I’m undecided on whether to pick up the Audioquest Nighthawk Carbon’s or Meze Classics, hoping for some experience and advise here.
As a starter, I can get the Meze for £200 from Amazon as I have some gift cards that I can use. The Nighthawk’s will cost £245.
I listen to a lot of hip-hop, R&B and rock. Definitely like good bass, and really high treble hurts my ears so both of these headphones seem to fit the bill.
Initially I’ll be driving them from my iPhone or iPad, and maybe I’ll pick up a Dragonfly Red at some point.
I do own the carbons and have sold my meze classics. Both are great. The meze has more treble and also more bass quantity. The carbons have better soundstage, imaging, detail and slam. R&b and hip hop are good on both. For rock i would give the meze a try, because the meze has a little bit more mid presence. But overall the nighthawk is superior in terms of sound quality.
The biggest question is: How will you use them? If you are using them with your phone and for portabel use, i would recommend the meze, because it is closed back and doesn’t leak sound.
Nighthawks. Any day of the week. I’ve tried both (technically I tried the neo99 which uses a slightly different tuning). Nighthawks is literally that but better.
The thing about the hawks is they started out as a $700 headphone that got discontinued and now can be had under $300. The Meze was released as a $300 headphone. The hawks will be a higher tier headphone in the sound, build, and accessories department. I haven’t tried the Meze, but I will always be partial to the hawks because they opened the door to higher tier headphones for me.
I ended up finding a pair of 99 Classics on eBay for £150 so picked those up. The Audioquest’s were my preferred option really but at £95 cheaper for the Classics, I thought it was a good enough deal to grab those for now. Will mainly be running them off my iPhone too, although might grab an ES100 at some point.
Not saying I won’t pick up Audioquest’s at some point though
Sounds like you got a good deal. Enjoy and let us know what you think! I think the hawks are worth picking up in the future if you are curious and want to move up another level at some point.
