Moondrop Quarks DSP Review
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I needed a pair of headphones for my Pixel 2 which is my primary Podcast listening device. I was using bluetooth headphones for this for quite a while but low energy or not, bluetooth is a battery drain, at least more than anything wired. The battery life on the Pixel 2 is already not great.
So I had a 2 options, either go for a type C headphone with DSP, or buy a dongle and connect whatever headphones I wanted. I went with the former option, just because it’s more elegant. I don’t want a dongle hanging off my phone.
I had a few headphones to choose from, including the Quarks DSP, the Moondrop Droplets , 7Hz Salnotes Zero type C and Tanchjim Tanya type C. I went with the cheapest one, because it was my first time using a type C headphone, and I’m using it primarily to listen to podcasts, which doesn’t require the best sounding audio gear. Plus, the Quarks DSP are the most subtle looking of the three. And I don’t mind the Moondrop aesthetic.
In the box:
The packaging is quite simple. The Quarks come with an egg bag, 3 additional sets of ear tips, a wearing guide and a manual. The packaging is quite good, nothing more than you’d expect at this price point.
Build, Looks, Hardware:
The USB-C end has a rubber finish and is pretty long compared to a standard 3.5mm jack, but that’s because it houses a DAC. The DAC itself seems to a proprietary Moondrop part, no other information appears to be available. Windows just reports it as a Generic USB Audio Device and it reports itself as Quarks DSP to Windows. The cable is soft and looks good, unlike the hard plastic-y built in cable KZ provides, which just looks cheap af. It’s not removable though.
There’s inline volume controls and a single play/pause button. This button is pretty weird. While it works normally for controlling volume and playback, you’d think pressing and holding the play/pause button wiuld bring up the assistant on android, and do nothing on PCs. For some reason, pressing and holding the play/pause key makes a weird loud annoying sound in your ears and launches these headphones into some weird mode where the volume controls now scroll on whatever device you’re using it on and pressing the playback button is a mouse click. A cursor even appears on the android device you’ve connected it to, which is super weird for a pair of headphones. To switch back to playback control, you have to hold the same button until it makes that weird sound again. I don’t know what’s going on here. The controls themselves feel cheap. The button clicks are not good, way too noisy and plastic-y. They work, though. Can’t complain because these are cheap after all. The microphone quality is pretty good too.
The headphones themselves are made of acrylic clear plastic. While they don’t feel sturdy, they looks really cool. L and R are embedded into the Moondrop Logo on both buds, and the right one is red. Super well done design. Moreover, the buds themselves are tiny. They don’t stick out of my ears at all and sit snug inside. I use the included medium sized ear tips and those have been pretty good at isolation and fit. These headphones are pretty comfortable to wear, and the cable helps. There is no cable noise unlike the Sennheiser Momentum earbuds or the KZ replacement cable.
Here’s some specs:
Driver Type: Dynamic
IMPEDANCE: 16Ω@1kHz士15%
SENSITIVITY: 113dB/Vrms@1kHz
EFFECTIVE FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 20Hz-20kHz
Sound:
These sound great*.
*If you primarily listen to songs with vocals and nothing else. Let me explain.
The Quarks absolutely nail vocals. A few months ago, I had a chance to visit Headphone Connect, where they put a lot of high and some low end headphones on display for you to check out. I checked out a lot of headphones from prominent brands like Audeze, Focal , Hifiman, Sennheiser, STAX and Meze. My favourites from all of these was the Sennheiser HD 820, Audeze LCD-X, which I fell head over heels for, and the HE1000SE from HiFiman. All of these headphones have pretty different sound signatures, but the way all of these handled vocals was on a whole another level of every headphone I have tried, and kind of un-distinguishable to me because I have never owned anything remotely high end. I can say, though, that the vocals on the Moondrop Quarks are reminiscent of those kinds of headphones: smooth, mellow and really well defined. Don’t get me wrong, the detail is nowhere near as good as any of those headphones (these cost a 200th of those headphones on average), neither is the soundstage. But the fact that these remind me of listening to high end headphones for the first time, every time, is because the mid-range and highs are really well done. Snares, rides,cymbals and crashes are done justice, electronic guitars sound just right. Songs like Mr. Brightside are the perfect candidates for this kind of sound signature. Some reviews say these are “shouty”, but for my ears, these neither sound shouty, nor muffled. They get the timbre just right.
All that being said, listening to the 2004 Remaster of Rumors by Fleetwood Mac is kinda disappointing. Like I said, these do mids and highs pretty well, but a drum-set also comprises the bass drum. And these do not do bass well, at all. Sounds at the higher end of the bass spectrum sound muddy at best, while most stuff at the lower spectrum sounds flat; there is no “oomph” at all. This leaves most songs from Rumors sounding weirdly uneven. The gruff nature of the bass from The Chain is not captured at all. At the end of Go Your Own Way, there is a whole 67 second portion with the electronic guitar and heavy drum beats; what ends up happening is the cymbals, the high hats and the electronic guitar sound amazing, but the drum beats sound just flat, which gives this weird phone-speaker feel to the entire sound. In a similar vein, The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala sounds similarly uneven.
The soundstage is another part that is disappointing. A similarly priced pair of KZs will get you much better soundstage. I’m not sure if it’s the way these are tuned or if it’s the drivers themselves (I’m leaning towards it being a combination of both), but the soundstage is just not there. They’re pretty much as good as the Momentum In-Ears in this regard.
Even worse is listening to hip-hop with these headphones. Swimming Pools by Kendrick Lamar sounds amazing with headphones that nail bass. Even headphones that sound mostly flat if a bit sparkly, like the CCA NRA manage to reproduce the amount of depth in the bass of this track. The Quarks have no such depth. The beats have no definition, the best way to describe it is “you hear a bass drop”. It honestly seems like Deep Bass wasn’t a thing known to the Moondrop engineers when they made the Quarks.
EQ makes things worse; trying to increase the bass response leads to them sounding muddy, and the mid-range and highs, which are the best parts about these, have now taken a backseat. Increase those and Congratulations, you’ve now made your headphones sound lifeless and sparkly at the same time. A flat EQ, therefore, is your best bet. If you mostly listen to EDM and Hip-Hop, stay away from these and buy something from KZ or even Sony for that matter. You’ll get better soundstage with the KZs in this price range or you’ll get better overall sound quality with anything from Sony. Yes, you’ll be missing out on great vocals but at least your songs won’t sound uneven.
Personally, if I’m doing even some remotely critical listening, like when doing chores, or some mundane work assignments, I like the sound signature to be flat. If I'm working out, I like the sound signature to be V-Shaped, hence my love for the Xtra Bass Sony stuff and some recent Jabra headphones- I like sparkly music with some bass oomph when I need to run just a few hundred meters more. These headphones satisfy none of those requirements. They’re not flat enough, neither do they have enough colour to their sound.
Although, like I said, I got these to mostly listen to podcasts. For something that does vocals right, I certainly lucked out in that regard. They can also get pretty loud, and are generally unlistenable at the highest volume levels.
TL;DR:
In Conclusion, the Quarks DSP are not for listening to all types of music. If it’s mostly classical, or mostly vocal, these do great, but all other types of music suffer. And if you were buying headphones for those kinds of music, you wouldn’t be looking at these anyways. For my specific use case, though, these are perfect. I mostly listen to podcasts and rarely listen to music on these. They have a DAC but still don’t consume as much power as bluetooth earbuds, and you don’t have to charge them.
The main factor when it comes to reviewing these, as you may have already read many times at this point, is the price. For what they cost, there aren’t many better options out there. They sound fine, they’re built well and they come with a good carrying pouch. The inline controls feel cheap, but again, for this price, it’s acceptable. Consider your use case before buying these; I wouldn’t buy them for listening to music. But as day to day headphones, they make a lot of sense.