Audioquest Nighthawk Carbon

Designed for exceedingly low distortion and high excursion with true pistonic motion, NightHawk Carbon’s driver contributes significantly to the headphones’ well-controlled bass, rich midrange, and naturally extended highs. Its combination of effortless clarity and outstanding representation of space produces meaningful, emotionally compelling listening experiences. More than merely capable of providing short-term pleasure, NightHawk Carbon is designed to deliver satisfaction that endures.

In this simple way, the headpad automatically adjusts to the listener’s head—no clicking, snapping, cranking, or guessing involved—guaranteeing an easy, comfortable fit, time and time again. Just place NightHawk Carbon over your head and let it do its thing. There’s nothing else to do, but enjoy.

Traditionally, this has almost always been accomplished with perforated metal/plastic, wire cloth, or some other effectively two-dimensional material. While more or less successful at protecting the headphone’s internal parts, these materials also tend to compromise the headphone’s performance, reflecting sound back toward the driver, creating standing waves and resonant colorations. But what if this grille could be three-dimensional and promote a random scattering of sound—diffusion—to successfully prevent those destructive standing waves?

But how, exactly, does our split-gap motor work? In other dynamic headphones, the magnetic field generated by the driver motor rapidly loses control over the voice-coil and diaphragm as those parts approach their extreme boundaries of motion. Hello, distortion!

Steadily evolving over the course of more than 50 design iterations, our headphones’ driver motor was developed using today’s most sophisticated Finite Element Analysis software to algorithmically fine-tune and optimize the magnetic circuit with accuracy unattainable by any other method.

However, the absence of a true voice-coil former, or bobbin, means that the voice-coil itself is susceptible to inefficiencies of size, as well as irregularities of shape and motion: As the Mylar diaphragm flexes, the voice-coil changes shape- a fact that proves detrimental to the headphone’s ability to produce clean, clear sound. A voice-coil that is not perfectly circular cannot effectively control the movement of the diaphragm. And, as we now know, poorly controlled diaphragm motion is a major source of distortion. Furthermore, the absence of a former means the design forfeits control of the voice-coil’s height and prohibits it from being optimally centered within the magnetic gap. The former-less coil must be tall and will therefore have higher mass, which can compromise its ability to accurately reproduce high frequencies.

Our headphones use a comparatively thin, lightweight voice-coil, with fewer coils of wire, carefully wound on a small cylinder of kraft paper, selected for its combination of low weight and stiffness - perfect for retaining the voice-coil’s shape - enabling productive motion, while preventing adverse flexion. Moreover, the voice-coil is wound at a very specific location on the former, precisely positioned at its zero resting point within the center of the magnetic gap, thus providing the ideal symmetry of motion needed for near-zero distortion. Precise control of the voice-coil design means better symmetry of motion, lower distortion, and more naturally beautiful sound.

Additionally, thanks to a number of aforementioned factors—low inductance, symmetry of motion through the magnetic gap, finesse of our surround design—our headphones exhibit exceptionally flat impedance curves, meaning that their response will not change with frequency. Yasss! While our headphones will respond well to a dedicated headphone amplifier—tube or solid-state—they can also be successfully partnered with laptops, tablets, smartphones, any of a growing number of high-resolution portable audio devices, and, of course, our very own DragonFly. That’s enjoyment—boundless and unwavering.

In this simple way, our headpad automatically adjusts to the listener’s head—no clicking, snapping, cranking, or guessing involved—guaranteeing an easy, comfortable fit, time and time again.

Providing contact akin to a hug or caress, rather than a pinch or stress, AudioQuest headphones rest softly but snugly upon the listener’s head, exerting minimal clamping force and enabling long, luxurious listening sessions—the kind you want and deserve.

Typical headphone grille design: Some sound passes through while some is reflected back at the driver, potentially leading to standing wave resonances (reflected sound shown in red).

Through this intricate design, we’re better able to control the propagation of sound and minimize its adverse effects on the music. Because the innermost trellises of our grille are narrower and more widely spaced than those at the outer surface, we are encouraging internal diffusion: While it’s relatively easy for sound to enter the grille, it’s much more difficult for sound to exit. Thus, compared to the typical open-back headphone, NightHawk exhibits significantly less leakage—a boon for you and your neighbors. Furthermore, as sound enters the acoustic labyrinth of our latticework, it ceases to propagate. We’ve achieved greater diffusion and fewer reflections, thereby defeating the resonances that would otherwise distort our music. And all with the help of butterflies. Nature rules.

Knowing from the outset of our development process that NightHawk’s grille would be 3D printed, we were freed to explore patterns and forms that would have otherwise been impossible. The experience was liberating, informative, and wildly satisfying. With our 3D-printing partner, Sculpteo, and the trusty EOS P395 printer, we are able to reliably and consistently mass-produce a part that is structurally sound, beautiful to behold, and achieves levels of purpose and elegance to match its counterpart in nature.