Special thanks to “animus” for loaning me this set.

Hype for the HEDDphones has been slowly brewing ever since its announcement in May last year, culminating to the frenzy of interest that we have today. Hype, to the point where even I (your resident IEM plebian) had been innudated with requests to review this headphone ever since its official release. But for those living under a rock you may be asking: what is this pun of a headphone?

Heinz Electrodynamic Designs (HEDD) started as a loudspeaker company specialising in an uncommon type of transducer called the “air motion transformer” (AMT). I will not waste time explaining what it is, instead I’ll just link you to their page that gives you a brief primer. Just note that it’s their page and so you should expect some marketingspeak and overpromising.

After designing some speakers that were popular in their own right, HEDD decided to dive into the headphones world with a brand new idea: the world’s (kind of) first full-range AMT headphone. I’m not going to mention oBravo because they used a 2-way setup with an AMT tweeter (that also happened to be hot garbage), and I’m also not going to mention the Precide Ergo AMT because… well, which active audiophile in 2020 has even heard one?

The headphones world is a cruel place and HEDD has many established veterans to beat. Will they succeed in popularising the AMT in portable audio, or prove why nobody should use it?

Product page: https://www.hedd.audio/en/heddphone/

MSRP: $1,900

Driver type: Air motion transformer