The numbers are starting to add up... ............... Heeds at the Heathrow 2005 by Jason Hector

Issue 42 / Jan-Feb 2006

"At Heathrow Heed were showing what they hope will be their assault on the more serious end of the market. The system playing consisted of a pair of their pseudo-omni Envoy speakers driven in a bi-amp configuration by two of the new stereo power amplifiers, fed from a prototype pre-ampfifier and Quasar phono-stage. Source components were a (slightly outclassed) Roksan CD-player or the (unsurprisingly) far more impressive Roksan Xerxes 20 turntable, arm and cartridge.

The Heed Envoys dictated much of the sound we heard and are a three-way spekaer with more than a hint of the Shahinian about them. Hardly surprising as Heed like me are fans of the American pseudo-omnis – but like all good engineers they thought they could do better! The Envoy are non-directional to use Heed's language and all of the drivers used in the Envoy are metal ceramic composite and offer wide dispersion. Mounting them in a sloping back baffle on the top of the cabinet creates the non-directionality. Bass reinforcement is a combination  of a transmission line and port.

The amplifiers also boast some novel technology and are balanced from pre-amplifier input to speaker output. Also on static display was a new integrated that re-launches many of the design concepts and the product name from the Ion Obelisk of years gone by. It cetainly looked promising with plenty of neat design  touches and the possibility to upgrade the power amplifier supply section with the addition of another box, just like the original.

But it is the sound that was produced that gets the Heed room mentioned. Firstly they were totally happy  to play any disc anybody had and I am afraid I monopolised the system for at least half a dozen tracks (which strangely emptied the room). Secondly while you could not say the sound was the best in hi-fi terms it was certainly one of the best rooms communicating the musical message in a piece. Being critical, the system sounded a bit bright in the treble, although it was clear without too many nasty artefacts. But this was more than made up  for with an overall presentation that grabbed the rhythm of a piece and built everything else on top. The omni-ness wasn't obvious,
the system just sounded real and the drivers integrated effectively. The bass from the Envoy speakers was pretty extended in room but did not have a hint of lag or smear; staying tight and communicative even at high volumes with bass heavy material. No matter what was played I always felt I was hearing through to the artists intentions and all happening in a small hotel room to boot. This makes the Heed system very rare at the Heathrow show."

Looking for speakers: The Heed Envoy by Markus Sauer *

August 2006

Okay, they’re gone. I’ll be installing the ATCs again soon, we’ll see if a direct-radiating speaker sounds wrong, as Jason has predicted, after prolonged exposure to a non-direct-radiating speaker.

I’d like to get back to the point I was trying to make in my previous long-winded post, namely, that listening to the Envoys has opened my mind to directionality as an important part of a speaker’s design.

The reason we all invest so much time and money in our system will generally be a love of music. If music didn’t touch our souls, there’d be no point in trying to reproduce it as well as possible, and as much to our taste as possible.

What I had not appreciated before the Heeds was that speaker directionality is an important point in determining how easy it is to get access to the music. I’ve said that I have arrived at judgements on speakers while sitting in the optimal listening position, usually in the classic stereo triangle. For that, the sound on the design axis, preferably in the near or mid field, is what counts.

But for everyday enjoyment of music, I – like everybody else, I suppose – also have the music running while sitting in other places, or walking around in the apartment doing stuff, or in the kitchen preparing dinner.

It’s at this point that a speaker’s dispersion and directionality come into play: they determine the room sound, and as a consequence they determine how the sound will be perceived from outside the room (sometimes referred to in the American press as the LIAR or listening in another room test). Wide and uniform dispersion helps, narrow dispersion makes the sound off the listening axis quieter, uneven dispersion makes the room sound, and the sound in the rest of the apartment, uneven/coloured.

The reason I dwell on this for so long is to clarify for myself something that has been a subconscious element in my previous speaker choices, but which will now be a conscious element. I want my system to allow me easy access to my music. I do not want to limit myself to enjoying music only when seated in the chair that sits at the apex of the stereo triangle, I want to have good music/good sound when doing my household chores, when lying on the sofa while I’m reading, and in a million other positions.

Looking back, I think I've generally favoured speakers which fulfilled that requirement, but I didn’t realise it at the time.

The Envoys fit the requirement extremely well. As I have been saying on a number of occasions, they fill the room very well, and they sound very good not only when listened to at the “Listening Position”, but also from almost everywhere else.

The ‘almost’ refers to the sound on axis from their drive units, for example standing a couple of meters in front of them. That’s on-axis for the drivers, but it’s not the axis the speaker was designed for. There have been a few comments on this thread and on the Heathrow show thread where people found the Envoys bright. My guess is that those people were standing up, reasonably close to the speakers, and thus got the full force of the midrange and tweeter domes.

Unless one listens on the direct axis, I do not think the Envoys are too bright, depending on the amount of damping in your living room, of course. Mine would certainly have benefited from more damping, but that is true, to a degree, for all the speakers I’ve had in my new room.

*Markus Sauer is not only active member and moderator at Pinkfishmedia but also a long-time contributor of the influential US hi-fi magazine Stereophile, and co-founder of HIFI-STATEMENT, a new trilingual netmagazine with renowned hi-fi journalists from the UK & Germany (launching date is the 6th of January '09).

„I was genuinely surprised at how coherent and free from time-smear the Envoy sounded – a difficult trick for any three-way. ……The whole thing is thoroughly entertaining in the way it manages to bring the performers right into the room. …
My partner – a much sterner critic then myself – was particularly fond of the Envoys,
and made some decidedly uncomplimentary comments when I eventually replaced
them with more conventional forward-facing speakers.”

Tales From A Hi-Fi Show: Bristol 2007 by Channa Vithana

February 2007

"Hungarian company Heed, which are a relatively new hi-fi company, here in the UK at least, had a great sounding system.
It comprised their new Obelisk amplifiers, which according to Heed, had product involvement from Richard Hay, the designer behind the iconic Ion Systems Obelisk amplifiers, which
I always thought were superb. Using a set of their Enigma 3 loudspeakers, Heed reproduced a very musical, free-flowing sound. It is always refreshing to experience simple, affordable and compact hi-fi sounding great after the bloated excesses of some ‘gold-plated’ high-end tripe."