Наушники — oBravo HAMT Signature

The HAMT Signature, also sold as the HAMT-1 Signature, is a hybrid over-ear headphone from oBravo, a Taiwanese maker of handcrafted headphones and earphones. In a message from the founder, David, the company says the design came out of twelve years of research and was meant to bring the performance of high-end loudspeakers to a headphone. It sits in the HAMT range next to the HAMT-1 MKII and the HAMT-3 MKII, with a HAMT-1 Plus announced as coming soon. The maker lists it at TWD 262,499, the Australian price is AUD 14,299.95, and in the UK it sold for about GBP 5,899.

Key specs that matter

Each cup combines a 57 mm neodymium dynamic driver with a 40 mm Air Motion Transformer tweeter in a coaxial two-way arrangement. Impedance is 56 ohm and sensitivity is 105 dB. oBravo gives a frequency response of 15 Hz to 45 kHz. The back cavity is acacia wood, the outer housing aluminium alloy, the headband carbon fibre and the ear pads Alcantara, and the headphone weighs about 540 g.

Engineering and use context

In an AMT the pleated membrane pushes air out of its folds as they open and close, letting a compact driver move a lot of air fast, and for that reason oBravo gives the top octaves to it rather than to the large cone. The dynamic driver covers the low and middle range. A small window on the cup shows the Mundorf capacitors used in the crossover, an upgrade over the original HAMT-1. The construction is semi-open, and each cup has three ports closed or opened with white plastic plugs, which lets the owner adjust the airflow and with it the bass level. The pads are removable and washable. The headband presses from the sides rather than from above, and a three-way gimbal gives 180 degrees of articulation. oBravo advises about 20 hours of burn-in.

Pairing

The supplied Prometheus cable is made of silver-plated single crystal copper, runs about 1.2 m and ends in a balanced 4 pin XLR plug, and adapters for 4.4 mm, 3.5 mm, 2.5 mm and 6.3 mm connections are included, so the headphone can run from both balanced desktop amplifiers and portable players. The cable attaches with coaxial connectors marked left and right. It ships in a weather-sealed aluminium case.

Alternatives

The oBravo HAMT-1 MKII is a closed-back hybrid AMT headphone with an aluminium alloy headband, priced by the maker at TWD 86,279.