Introduction

Drop has been going heavy with mechanical keyboards and headphones ever since the rebranding from Massdrop, and we have a new slew of Drop-sold products being reviewed on TechPowerUp. These include the officially licensed Drop + LOTR keyboards as well as relevant keycap sets in collaboration with brands including Marvel and Noctua. On the audio side, the company's biggest hit has to be the excellent HD 6XX open-back, over-ear set of headphones made in partnership with German powerhouse Sennheiser. While Drop has raised the price of the HD 6XX since the time of that review, it showed the power of vendor-specific headphone collabs that we've since been seeing in the IEM space lately. Drop took this success to heart and has since worked with a few other audio brands, Dan Clark Audio being one such partner.


Known as MrSpeakers until 2019, Dan Clark founded the eponymous Dan Clark Audio (DCA) audio brand in 2012. Dan has been in the audio business for a few decades now and his claim to fame has been with closed-back headphones. In particular, and in his own words, "how to make closed headphones sound more open while delivering the isolation many headphone users required." Dan Clark Audio has been responsible for some of the more innovative engineering in the headphones space of late, including the use of novel metamaterials in his flagship Stealth and Expanse headphones, but there have been some root technologies developed over the years that have gone into his ÆON—henceforth referred to as Aeon for easier typing—series of headphones. In particular, I'd draw your attention to the DCA Aeon RT that the first-party model the Drop + DCA Aeon Open/Closed X sets are analogous to, in the same manner the Sennheiser HD 650 was for the Drop x Sennheiser HD 6XX. Today we examine the Aeon Closed X planar magnetic headphones that aim to offer a wide soundstage coupled with a warm audio signature and a highly comfortable fit, without breaking the bank. Thanks to Drop for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp and we begin this review with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications