Audio-Technica ATH-ADX3000

It’s no small feat that Audio-Technica were able to reproduce such a large 58mm driver that’s able to climb in high frequencies seemingly devoid of intermodulation and modal break-up. ADX3000 is an audibly low-distortion affair throughout, seemingly able to move pistonically at all frequencies.

That achievement is only made more remarkable by the apparent absence of any damping material in ADX3000 apart from its earpads. Its driver starts with a sandwich driver core of softer material for effective damping at higher frequencies.

This surface is coated with tungsten for the metal's stiffness, lightness and air acceleration properties moving at low frequencies. This means ADX3000's driver moves as a perfect piston over all frequencies up to and above its working range, keeping distortion down due to cone and modal break-up.

Given Audio-Technica’s design goal of providing a clean, totally clear path of air towards the ear via a streamlined, svelte baffle with no acoustic impediments hanging off its inside, it’s remarkable what the company’s engineers did on a relatively small budget.

That’s what 60 years of Audio-Technica’s audio know-how, and construction at their Japanese Naruse Machida plant, sounds like. The allowances for such a large driver were not for mere bragging rights. 

By being built big, ADX3000’s 58mm driver’s cone can move less – by going large, the radiating driver surface area is increased exponentially on a comparable 40mm driver while reducing requirement pistonic movement substantially, to move the same amount of air and sound with better cone control. 

ADX3000’s development period was a lengthy one, if one considers the seven years its ADX5000 sibling was on the market, and how Audio-Technica have churned out hits for six decades. 

The former’s metallic material driver performs as effectively in the time domain as the frequency one, ADX3000’s ideal Q-factor not depending on tons of damping material that leads to a deader sound. Rather, transients zip and snap naturally and organically, without acoustic crutches.

ADX3000’s purist construction means that this headphone can be nudged out of its comfort zone too, playing beyond the kind its creators directly intended for it.

The extra ability to grant it sub and mis-bass response from sources is another feather to Audio-Technica’s versatile bow, responding and adapting to your listening needs, and chain. This is a heavyweight performance, from a 257 gram featherweight.

Its 50ohm impedance gives it ability to scale with power, without fear of overdamping, so treat it to your ideal voltage sources such as Questyle Audio’s M15i and CMA18P too.

Indeed, here’s a mid-price treat that really behaves like Audio-Technica’s co-flagship. Apt, that a 60-year-old company produces such a potentially timeless, made-in-Japan, heirloom.

Check out the higher-specced ADX5000 that will love tube gear on the other hand here, all of Audio-Technica’s other classics here, and our other headphones here.