Unlike the slow-moving hi‑fi stream, the personal audio world is a place of movement and energy. Electrostatic headphones are the perfect example of this. A dozen years ago, ‘electrostatics’ meant Stax and nothing more. Today, myriad companies are adding their take to the electrostatic headphone concept. Amid that proliferation, the Dan Clark Audio Corina electrostatic headphones stand out.
This is not Dan Clark Audio’s first electrostatic rodeo. That honour goes to the Voce of 2018. Voce arrived with all the pomp and circumstance expected from the first electrostatic headphones from the brand. Corina that replaces it launched with little fanfare. That might make people think Corina is little more than a redressed Voce. It’s a thought only reinforced by the Corina using the same 88mm electrostatic panel as its predecessor. However, that’s like saying that because two cars share the same size alloy wheels, they are the same car.
Added tension
That 88mm driver is now subject to a new tensioning system. This first appeared in Dan Clark’s planar magnetic headphones and now reaches the electrostatic panel. It has a more uniform tension across the panel, which makes for a more linear sound. Although the large stator is like the Voce before it, the Corina is less efficient than some of its rivals. Therefore, it needs a more muscular amplifier behind it.
Also resulting from Dan Clark Audio’s latest planar magnetic designs, Corina benefits from the company’s Advanced Metametal Tuning System (AMTS). This makes the Corina better damped and gives it a slick look and feel. AMTS is the honeycomb-like pad that sits between the stator panel and the outer pattern of the Corina ear cup. This clever and sophisticated wave-guide system can act as a Helmholtz resonator at specific frequencies. This is tuned – and therefore different – for each drive unit.
Good Damping
There is plenty of damping in the higher frequencies in Corina’s place. This shows in the listening… in a good way! The circular ear cup is retained, but the new protective guard no longer needs to protect the stator. As a result, it looks a lot more elegant and refined, whereas the Voce just looked like another high-end electrostatic headphone.
If you look at the headband, the Corina shares similar design concepts seen in the Expanse and Stealth planar magnetics and losing the adjuster blocks. It’s also changed from a silver and black finish to a richer and more luxurious black and gunmetal, with a very comfy leather headband and hybrid cups.
It is a slightly heavier design than its predecessor, and at 465g it’s still one of the lightest electrostatic headphones on the market. The Dan Clark Audio Corina is also extremely comfortable and great for long listening sessions. The headband auto-adjusts to your head and the pads seem more breathable than many similar designs. I had no problems settling in for hours of listening without the least discomfort. The way the headband works makes it feel far light on the ears.
Amp matching
As discussed earlier, the 88mm electrostatic driver means the Dan Clark Audio Corina is less efficient than many designs. This isn’t too big a deal, but it slightly limits the choice of amplifiers. Then again, if you are thinking of spending almost five grand on a pair of headphones, you will probably not be searching for discount energisers and amplifiers. Stax is a good starting place.
The fascinating thing about the Corina is that it is and isn’t what you would expect from an electrostatic headphone. It’s got that stunning resolution and lightning-fast speed of attack and release that we have come to expect from an electrostatic, but it also has bass. Surprisingly deep, meaty bass. That’s a rare find in electrostatics, whether headphones or loudspeakers. You often find hybrid electrostatic loudspeakers with dynamic bass drivers, and companies like MartinLogan have spent decades trying to integrate the two seamlessly. The Corina does that bass like no other electrostatic I’ve heard. Whether that’s down to the AMTS, the tightened diaphragm or both is immaterial; it makes the bass deeper and more powerful than its rivals.
Tonally, the Corina is darker-sounding than most electrostatics and falls more into line with Dan Clark Audio’s other products, only with significantly greater resolution and detail. That’s a conscious voicing but also a very natural one. I’ll be honest: I’ve backed away from headphone reviews recently partly because I’ve found many to be too treble-accented and bright, but the Corina is exceptionally well-balanced.
Natural Sounding
The treble is extremely natural sounding, without too strong an emphasis to make it artificial. Voices extend organically from midrange to the highest frequencies, sounding detailed and precise, yet not so brightly lit that they aggressively show every flaw in a recording. The information is all there – Joyce DiDonato’s powerful mezzo-soprano is beautiful here, both in clarity and range – but that detail is never presented in a way that undermines the musical intent.
That effortless treble, which combines extension without sounding forward or bright, sets the tone for the entire frequency range of the Dan Clark Audio Corina electrostatic headphones. I tend to overuse the terms ‘natural’ and ‘musical’ for products that I like the sound of, and my listening notes were crammed with those two words on almost every other line. But of particular note was the timbral accuracy of the Corina; it got the ‘shape’ of the voice or instrument just about spot on every time.
This is so important because it doesn’t favour any musical genre. We can never know a synthesiser’s ‘natural’ sound because it’s inherently electronic and infinitely adjustable. Still, we can cross-reference that sound against known acoustic instruments and have an intrinsic way of knowing when something sounds a bit ‘off’. You could feed the Corina the most wubbly-wub three-fat-drifting-Minimoog-oscillator bass line and then swap that for a beautifully recorded Bach cello suite, and the headphone takes both in its stride. That comes from nailing the timbre of the instruments, not simply their tone.
Back wub
I’m going to come back to that bass, though. Because those wubbly-wub synth sounds need some deep reinforcement. When you play something from Trentmøller or Aphex Twin, the bass notes need to hit you on something closer to an atavistic level; these are sounds that, if you heard in nature, would be running away from whatever made those sounds because it will probably eat you. Those sounds typically need to move a lot of air, which means in most electrostatic headphone systems, the scary, rumbles and the monsters they hint at remain just out of reach. However, Corina can hit those lower notes with the same speed and clarity in the midrange and treble. And that’s a very scary experience.
Strangely, and this is the first time I’ve experienced this on any headphone system, our bodies seem to compensate when the bass is that deep, that fast and that well integrated. You get to feel the bass in your stomach, not just between your ears. That’s how good the Corina is!
There’s one last bonus to Corina’s performance: its soundstaging properties. This is where traditional loudspeaker users often score a win because the stage tends to sit around your head rather than fill a virtual room in front of you. The Dan Clark Audio Corina makes for something altogether more expansive and spatially accurate. You feel that the band or the orchestra is ‘out there’, and there’s a sense of space and dimensionality often so lacking in the personal audio space.
Impressed? You bet!
I want to say I’m impressed by the Dan Clark Audio Corina, but that doesn’t go far enough. This is one of the finest personal audio experiences you can get right now, and the headphones combine the benefits of dynamic driver-like bass with electrostatic clarity, speed, and detail across the board. They are worth the price of admission for the bass alone because the speed, depth, and precision it brings to bass is unparalleled. And they do all of these things in style and comfort. The lone trade-off is that a relatively powerful amplifier is needed to drive them.
In making the Corina, Dan Clark Audio has excelled; I didn’t log that many hours with the Voce, but I do recall it being slightly below the performance of the best electrostatic headphones. The Corina is several jumps ahead of that performance in absolute terms. That spookily good bass depth and integration places it at the current apex of what electrostatic headphones are capable of. With the possible exceptions of Sennheiser’s Orpheus and the HiFiMAN Shangri-La, I would struggle to find a pair of headphones that get close to doing what Corina does so well. They set the standard.
Technical specifications
- Type: Electrostatic headphones
- Driver: 88mm diameter
- Capacitance with 2m cable: 135pF
- Dimensions: 18 × 14 × 19cm (in case)
- Weight: 465g
- Price: £4,800/$4,499.99
Manufacturer
Dan Clark Audio
UK distributor
Electromod
+44(0)1494 956558
By Alan Sircom
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