Setup
Contents
We test the Bathys via Bluetooth, using phone and Macbook Pro. In DAC mode, we control the Macbook Pro Thunderbolt/USB-C output and also the phone’s USB C output. The Bathys’analogue input is powered by the EarMen stack (PSU-3 power supply, CH-Amp headphone amplifier, Tradutto DAC).
Audirvāna is the playback application in all cases, including Bluetooth.
Le son: énergie!
The first thing we notice is energy and spaciousness. The Bathys sounds very open for closed headphones, and that is a compliment.
First up is Crazy Race and Kansas City Funk by trumpeter Roy Hargrove on the album Distractions. A neo-soul track with vocals, a jazz ensemble and a pumping bass. The bass quickly becomes dominant and pushes the rest of the music to the background. We hear this mainly with the Bluetooth setting. The bass is omnipresent and becomes quite dominant. With the analogue input, this effect is virtually absent and it is a different reproduction, a lot more neutral, although the emphasis on the bass remains. When we connect the USB cable and activate the DAC, we find this to be the most pleasant setting.
We stick with soul, jazz and funk and listen to vibraphonist Roy Ayers, who passed away at the age of 84 in the testing period of the Bathys. Ayers is one of the most sampled artists; just listen to Liquid Love or Everybody Loves The Sunshine (sampled no less than 207 times according to WhoSampled, including by Dr Dre and Mary J Blige). We listen to Searching and, like his other work, it sounds so new and fresh. It is hard to imagine that this music originates from the 70s. The warm vibraphone sound and the sound of the studio are clearly audible, and we once again choose the DAC as the best-sounding option.
This review of a French pair of headphones would not be complete without French music, and regular readers will know that we put Jacques Loussier’s interpretation of Bach’s Little Fugue in G on the digital turntable. Here too we hear that the Bluetooth-Bathys is very bass-happy; it is striking that it matters which streaming application we use. For example, Qobuz sounds bassier and less spacious when played directly from the Qubuz app on a telephone and via Bluetooth than Audirvãna (Qobuz, Bluetooth).
Let’s stay in the French mood and listen to Frida Boccara, Cent Mille Chansons from 1969. It fits in well with Loussier’s Bach interpretation because this composition has many similarities with an aria from the St Matthew Passion (Mache Dich, mein Herz rein). The recording of Cent Mille Chansons is not very good, at least the versions we listened to. But a good audio system should be able to handle this properly. The orchestra accompanying Boccara has been recorded too loudly. We hear tape saturation and distortion. And here too, the double basses dominate and drown out the vocals in loud passages. This is most noticeable when using Bluetooth. When using the DAC and analogue input, the sound is more balanced.