HEDD Type07 at StarMount Studio

StarMount Studio is really fortunate to be one of the few to experience the first things that reaches our shore (Malaysia)
Dennis Tan of  Roland Asia Pacific (RAP) offered us a trial to listen out to new speakers and without much hesitation and with great pleasure we got a pair of Heinz Electro Dynamic Design HEDD Type 07 active monitor speakers in the studio.

 1:1 box for the HEDD Type07

To be honest, this pair is not a show stopper. It appeared to be under powered when it was fired up alongside with ATC SC25, Solitaire 6a (which sounded very close to ATC SC25 at a fraction of the price) or even Axis Voicebox S passive ribbon speakers. We are used to a more open sounding, class A amps rather than enclosed bass reflex active speakers. Thus the underpowered impression was made when they were lined up together.

We always believe in 2nd chance, so we took great length into sweeping frequencies, adjusting speaker angle, and finding the best distance from the wall and to the sweet spot etc.

Here are some things we figured. The speakers sounded best in the studio when its about 1ft away from the wall, spaced in between is around 5m and about 3m to listening spot. The speakers are very directional, and we manage to widened the listening sweet spot with this arrangement. And listening to 78dB is quite comfortable as well. The mids and highs are very well presented without much hype or in your face especially on those sensitive 7k, 10k region. Its not muffled but much more comfortable to use and encourages explorations on the high frequency regions in tone sculpting.


As mentioned before, this pair is not a show stopper that it won't have immediate impact on listening experience, but its textbook like sound reproduction is surprisingly easy to work with. And most of all, we did a quick mix with the pair and it translated very well across mediums, especially phones where most of the elements are still intact, with almost exact mids and the low mid thuds. Its also sensitive towards compression and it can really gives a good gauge and direction to how much treatment needed to be done on the mix.

We struggle on listening on the bass notes on the low end as compared to the other monitors. Clarity is not so much 400hz and below. Its more lumpy, but once we could carve out the clarity for our bass lines, its very much visible and heard throughout platforms. But really wished the low extensions are made deeper and clearer, maybe that's the limitation or characteristic of bass reflex design.

Overall, we were quite happy with this as its time saving in making decisions once it sat in the right place. And now it has become our new addition to the studio ( one of the contributing part is, our main speakers needed to be sent for maintenance and we need this HEDD to work asap). As risky as it seems, but actually it was a good decision as we have delivered one off mix to clients more than we have done before. Perhaps these are much better on the bigger HEDD Type 20 (which we are really looking forward to it)

Its not exactly a easy listening pair of monitor speakers, but as for work, it translates well and that is what matters in our day to day turnover. As we are mainly summing through outboards, that have saved us tremendous amount of work in recalling. So, yes the HEDD tag is on one of our Avocets output buttons and will be for a long time.

HEDD Type07 on the outer side, with Axis Voicebox, both having ribbon tweeters.