Pros:

     Comfortable

     Light Weight

     Beautiful Earcups

Mediocre:

     Not Super-Durable Finish

     Mids

     Highs

Bull:

     Sibilance – So Much

     Weak Bass

     Feels flat across the board – 2D

     No Case

BLUF: The Denon AH-D9200 is a lightweight, beautiful, closed-back headphone with excellent comfort and decent isolation. It is wholly let down by its sound signature, a lack of bass, and intense sharpness/sibilance. A balanced cable oddly helps the sound quality quite a bit, but one is not provided by the manufacturer.

Up for review today are the Denon AH-D9200 closed-back headphones. The 9200 is the flagship headphones for Denon. They use proprietary 50mm FreeEdge dynamic drivers with Neodymium magnets. They come with a box and a couple of cables, but no actual carrying case, a must for most closed-backs. These retail for around $1,600 and I bought mine from eBay to try them out. I don’t…really have much else to add since Denon’s website is sparse on information, so let’s get into the review.

Comfort/Build (Can you wear it for long periods, or will it fall apart after 1 use?): The 9200 looks like the embodiment of a glass of Japanese whiskey from Suntory. The lightweight bamboo earcups are beautiful with textured grains and a quilted leather headpad. The cups extend well, have numbers to remember your settings with, and swivel to fit your head better. These are some of the most comfortable headphones I’ve owned and they are quite portable too if you want to risk damaging them because they don’t have a carrying case. Why would you build a lightweight closed-back without a carrying case? No clue, but it’s definitely missing. Still, the headphones are exceptionally comfortable and would make for decent travel headphones.

Speaking of travel, these are clearly built for it if the cables are any indicator. The 9200 comes with two cables, both basically identical as they are unbalanced 3.5mm cables terminated in 3.5mm with a 6.35mm adapter for home use on a desktop system. The only difference between the cables? How long they are. One is 1.3m (travel) and the other is 3m (home). I am surprised they include both instead of a decent balanced cable – something even Sennheiser is doing these days with the HD 660S2. The cables themselves are fine, if a little microphonic, but the 9200 REALLY benefits from a balanced cable as described later. The lack of a case and a balanced cable at this price is a ridiculous omission. Still, the overall here is a 5 (Among the Best.)

I am powering these headphones off of my home theater desktop setup which consists of an EverSolo DMP-A8 Streamer/DAC that feeds into an iFi iCAN Phantom AMP through 3-pin XLR connections. This combo eliminates the need to be hooked up to my computer as a source and the Phantom can power anything from sensitive IEMs to E-stats to power-thirsty planars – allowing me to use the same setup for every review going forward. The 9200 is moderately easy to drive using the 3.5mm connection – I’m running it at 35-50/100 on the Phantom with Low gain. A balanced cable changes it to about 15/100 on low gain.

Below are the test tracks used to test each headphone we review – there are a couple changes to refine this. The songs are in order to test sub-bass (bass you can feel) first, followed by mid-bass (bass drums and bass guitars – bass you can hear), then a spectrum of mids evaluating different instruments and vocals (where most of the music is presented), then highs (higher pitched instruments and cymbals) and lastly sibilance (sharp S sounds).

Lows (Sub-bass/bass quality and quantity): well, it’s not Among the Worst, but I’d rank the bass here as Below Average to Average. There is essentially no sub-bass at all on Taylor Swift’s “…Ready For It?” – easily of the bassiest songs I’ve ever encountered. This is normally such a rumbly song that it is depressing to listen to it on the 9200. The same goes for “Seven Nation Army.” If you’re looking for headphones with no bass, these are they. The Mid-bass is a bit better – you can hear the bass guitar and drums in Seven Nation Army, but the bass feels so flat and lacking in dynamics that it feels like a different song compared to listening to it on the Liric or Susvara or XTC2.5. The Ronir’s bass destroys the 9200. “Crystalize” barely has any drums at all and “Sail” feels like its wings are clipped. It’s a 2 (Below Average) for me on the 9200, I just can’t get behind it.

Mids (Vocals/Instrument clarity and presence): OK, so bad bass, then at least it has good mids right? Yes and no – the 9200 is clearly a mids-focused headphone, which is OK, I like mids as much as I like balance. “Liar” honestly sounds really good with the female vocals coming through nicely along with the instruments. In fact, the female vocals emphasis is greater than a lot of headphones, so if that’s your cup of tea, these may be perfect for you. “Landing in London” sounds good in the mid-frequencies, even if there are almost no lows to speak of. The male vocals and guitars are full-bodied and accurate. There is some sibilance though on this song with sharp “S” sounds, and it’s a bit annoying. Still, the detail and presentation in the mids are very good. “Narrow Mouth” sounds excellent as always, but the sibilance is still there and the drums sound flat. The piano from “Wide Awake” is accurate, if a bit sharp sounding, but it’s more of the same here, sibilance and flat bass response make the overall song sound flat. The best I can give the 9200 here is a 3 (Average.)

Highs (Cymbals/High pitched vocals or instrument quality and presence/Sibilance): The sibilance starts coming through immediately on “By the Way,” but also the mids detail is well presented here. The overall song sounds pretty flat again, though the cymbals can be heard quite clearly – they just sound wrong though. It’s not the brilliant cymbal strike you get on the Susvara, it’s a weird, flat, metallic strike that’s more abrasive than excellent. The high guitar notes on “Otherside” are abrasive and painful. This is not the Chili Peppers at their best, and it definitely doesn’t sound like a $1,600 set of closed-backs should. “Awake and Alive” had to be turned off before I could get through the whole song due to how painful the sibilance was from both male and female voices – very bad. Again, I’m torn between a 2 and a 3 here because the highs overall are a 3 (average), but the sibilance is a 1 (Among the Worst), so we’ll go with a 2 (Below Average) here.

Soundstage/Imaging (How big and accurate the song sounds: The soundstage is OK, that’s the best I’m giving it, and that’s not taking into account eh flat feeling of music on the headphones, that’s just how music is presented. It’s bigger than some, but far worse than the best. I’ll call it average for a set of closed-backs, but the Liric, Rognir, and the XTC2.5 are both better. Imaging is OK, but it comes across as very forward-focused – 180 instead of 360. “Sound of Silence” is way off with the drums coming in the front of the left ear and the guitars coming in somewhere distant on the right ear. Vocals just sound everywhere instead of in front. At least everything avoids being blurred together. Oddly, I hooked the 9200 up to a balanced Corpse Cable and it improved the imaging, bass, AND the soundstage – but not the sibilance. So, if you have these, ditch the stock cable and grab a balanced one. With the stock cable, since you shouldn’t be expected to buy a $200 cable in addition to $1,600 headphones, the 9200 earns a 3 (Average.)

Value (Cost vs Performance): The value is pretty bad overall. Bamboo is good at reducing vibrations, but you can get the same drivers with different wood just by moving down Denon’s line – the 7200 and the 5200 are $1k and $700 respectively. The only difference I can tell is the wood the cups are made from. So, if you want sonic mediocrity, at least just get the 5200. Or, grab a Liric for around the same price as the 9200 – it’s a better overall headphone with a carrying case. Or, if you want wood cups, grab the Liric II when it comes out. Heck, grab the XTC2.5 for $200 less, it’s less comfortable, but sounds better by far. If you want gorgeous wood cups, grab a Rognir, though find one used. So yes, the 9200’s value, even compared to the rest of the Denon lineup is bad enough to earn it a 2 (Below Average.)

Conclusion: I really wanted to like these and I have heard good things from people before, so I was expecting a much better sonic performance. I’ve been listening to a slew of closed-backs and some truly excellent open-backs lately though and the 9200 just doesn’t come close in 2024. You’re better off with the Liric, Rognir, XTC2.5, Solitaire T, Modhouse Argon, Beyerdynamic T5, or just an open-back Arya unless you really love the looks of the 9200 and that’s your only requirement. As much as I wanted to like these, I cannot recommend them to anyone, especially at this price. The score of 3 (Average) below is only prevented from being a 2 by the comfort/build quality score – otherwise, the 9200 would be a 2 (Below Average) – and yes, I broke out the calculator to get a 2.83/5 overall score which I rounded to the nearest whole number to get 3.

Bytes & Bull Overall Score: 3 (Average)