Hello again! My thoughts on the AWKT are long overdue, so let’s go! I’m going to start with some caveats—I haven’t heard a ton of gear and I’ve also upgraded my chain kind of backwards. I upgraded to a nicer DAC (Exogal Comet+), then I upgraded to a nicer amp (Allnic HPA-3000 GT), and for whatever reason, I’ve left my headphone upgrades for last.
So my headphone experience is a bit limited, but it also means that I’m highly motivated to really give the AWKT my attention since it’s exactly one of the kinds of headphones that I’m currently in the market for.
The most resolving headphone I’d heard prior to the AWKT is a Focal Clear OG (which I recently sold to @MacDLaw, I hope you’re enjoying it!), but even though the Clear is now out of my possession, I’m pretty confident in saying that the AWKT has more detail than the Clear. If I’m just listening casually and taking in the overall sound, I can feel that the AWKT is more clear and crisp than anything I’ve heard so far, but when I listen more closely, the first difference that immediately jumps out at me is my ability to separate layered sounds. For example, if I listen to a group of vocalists singing a harmony [King of Anything], I can hear each of the individual singers in a way that I’ve never been able to before.
Note that the jump from the Clear to the AWKT isn’t as big as some of the other jumps I’ve made (for example, jumping from the Bifrost 2 to the Exogal Comet+ made a bigger difference), so I don’t want to overstate the amount of detail here, but it’s certainly noticeable. I’ll also add that the source is starting to matter more here as well, I’m definitely hearing a larger difference than I used to between a track in Apple Music versus that same track upsampled to 192k using Audirvana/Qobuz.
If I listen to recordings of some of the swing bands I’ve heard in real life [Moppin’ and Boppin’], the AWKT to my ear has great timbre, sounds very organic, and it’s the best I’ve heard these recordings sound. And to be honest, just about every song I’ve listened to that predates, say, the 1980’s, has sounded wonderful on the AWKT. Jazz sounds fantastic, classic soul music sounds fantastic, R&B oldies sound great. I really don’t have any issues with the sound signature at all until we start to get into more modern music.
With modern music, the AWKT starts sounding just a smidge bright, and the bass sounds a little lean compared to what I would want. Interestingly, for most music, I really don’t mind that bit of extra treble, but the amount that the lack of bass impact and fullness bothers me seems to vary a lot depending on the song.
But it’s not like the bass is just okay in the songs where it’s good: in more acoustic modern songs [Gravity], the bass is full of texture and it genuinely sounds wonderful. The AWKT still never quite gets to the level of punchiness that I’m used to with the Eikon or the Clear, but in a vacuum, the songs where the AWKT sounds good really don’t feel lacking at all.
But once I start listening to some rap and hip-hop [Get Down] [Kiln], the bass definitely loses some of it’s impact and gets more pillow-y sounding, and in general, I feel like these kind of songs just want a more energetic presentation. I want to be bobbing my head and tapping my feet and I’m just not doing that here. I suspect that maybe part of the difference has something to do with the bass extension, that maybe synthetic kicks are lower down than real drums and maybe the impact is lessening as you get into the lower frequencies, but it’s just a suspicion.
Heavily sampled music [Delta] and electronic music [Hey Sexy Lady (Skrillex Remix)] also suffers in a similar fashion, but electronic in particular also can sometimes sound slightly off in the higher frequencies since it has more “pure tone” kind of sounds. This is most obvious in chiptune music [Missing You] [Focus], where the balance of the mix sometimes doesn’t sound quite right, so I assume that there’s some kind of treble peak or dip throwing things off. (If you don’t normally listen to chiptune music, be assured that these tracks are /supposed/ to sound a bit piercing.)
Now a bit of a detour: the AWKT actually took to a high-impedance source pretty dang gracefully. If you’ve ever put a Focal headphone on a high-impedance amp, the bass gets ridiculous and it sounds really loose and sloppy. It’s fun for a novelty, but it’s not something I’d ever do on a regular basis. On the other hand, the AWKT does exhibit all of these characteristics on a high-output: the sound signature warms up, the bass gets a bit looser, and you do lose some detail and clarity, but the AWKT exhibits all of these traits to a /much/ lower degree. I could really imagine swapping to a high-output source depending on my mood and what I’m listening to on a semi-regular basis.
I mentioned that I’m looking for an upgrade to my Eikon, so let’s talk a little bit of a use case comparison. Even with the Auteur pads, the Eikon has more low-end impact, and I think I would say that the stage width is a little wider, but other than that, the AWKT makes for a very logical step up. The AWKT seems to isolate just as well, and it also doesn’t leak much sound. They both excel with similar kinds of music, though the Eikon is quite a bit less picky. However, the AWKT has more detail, better texture, and better timbre.
So is the AWKT going to be my next closed-back purchase?
Well, there’s one issue I have with this headphone that will likely keep me from buying one for myself: comfort. The first time I put the AWKT on my head, I immediately felt like I was wearing them wrong and that “slightly off” feeling with the fit never really went away. If I wear the AWKT for several hours in a row, I have some pain on the top of my head and I don’t have this issue with any of my other headphones. My best guess is that I’m not getting enough clamp force, so instead of distributing some of the weight on the side of my head, I’m bearing all of the weight on the top of my head. (I don’t have an especially narrow head, but if your head is wider than mine, it’s possible that this won’t be an issue for you.) I don’t know if you can bend the headband or something to get a stronger clamp, but since this headphone doesn’t belong to me, I’m certainly not going to try.
Unfortunately, it looks like this isn’t the headphone for me, but I want to say a huge thank you to @NickMimi and I very much appreciate getting the chance to spend some real time hearing a higher-end closed-back. This makes the genres in its wheelhouse sound so great, and if what you listen to is primarily older music or more acoustic/organic music, the AWKT might be for you!