Recording - July 2017 - 30

HEDD

Type 05 Studio
Monitor

A new name in monitors adds beautiful
innovation to world-famous technology
REVIEW BY MIKE METLAY

EDD stands for Heinz ElectroDynamic Designs.
It's a firm based in Berlin, founded in 2015,
that has recently brought its first monitors to
market. The mastermind behind HEDD is Mr.
Klaus Heinz, the cofounder of ADAM Audio and the man
directly responsible for the current explosion of monitors
using Air Motion Transformers, sometimes inaccurately
called "ribbon tweeters".
The AMT was first developed by Oskar Heil in the 1960s,
and consists of a folded flat ribbon of very light metallized
plastic that "breathes" like the folds of the human voice box.
Without going into the physics of it all, this design boasts
lightning-fast transient response and beautifully flat and consistent behavior at very high frequencies. Mr. Heinz developed
ADAM's ART and X-ART tweeters based on this design,
propelling the firm to the heights of popularity. Now, partnered
with his son Frederik Knop (himself a mastering engineer),
Mr. Heinz has continued the evolution of the AMT and added
other innovations in a new line of HEDD speakers.
The current HEDD line consists of four speakers: two 3-way
models-the dual-woofer Type 30 and the brand-new Type
20-and two 2-way models, the Type
05 and Type 07. For this review, I
got to live with the Type 05 for several
weeks and get to know its unique
capabilities and sound.

The Type 05

The Type 05 is a front-ported, biamplified 2-way speaker with a 6" Ultra
Honeycomb Composite cone and a
2" (equivalent size) AMT tweeter, with
Danish-made ICEpower amps delivering
50 Watts of power to each driver.
The AMT is mounted in a redesigned
waveguide that's intended to provide
a smoother transition, both sonically
and in terms of "sweet spot" dispersion,
between the AMT and the woofer.
30

RECORDING July 2017

The cabinet itself has rounded corners to prevent
edge-related anomalies and is extremely rigid, coated in
a matte-black rubber finish that's both elegant and practical
(if you pick up and move speakers as often as I do). The
front-panel faceplate is designed to have up to three
indicator LEDs; the Type 05 sports green power-on and white
digital-connection LEDs, but no red overload/limiter LED, as
HEDD feels its amplifiers don't push enough power to warrant
the extra limiting circuitry present in its larger siblings.
The rear panel has an IEC power cable socket, balanced
XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs, and a slot for a HEDD Bridge
card (see the sidebar). Controls include a 3-way Source switch
(Unbalanced/Balanced/HEDD Bridge), a Gain pot (-30 dB
to +6 dB), and two shelving EQ trimpots for low and high
frequency shaping. The pots have corner frequencies of 200
Hz and 2 kHz and the EQ has a very gentle curve, offering
up to ±4 dB adjustment down at 50 Hz and up near 20 kHz.
For my listening sessions, I played with the LF shelf a bit and
ended up leaving it flat; HF shelving sounded best in my room
with a tiny cut, less than 1 dB.

Listening

The first thing that struck me about the Type 05 wasn't its
beautiful and crystal-clear high end, believe it or not. That's
what neophytes tend to notice the first time they hear any
AMT-based tweeter, but I've been using and working with
those speakers for well over a decade, so I was half-expecting
that. No, what got me was the bass!
The Type 05's frequency response is listed as 45 Hz to 50
kHz with no tolerances listed; we can assume that's -3 dB,
but it's not stated explicitly. What is stated explicitly is that the
speaker's only 1.5 dB down at 52 Hz and 20 kHz, and based
on my listening tests, I think those numbers are conservative.
Is it the new woofer design? The porting? The cabinet? All of
the above? All I know is, this is the first 6" speaker I've used
in a very long time where I didn't even feel a tiny twinge
of desire for a subwoofer. Bass response is rich, incredibly
detailed, and dovetails perfectly with low-mids and above.
Unless you're producing dance music that requires 808-level
boom, the Type 05 won't leave you lacking.
The new waveguide does its job very well...
there are no audible anomalies in the crossover range (2.3 kHz), and the woofer hands
off very gracefully to the AMT tweeter, which
is one of the best I've ever heard. Lots of
companies are building speakers with folded
ribbons today, but Mr. Heinz seems to have
a magic touch. The treble is present, vividly
etched without being shrill, and goes on forever.
When set up in an equilateral triangle at ear
level with a dimension of about 48" between
the tweeters, the Type 05 had a nicely broad
sweet spot-enough for a single engineer to
move about with impunity or for two people to
sit close together. Stereo imaging was excellent,
with a solid phantom center, and it was easy to
hear tiny details of all kinds.

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