HEDD - A History

To celebrate ten years of HEDD Audio, our team looks back at the past decade of work and the roots of its sonic philosophy in the work of co-founder Klaus Heinz.

2015 had many highlights - the Paris Climate Accord was signed, Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars got into everyone’s ears with ‘Uptown Funk’ and Usain Bolt claimed his third triple gold haul at the Beijing World Athletics Championships. We all sent each other GIFs on our iPhone 6s’ and went to the cinema to see Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out. It was also the year that we began our journey to challenge established speaker brands and take monitoring to a whole new level.

For the past 10 years HEDD has been making waves in the world of speaker and headphone design, and it’s easy to think of us as a relative newcomer to the scene - but much of our work has been decades in the making, representing countless hours of inspiration, dedication and perspiration. All of which has been in the quest to achieve a signature sound that is as natural as it is powerful.

It’s not possible to discuss the life of HEDD without first discussing the career of our co-founder Klaus Heinz — a man who has dedicated his professional life to the accurate recreation of music, and whose passion and engineering excellence has delivered some of the key innovations in loudspeaker technology.

Klaus Heinz - A lifetime in sound

Born in 1946 and nourished by a love of classical music, Heinz’ early studies and interests in physics were fused with a passion for sound while studying at university. As a result, how sound was replayed went on to become a lifelong fascination. By the mid 1970s, the young physicist was also a hi-fi dealer, running a store named Audio Level in Berlin. One day, a new pair of speakers were brought in, the AMT1, manufactured by ESS, sparking a technical and engineering relationship with their designer, Oskar Heil. Heinz was intrigued by Heil’s new tweeter design — dubbed the Air Motion Transformer (AMT) driver — which provided incredible high-frequency clarity. Enthused by the sound, Heinz visited Heil in the Bay Area and was eventually mentored by him over a number of years. At the same time, the young German physicist also made a point to meet and discuss speaker architecture with other leading designers of the time such as Paul Kliptsch.

Above: Klaus Heinz and Oskar Heil meeting in the US in the 1980s. 

Motivated and inspired by his travels and what he was learning, Klaus Heinz worked to modernise the AMT tweeter by combining innovative designs with new materials that were becoming available throughout the 1970s and 1980s, making it possible to reduce the weight and physical size of the original AMT driver designed by Heil. The result was a driver that was more practical and could fit in large-scale production environments putting Heinz at the forefront of technological changes that would revolutionise the professional audio industry. In 1999, he founded ADAM Audio where he created a number of landmark studio monitor models over the following 15 years.

New start, same direction

Inspired to find new challenges, Heinz left ADAM Audio in 2014 and founded HEDD the following year alongside his son Frederik Knop, mastering engineer and Doctor of Musicology. From the onset HEDD Audio was intended as a continuation of Heinz’s quest for sonic accuracy: a natural sound delivered with power, pushing the sonic capabilities of the AMT driver, and all of the other components in a modern speaker, to their limits.

A conscious decision was made to design and build every unit in the new company's headquarters in Berlin. Quality control would be assured and managed through knowing everyone in the production line and the company soon became a significant pillar of the German capital’s music technology scene. Partnerships and relationships were formed with many of the leading companies of the time such as Rupert Neve Designs, Ableton, SoundCloud, Native Instruments, Trinnov, and GIK Acoustics to name a few. Over the years, HEDD has grown to reach far and wide, with a global network of distribution and retail partners as well as being a regular presence at trade shows like NAMM, Superbooth, GearFest, and CanJam.

Today, our monitors and headphones are used by legendary studios including Hansa in Germany and Miraval in France; ground-breaking artists like Q-Tip and DJ Jazzy Jeff; Grammy-nominated producers such as Alissia and Tokimonsta; and blockbuster composers Haushka and Hildur Guðnadóttir. What unites all these artists and creative houses is their choice to rely on HEDD to create their art on a daily basis.

Above: Hip-hop pioneer and legendary DJ and producer Jazzy Jeff in his Philadelphia studio where he uses HEDD's TYPE 30 MK2 monitors. 

The innovations that have lead the way

In the continual search for improvements, Klaus Heinz identified a new honeycomb material that would become the foundation for all the woofers used in HEDD monitors, one which combined beautifully with the new AMT drivers he and the team had been developing for this new company.

The first example of this combination was our inaugural product range, the MK1 line of analog monitors, which introduced the now well known and loved TYPE 05, 07, and 30 models, released in 2016. As Dante (audio over Ethernet solutions) began to spread into more and more areas of audio connectivity, HEDD took the leap and offered digital connectivity via the HEDD Bridge modular input card, giving more options to the end user.

In 2017, we added the TYPE 20 MK1 monitor to the range alongside the innovative HEDD Lineariser VST/AU Plugin, which allowed producers and engineers to phase-align the individual drivers in their HEDD speakers. That year also saw the launch of the flagship Tower Mains: a modular, closed-box design which combines accuracy with the power and presence of traditional recording studio main speakers. With a small footprint but standing at 2.2m tall, their imposing size is matched by the impact of their performance. They continue to be a hit in both professional music studios and the homes of audiophiles from Germany to South Korea.

Above: A custom Tower Mains installation for a South Korean audiophile.

Dmitry Grigoriev joined the development team in 2018 and the following year proved to be a pivotal year in our ongoing story, moving us further into the public eye and creating new industry benchmarks. The first full-range AMT driver was implemented into the HEDDphone ONE marking a new way of thinking about headphones that created huge waves amongst audio communities. With its AMT driver powered by Variable Velocity Transformation (VVT) technology, the HEDDphone One was able to deliver frequencies between 10Hz and 40kHz, whilst still adhering to the ‘HEDD Sound’ that was established with the MK1 monitor range.  

That same year saw us his another major milestone as a manufacturer with the release of the MK2 range of monitors, which also included two dedicated sub-woofer units. Building on the analogue foundations of the MK1, the MK2 range further refined the AMT and woofer designs and moved our monitors into the digital realm with the addition of onboard DSP options as standard. The integration of DSP across the range meant users could tune their speakers to their own tastes and their own listening environments like never before. The MK2 range was made possible thanks to the HEDD design team using technology and knowledge from previous research and development efforts. The Lineariser plugin was now integrated into every speaker while the new BASS 08 and 12 units could also be phase-aligned meaning that all drivers in a dedicated sat/sub system could be aligned, regardless of their physical position in the room. The lessons learned from the closed-box Tower Mains evolved into the Closed or Ported feature, giving MK2 users the option to have a tighter or lower bass response depending on their preference. This new feature was implemented with the design of custom plugs that can fill the bass ports on the front of the speakers.

Following these milestones, we, alongside every other hardware manufacturer in the world, saw a drastic change in the following years as the COVID-19 pandemic affected the global trade system, making it difficult to access parts and effectively ship products. This downturn did allow extra time for research and development however. Klaus Heinz, now in his seventies, passed the engineering baton to Dmitry Grigoriev, who became HEDD's Head of Research & Development. Having worked with Heinz for several years, Grigoriev had the ‘HEDD Sound’ in his veins and it wouldn’t take long for the team’s new efforts to bear fruit. 

In 2023, we took our next technological leap with the release of the HEDDphone TWO, which built upon the foundations of its predecessor by implementing a new tuning of the AMT driver and a reduced overall weight alongside an innovative headband design. The result created a new standard for studio headphones, one that has become a trusted tool for many mixing and mastering engineers the world over. That year also marked the launch of our collaboration with renowned monitor accessories company ISO Acoustics to develop accessories to mount and fix HEDD speakers in a variety of different locations and angles. These new accessories were designed with the emerging Atmos world in mind, and have proven especially appealing to smaller, home-based studios who want to work with immersive audio. 

Above: A custom HEDD atmos installation for French musician Grégory Betton.

Following the success of the HEDDphone TWO, our R&D team engaged in a rapid process of taking onboard user feedback from the audiophile community and implementing it. The result was the HEDDphone TWO GT, released in 2024 and  our first dedicated foray into the audiophile market. The GT proved to be sleeper-hit and global success, with the Head-Fi community embracing the clarity and dynamic power it provides.

In 2025 - our tenth year of operation - we returned to our roots with the fully analogue A-CORE range, available in the same TYPE 05 and 07 sizes and format as the MK2 models. This time we put the emphasis on straightforward analogue power and precision. Featuring the exact same acoustic components as the MK2 speakers (with the DSP replaced by an analog filter board), the A-Core delivers the same outstanding HEDD sound at a more accessible price.

What comes next

The central strand that runs through every one of our products, the ‘HEDD Sound’, has always been about delivering a natural sound with clarity and power. That aspirational goal has been achieved in a variety of different ways to suit different users and their respective circumstances.

Above: The Edition X, a TYPE 05 A-CORE monitor with unique gold-detailing.

Our ability to innovate remains key to our growth and success so what is set to come in the next ten years? What will we add to this history of HEDD when we celebrate our 20th birthday?

Here's our promise: we will continue to pioneer new materials and manufacturing approaches and try bold new ideas to produce trustworthy and great-sounding studio equipment and high-end audiophile gear. Every step we take will honor our commitment to uncompromising components, thoughtful design, and extraordinary sound

Here’s to another 10 years of HEDD!

Yours sonically,
Freddy, Dimi, and the whole HEDD family