MITCHELL & JOHNSON HP1 HEADPHONES
HEADPHONES
Mitchell & Johnson’s new HP1 headphones use a new technology developed by ITRI in Taiwan that claims to deliver electrostatic accuracy.
Mitchell & Johnson was named after its two UK founders Paul Mitchell and Dave Johnson, and began life in 2011, well before our moustachioed Aussie cricketing legend demolished their touring 2013/4 Ashes team in a 5–0 rout. (How they must have winced.) The hi-fi brand produces not only headphones but also a CD player, streamer, amplifier and even a tuner, with the declared philosophy of “state-of-the-art technology combined with classic hi-fi design at an affordable price.” Few would argue with that.
The HP1 headphone design is certainly unusual and state-of-the-art, including a patented electrostatic technology called Electrostatz, a new transducer type reportedly developed by the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan (ITRI) Taiwan’s largest industrial research institution. Mitchell & Johnson has global exclusive use of the technology in headphones, starting with these HP1 designs and with an expanding range to follow—as I was writing this view Mitchell and Johnson were fund-raising a new lower-priced model via the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.
The defining feature of Electrostatz is that the drivers are self-biasing, so that they don’t need the usual power source required by electrostatic designs to maintain a d.c. voltage between the grids and the diaphaghm. As I understand it, the Electrostatz diaphragm material itself can hold that potential permanently, so that as a consequence the headphones can be driven from relatively low currents. Presto—a pair of electrostatic headphones that can easily be used with portable devices such as smartphones and tablets.
A second benefit seems to be cost—electrostatic headphones are always pricey, but the HP1s cost $799 in Australia, and M&J is promising even lower-priced models.
Yet these are actually hybrids, because in addition to two ‘Electrostatz’ panels (one in each earcup), they also contain two conventional 40mm dynamic drivers: one in each earcup. The ‘Electrostatz’ panels can reach up to 45kHz, but are not so strong in the bass, hence the need for conventional drivers to deliver mids and low-frequencies. I loved the external design of the HP1s—indeed the closed wooden headshells with their carved logo impressed all who fondled them—while curved metal-alloy supports and polyurethane-coated leather earcups kept things exceedingly comfortable during use, so that even after wearing them for long periods of time, I had very little sense of their 320g weight. On that matter, I’d suggest making sure you audition a pair that has been well run-in, because I found their sound changed significantly for the better after I’d soaked them in tunes for 48-hours. The HP1s were successful in delivering the electrostatic delights of speed, openness and detail. Soundstaging is excellent, with sharp-edged imaging of different elements, and I loved the minutae they could reveal, for example, from the audience mikes on Leonard Cohen’s ‘Live in London’ recording— every bustle, every chuckle, every gasp of delight. The same Cohen recording highlighted how the midrange could veil and sound slightly honky around some vocals—a tonality that may be the result of the two drivers superimposing their rather different characteristics in the crossover range. Below that the bass provided solid support and sounded natural, not ‘pushed’. But the highlight of my listening was always those high frequencies, remarkably open (for a closed design), tantalisingly delicate on the right-channel snare on k.d. lang’s ‘The Air That I Breathe’, while separating all the layers delightfully, even through this track’s complex crescendos.
It’s a most promising piece of debut headphone design from these two Brits, and I look forward to seeing how the current campaign further evolves the use of ITRI’s Electrostatz technology. Jez Ford