I decided to venture into the audiophile realm recently as I have been a lifelong music fan.
After weeks of research, I thought that the Dan Clark Aeon 2 Noire seemed like the right choice for comfortable high-quality sound. Many reviewers pointed out that they could be difficult to drive, so with even more research, I chose the Astell and Kern Kann DAP to drive them. There were several claims that this DAP, while expensive, would drive anything. I thought this combination would provide for a portable sound system I would love.
The headphones arrived on Tuesday 4/23/24 and the DAP arrived on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the balanced cable from Audiophile Ninja did not get here until the following Monday.
At first, I used them with the supplied unbalanced headphone cable. The sound of these headphones is truly awesome, up to a point. For low to moderate volume, they produce an amazingly clear sound with voices and instruments distinctly separated. I heard things on old recordings that I did not know where there.
Unfortunately, when I turned the volume up, I began to notice distortion. I am assuming it is coming from the DAP clipping the signal because the headphones are so difficult to drive.
When the balanced cable arrived, I did notice some improvement in the volume, but not what I was hoping for. The A&K DAP has 4 separate gain levels. Oddly enough, they rate these by voltage, not by power output. They seem to have the output current limited. This means that when the headphones draw too much current, the gain settings do not show any real difference in what you hear. At higher volume levels, the sound comes apart completely with distortion and clipping causing guttural sounds to emerge. I found that different music caused this at widely separate volume levels. For example, Harry Hudson's Gone (not one I would normally crank up) produced distortion and very low levels of volume compared to Shinedown's Devour or Primal Scream's Rocks.
I also noticed that battery in the DAP was going down rather quickly. I am wondering if this may play into the idea of limiting the current output.
To make sure where the problem was, I dug out my old, well used and weathered Audio-Technica ATH-M50s that I use to use in the days when cell phones still had headphone jacks. The A&K had no trouble driving these past the point where you would want them on your head. The Dan Clark Aeon 2 could not produce as sound as loud as my Sony Bluetooth WH1000X-M3s without distortion.
I could go into speculation about the quality of the recordings or the source (Tidal), but that isn't the problem.
There is little point in assigning some kind of fault to the components.
The A&K DAP will drive MOST headphones with ease.
The Dan Clark Aeon 2 Noire headphones do truly produce awesome music when properly driven. You just can't use a portable source to drive them.
The problem is that I invested over $2500 on a system that I can't listen to past a moderate volume level, and I want it to rock when I want it to rock. Lord knows what this is going to sound like when I get into some Led Zepplin or Aerosmith. I spent a lot of time and effort researching this, I'm not sure I want push on. Now considering the expense and the rather disappointing results, I am tempted to just return everything.
