Klipsch Heritage HP-3 Headphones Preview

This is funny because I was just thinking about the Elear. Distortion measurements aside, I actually don't hear the HP-3 as particularly warm. Bassy yes, but not especially warm. The Elear actually sounded warmer than the HP-3 to me, and with the wrong the amp, exhibited a "wall-o-warmth" as I called it. I surmise a few reasons for this - taking into consideration that everything about frequency response is relative.

1. The HP-3's higher low / mid bass bump makes the upper bass / lower mids seem less evident - more contrast between mid-bass and lower-mids.
2. The Elear's got that dip in the 4-7kHz presence region which has a drastic effect on how the bass and mids will be perceived. A similar example of this would be the earlier HD650s which had a dip slightly higher up starting at 5kHz. For was a name for this back in the day: the Sennheiser veil.
3. The HP-3 simply has a more articulate quality than the Elear. I dunno. Maybe the mass / BL factor of the biocellulose driver of the HP-3 is better than the aluminum of the Elear.

I actually liked the Elear from neutral amps that had tight grip and could control this "wall-o-warmth".

@Serious: As far as measurements, you of all people should understand that they don't explain everything. You yourself measured your Voxactivs and noted that according to the FR measurements, you would not like them and feel they might be too bright; but subjectively, they were just fine. You cannot create an exception for yourself allowing your subjective impressions to override your own measurements, and then not allow the same to others.

Also, as you are still relatively new this community, I realized that there are still certain things that you may not fully understand:

1. Yes, I do prefer neutral headphones, but people who have been around for a while know that I am secret basshead. I've dropped hints about this on several occasions too. It's a guilty pleasure, but only if done right.
2. I've on occasion loved gear that had otherwise horrible frequency response that would make other people cringe: Pinnacle P1, ATH-W3000ANV.
3. The Fostex TH-900 (and the old Denons) remains in the minds of many members here - this goes back five, six, seven, eight years. These headphones were seen by many as a "shoot, oh so close". Probably 50% of the people who have been around long enough, including myself have actually owned the old Denons or TH-600/900. The HP-3 is something a lot of people I know actually have been waiting for. Bassy, maybe even slightly V curved, no lower mid suckouts, and no sharp ringing treble.
4. There are A LOT of secret bassheads here. More bassheads than trebleheads. They don't go around stomping on the ground, crapping on the Utopia or HD800 (and whatever modded variants), whenever someone praises these headphones. The best you can do is extend the courtesy back.
5. Along the lines of #4, there are also a lot of biocellulose driver material fans, myself included.

Finally, I'm not telling anyone these are neutral headphones. The frequency response plots should be obvious enough. Since we have an opportunity here, I would say that the bass subjectively seems much less that what is shown on the FR plots. It's entirely possible I'm getting too good of a seal on the coupler (even though I did use a foam strip to break the seal slightly - I probably should have used a felt strip).

P.S. Please, no one go PC on @Serious. Let his words speak for themselves. Sometimes it's more damning when we don't overreact.

 

Again pre-production!

 

Moved off-topic stuff to the How to WIn Friends section. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

 

tomorrow.

 

LOL. I am not putting sunglasses on. I'm sure it's fine. What I'm finding lifting the pads off a bit is that the bass doesn't roll off. Seems inherent to open headphones for them to be more immune to bass reduction when the seal is broken.

I never found the Elear fatiguing. Granted it had a bit of shhh shhh shhh and zzzz zzzz zzzz thing going on, but that region of the treble never particularly bugged me. If anything, the HP-3 is a bit sharper and edgier than the Elear (there was no added sibilance on HP-3.) I don't know if this will bug you or not.

 

I'll take an impedance measurement to confirm, but yeah, source impedance of 20 ohms probably would be very bad.

 

Eikon as a slightly dark tilt with warmth.
HP-3 is fun V-shaped- bassy.
HP-3 has more bass and more treble than Eikon.

 

OK, here are some subjective comparisons of the HP-3 to other traditional dynamic headphones that I have on hand. I generally don't like comparing traditional dynamics to orthos( or electrostatics) because they are so different in presentation, so no orthos will be included. The other three headphones are the Sennheiser HD800 (heavily modded - Vader), HD650 KISS, and ZMF Atticus. These are the only traditional dynamic headphones that I keep in the stable. While they have different frequency responses, I consider all of them TOTL (well maybe not HD650), each bringing their own special traits to the table.

HD650 KISS: http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/hd650-kiss-mod.3440/
HD800 Vader: http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/hd800-darth-vader-sdr-mod.3648/

Note that the Vader mod has been further developed to the foam filled three straw method instead of the SDR, which I found more effective at taming the 6kHz peak. In addition, some foam was used to line the lower front area of the inside of the cup.

I pulled out all the stops for this, including my poisonous toxic blue glowy mercury vapor rectifier tubes for my parallel 45 SET. I used only three LPs to keep things simple, looking for specific things that I was interested in: Daft Punk Random Access Memories, Suzanna Vega Self-titled (original LP I bought from store in the 1980s), and Paul Simon Graceland (RTI).



The point of this exercise was to use the best playback system I had on hand to compare the HP-3 to my most favorite headphones. Note that I am not bothering with inferior headphones. One person seems to be stuck in his head that the HP-3 is a fancy TH-X00.* From a subjective point of view, I can assure you that this is the not the case. The X00 is a good headphone, a great bargain (it won the SBAF 2016 Golden Schlong award after all), but is not competitive in this arena. Finally, if you don't like fun sounding headphones, or are one of five people on SBAF who require smooth highs only achieveable by modded HD650/800s (Serious, Psalm, OJ, and maybe NY Jimmy and Canada Mike), or you hate bass, then GO AWAY. None of what's coming up will interest you.

*Just because the HP-3 uses a biocellulose driver that has a 1-1.3 Testicles or whatever doesn't mean squat. Making any assumptions of what the Klipsch engineers or presumably what Foster did or did not do the driver is presumptuous armchair quarterbacking, and ignores all the subtleties and nuances that make a tranducer system work. In my experience of designing, building, tweaking many different types of speakers since I was 19 (and in the past year SET amps), I can say that it's the last 5% that makes all the difference. And some people never get that last 5%, because it's the hardest thing to do.

In a nutshell, here is a subjective analysis of the technicalties of each headphone. While tonal response does affect these factors, I've tried to listen past the tonal response to arrive at my conclusions. The three LPs I mentioned above contain sufficiently different tracks for me to make a good assessment of these technical aspects.


One thing of interest to readers is that some technical aspects are very close to each other. That's because they are. There's an art to plots like this, so the scale and look is intentional. Anything that is 0.5 points away took me mulitple one vs. one comparisons using different tracks to arrive at a conclusion, and even then I'm not too sure. Anything that is 1 point away is subtle but can be definitively discerned.

General thoughts:

1. The bassier headphones have a tendency to artificially inflate their macrodynamics score. What I did was run less bass and drum heavy tracks to accounts for this (Suzanna Vega). Even after this, I felt the HP-3 just nudged out the others. The HD800 and HD650 are the most compressed, but not by much.
2. The HD800 owns everything else in terms of microdetail. Atticus gets close in terms of microdynamics. HP-3 is surprising good at "plankton". It falls a little bit behind in microdynamics, having a tendency to compress lowel level sounds a bit upward. Everything is mashed together here because it's all so close. Microdynamics is a huge priority for me. Don't expect this without a SET amp, preferably the no feedback types.
3. The HP-3's headstage was actually surprising once I got to do some one vs. one comparisons. Actually quite deep. The Atticus has decent depth, but the closed cups muddle things up in terms of localization precision. HD650 has decent width, little depth, and overall compact. Everything scores badly here because headphones suck at staging. Speakers are better.
4. I never considered the HD800 a particularly fast headphone and still don't. The TPE and biocelluse (on Atticus and HP-3) are faster, more agile, more reactive.

More notes:

1. The HD650 KISS has the most neutral response. Where it fails are at the extremes. Rolled off sub and low bass and rolled off top-end air. Also, there's a bit of edge (5kHz) that could be toned down with some recordings. The accurate mids are the best part - not too lush, not too dry. Just right. Of all the headphones here, the HD650 has the suckiest bass. Muddy, slow, early roll-off.
2. The Atticus has a localized mid-bass bump and a tiny depression in the upper bass / lower mids which helps impart a sense of clarity. The rest of the treble seems well behaved. The cup reverb can exacerbate any bit of honk or shrillness in recordings. The internal cup reverb can be good or bad, depending upon personal preference. Last half of top octave is missing - but this is typical of many good headphones. (The lack of top end air is probably something more noticeable for people who've been playing with controlled directivity supertweeters all day, trying to integrate them into wideband drivers.) The midbass quality is good, articulate, taut, clean, but below the midbass, things start to suffer.
3. HD800 Vader, like all HD800 mods is a bit tipped up. Little bit of warmth, well controlled 6kHz peak, but still annoying with the wrong recording. The highs and top end are fairly smooth and extended. Bass is good / OK. I think the HD800 bass is missing texture and clean pitch compared to the Atticus and HP-3.
4. HP-3 is V-shaped and has the most overall bass. The bass doesn't seem to be as much as what the frequency response measurements indicate. Could be measurement error from me getting too good of a seal. The other reason might be because the bass quality is the best among the headphones here, allowing us to pick out pitch, textures, transients, more easily despite the higher volume. Highs are more energetic and sharper than he rest.

Comfort:

1. Atticus is the least comfortable, but this doesn't mean uncomfortable. Big pads. Heavy weight. The suspension band helps a lot. The large cable plugs can get in the way. I really don't have a problem wearing them.
2. HD650 is next least comfy probably. The clamp. It can be reduced by pulling the cups out all the way and bending the metal back a little bit.
3. HD800 would have been super nice, but lack of padding at the top of headband causes me discomfort over time - most other people without Klingon head ridges will have no problem. The circumferance of the cups is a bit oversized, like an Alien facehugger on the ear, but weight is distributed nicely.
4. HP-3 was the most comfortable. Pads conform the the proper angle to face. Cable entry in the back and angled sharply so cables don't get in the way.