Had both of these headphones, and absolutely they have a pleasant presentation, but make no mistake, they are quite coloured and rolled off sounding. You get used to the sound and of course you don't get sibilance or harder edges, which is like prozac for the ear, but you certainly are not hearing everything in the intended balance. Just to be clear, I am not a proponent of neutral is best, not at all, I like some colour to my headphones, a little more warmth than neutral and with bass impact. However, once the sound gets too smoothed that becomes too much of a good thing.
As much as I enjoyed Nightowl and to a lesser extent the Nighthawk, eventually my brain was craving what was missing. It took a little time to get my hearing brain used to better balanced frequency relationship/presentation than you get from these headphones, but when I started using objectively better balanced headphones and tried going back to the Audioquest offerings I couldn't really enjoy them very much again. Just too much attenuation. It is non-offensive, but it is too smoothed over and while warm and comforting, there is a great deal of detail that is either hard to perceive due to the smoothing, or it is still audible, but changed.
You lose a great deal of transient information with this smoothing, IMO. We all gravitate to and enjoy things through our personal lens so while these aspects of the Audioquest signatures for me became a detriment they may be a positive for others. And just to finally tie things up, I do not like bright headphones either, some smoothness is often in order because a great deal of music isn't really that well recorded and some smoothing may be beneficial, especially at louder playback volume which I tend to prefer. As I said though, for me the Nightowl and Hawk are just a little too smoothed over and they end up being, for me, not very engaging. I fully get that others simply love that about them and more power to you if you've found your sound.
And for those who are currently wired into the sound of the Owl and Hawk, if you are ever tempted to try other signatures, you can't go back and forth. The Owl and Hawk are quite coloured and if you have been using them for any appreciable period of time, your brain is now for lack of a better metaphor, addicted to the colour. The first time you start listening to more balanced presentations they will sound jarringly different and your brain will want what it knows. That happened to me. However, if you stop using the Owl or Hawk for a few weeks, completely stop using them, and let your brain acclimate to a different signature, when you put the Owl and Hawk back on you will notice what you haven't been hearing. That isn't a guarantee that you will prefer the difference, maybe you will, maybe you won't, depends on the headphones that you try as an alternative.
