, you’ll like the other.

 

Finally there’s another last feather in the NightOwl’s cap. It’s incredibly easy to drive. This is not the kind of product that demands a home rig or a powerful amp on the back of a DAP. Run the NightOwls from a phone (OK, not an iPhone 7) and the headphones are driven effortlessly. There is another bonus to this; that dark sound limits the ill-effects of the compressed signals commonly streamed to smartphones. NightOwl is not masking those horrors, and its top-to-bottom detail is extremely clean and clear, but that tonal darkness acts to counter the sound of data and signal compression.

, AudioQuest NightOwl headphones

Like the NightHawk before it, the NightOwl is technically innovative, beautifully made, and engaging to listen through. Its ergonomic design offers excellent long-term comfort, meaning listeners can wear the headphones for hours on end without a hint of fatigue. “At the end of the day” is a cliché but is relevant here because the headphones are so suited to end of the day relaxed listening, the NightOwl is all about musical ‘feel’ and ‘enjoyment’. It does the other stuff – the detail, the insight into the recording, and the rest – but it’s also the kind of headphone you reach for after a long, stressful day. Highly Recommended.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

  • Type: Circumaural, dynamic driver-equipped headphone.
  • Driver complement: 50mm dynamic driver with biocellulose diaphragm and split-gap motor assembly
  • Frequency response: Not specified
  • Impedance: 25 Ohms
  • Sensitivity: 100dB/mW
  • Accessories: one 8-foot audiophile signal cable with solid Perfect Surface Copper+ conductors in a Symmetric Star-Quad configuration, foamed polyethylene dielectric, AQ noise dissipations system and direct-silver plated red copper adapter plugs; one highly flexible rugged-use signal cable with gold-plated adapter plugs; one heavily padded leatherette-covered carry case: manual.
  • Weight: 346g
  • Price: £499

Manufacturer: AudioQuest

URL: www.audioquest.com

Tel: +31 165 541404

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