Final DX3000CL Review

Design

• Glass-fibre/resin housing
• 410g (without cable)
• Constructed entirely with adhesives

First things first: with more than one eye on sustainability and longevity, Final Audio has used precision screws and O-rings, rather than adhesives, to construct the DX3000CL. Which means they used no unnecessary chemicals in the construction process, and they can be easily dismantled, serviced and rebuilt. It’s almost reason enough to give them a pass in every other respect where design is concerned.

But happily, there’s no need. The DX3000CL are discreet, quite good-looking headphones that use a combination of glass fibre-reinforced resin, slender lengths of steel, and a generous quantity of synthetic leather-covered memory foam to create a tactile and visually pleasing form.

The earcups adjust on their steel arms to adjust the fit – unlike a lot of rivals, the Final Audio can be small enough for even the smaller-headed to wear them comfortably.

There’s plenty of padding in the earpads, though – so no matter how big (or otherwise) your head is, it will be made to look significantly wider by the DX3000CL. The cable connects to the front of the lower edge of the earcups – without the cable attached, these headphones weigh a considerable 410g.

But so carefully considered is the hanger arrangement, and so well-judged the clamping force, they never feel especially heavy – and the fact they don’t store and return ear-heat quite as keenly as plenty of rival designs doesn’t do any harm in this respect, either.

Specification

• 40mm paper/carbon composite dynamic drivers
• 10Hz – 40kHz frequency response
• 2m OFC cable with 4.4mm or 6.3mm termination

Like pretty much every pair of passive hard-wired speakers at any price, the Final Audio DX3000CL are not exactly overburdened with features. They have the essentials – and in this instance, those essentials are entirely fit for purpose.

The headphones come with a 2m length of fairly chunky, nicely flexible polymer-covered oxygen-free copper cable. At one end the cable splits into two, each end with a 3.5mm termination – because each earcup needs to be wired.

At the other, the cable ends in a 4.4mm balanced jack – and there’s a quite opulent 6.3mm unbalanced adapter supplied too. This is called ‘doing the right thing’ where terminations are concerned, and there are quite a few nominal rivals to Final Audio that learn from this.

The cable feeds a couple of 40mm free-edge dynamic drivers that feature a paper/carbon composite diaphragm. Frequency response is claimed to be 10Hz – 40kHz, and the numbers for sensitivity (96dB w/m) and impedance (37Ω) strongly suggest the DX3000CL will be no kind of problem for even quite modest headphone amplifiers to drive.

The fact that the entire driver assembly is designed and engineered in-house by Final Audio in Japan adds just a little cachet.

Sound Quality

• Remarkably revealing and insightful presentation
• Big, organised and well-defined soundstage
• Unwilling or unable to properly attack those recordings that demand it

There are issues with the way the Final Audio DX3000CL perform, so I may as well deal with them immediately – it will leave us plenty of time to talk about the stuff these headphones do really, really well.

Basically, the DX3000CL are too polite and too well-mannered to properly sink their teeth into a recording, even if it’s something that’s crying out for it – Do the Astral Planeby Flying Lotus, say. The headphones are slightly inhibited where dynamic response is concerned, and as a result can sound a little tepid and matter-of-fact when ideally they should summon greater intensity.

But in pretty much every other respect, the Final Audio are an admirable listen. That same recording showcases their ability to extract an enormous amount of detail, both broad and fine, from a recording – and in the least showy way, give it the weighting and context that’s appropriate. No aspect of a recording is too fleeting or too minor to escape the attention of the DX3000CL. 

This facility for highlighting even the most transient occurrences in a recording is helped no end by the sheer scale of the soundstage the Final Audio can generate. By the standards of closed-back headphones the stage they summon is enormous – and it’s carefully controlled and well-defined, too.

No matter if the stuff you’re listening to is packed with participants, everyone involved gets plenty of space in which to do their thing. And this is not at the expense of unity, either – the DX3000CL make every recording sound together and singular. Even if, as with the Flying Lotus tune, it was barely ever a performance in the first place.

The frequency response is nicely judged, which also contributes to the sense of unity – no part of the frequency range is too prominent, no part is particularly underplayed. The top end shines brightly without threatening anything approaching hardness, while at the opposite end there’s control as well as substance – which contributes towards positive, confident rhythmic expression.

And the tonal balance is equally judicious – there’s a neutral quality to the tonality of the headphones that helps them sound as realistic (in this respect, at least) as the very best of their price-comparable rivals.

Should you buy it?