Pass Labs HPA-1 Headphone Amp Review

[AndreaT]

Lots of money, lots of noise. How could you not isolate the circuits from PS noise, in consideration of the large volume of the case? No balanced inputs? A ridiculous locking headphone receptacle, barely adequate power, poor ribbon-cable dressing complete the offer for the anxious “almost-wealthy” crowd of non-cognoscenti. At a 20 times lower price, the Topping L30 II incinerates this bloated sub-spec product to the dust-bin of history.

Thank you Amir for an impeccable review! To the audio electronic engineers of America: it is time to wake-up and return to the drawing board and the 101 Class of contemporary high performance Audio design and manufacturing.

 

[Jasperous]

Can somebody explain the advantage of a locking headphone socket? Seems like a really stupid idea on a headphone amplifier, unless you like pulling your equipment from your stack or breaking something on your headphones because you stood up not remembering you had headphones on.

It’s a gimmick! Nothing more!

 

[KR500]

Is this the commercial available version of the WHAMMY diy headphone amp that Wayne designed ?

 

[AndreaT]

When a pic is worth a thousand words:

 

[anphex]

...

Still, voodoo high end followers will defend this garbage with tooth and nail. The casing is pretty cool though, so I guess that money went into a pretty CNC machine.

Edit: The component placing looks pretty clean too, so I wonder how the hell they didn' think of the ps noise.

 

[voodooless]

I can’t believe nobody made this joke: I’ll Pass

 

[Kennyknetter]

This is a review and detailed measurements of Pass Labs HPA-1 headphone amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $3,675...

The performance in on par with something that I'd expect a couple of good university students to be able to put together as a project at the end of their education. They get hyped that their thing works, measures it, sums it up as a good first attempt but nothing more, keep it on a shelf and look at it from time to time while smiling reminiscently, beat themselves through a few years of development, develop something at half this price with a hundredth of the coloration, and then move to launch.

You simply don't proudly sell something like this at 3675 bucks, in this day and age.

 

[fpitas]

Ha yes it's funny when they tell you to use high end RCA/XLR/power cables for thousands but actual cable with signal inside amplifier is a ribbon one, just like an old floppy disk drives used. Hahahha

To be fair, Pass himself doesn't say to use exotic cables. His marketing people may, though.

 

[Jimbob54]

I can’t believe nobody made this joke: I’ll Pass

Solderdude did.

 

[Sokel]

Edit: The component placing looks pretty clean too, so I wonder how the hell they didn' think of the ps noise.

Clean with that signal ribbon cable literally touching PS's heatsink?
I bet that twisted cables 1 inch away would have shown a greately better picture.

 

[DSJR]

The performance in on par with something that I'd expect a couple of good university students to be able to put together as a project at the end of their education. They get hyped that their thing works, measures it, sums it up as a good first attempt but nothing more, keep it on a shelf and look at it from time to time while smiling reminiscently, beat themselves through a few years of development, develop something at half this price with a hundredth of the coloration, and then move to launch.

You simply don't proudly sell something like this at 3675 bucks, in this day and age.

Oh yes they do - sadly - and this box is but one of many.

I think the designers here need to come into the 21st century and acquire (with their vast profits) some seriously high end headphones costing as much or more the price of this box rather than the mid priced stuff I know all too well... maybe then they can hear the subjective flaws that Amir noticed and up their design game!

 

[respice finem]

I can’t believe nobody made this joke: I’ll Pass

If I had bought this, and read this review, I would turn into a giraffe and bite myself in the a** (which accidentally rhymes with...)

 

[Dzhaughn]

To be clear, I don't mind the price at all if it delivered performance in such a substantial enclosure and nice volume control. Just don't charge me and well underdeliver.

Well, perhaps the folks at Pass Labs (among others) might start engineering paperweights or furniture that, as a bonus, serve to enclose decent electronics kit, say like Topping's?

Well, I'm not sure I'd trust the furniture. Maybe a vase as a stretch goal. A nice big vase. Bang and Olufsen's vases were cool but tipped over easily.

Send it to Amir, he will test it for you on the sister site, AE^3R, Audio Electronics Enclosure Engineering Review.

 

[voodooless]

Solderdude did.

Good catch, I only searched for the literal phrase. Well, at least my belief is saved once more

 

[ObjectiveSubjectivist]

To be fair, Pass himself doesn't say to use exotic cables. His marketing people may, though.

Probably.
I was generally speaking.

 

[fpitas]

Probably.
I was generally speaking.

Sure. But he's very forthright about silly cable nonsense. Even insists his Belden power cord is exactly right

 

[DanielT]

time to humiliate Mr. Nelson!

Mr. Nelson is famous for intentional 2nd distortion pure class A without using any feedback (nfb), to try to mimic tubey as much as possible with solid states.

basically Mr. Nelson is the defacto grandpa in the audio world

But why doesn't Mr. Nelson make one with tubes in that case?

Also, if it's distortion you want, you might be lucky and get it with this one:

Mini 5654 Vacuum Tube Phono Preamp Home Stereo Audio Pre-Amplifier Headphone Amp | eBay

T4 PRO tube preamp meets more HiFi needs: MM phono input, converts phono signal to line level signal, with low-noise integrated circuits and high-quality components to ensure clear and clean sound. 3.5mm AUX input, amplify the low level audio signal from your phone, tablet, PC, MP3 etc., easier...

www.ebay.com

Plus, just 2% of what the Pass Labs HPA-1 Headphone Amp costs.

 

[roog]

Disappointing, I have a Pass head phone amp pcb which I was going to build up, it looks very similar to the one shown in the photos here, but on seeing this test I might save my money and time. Another reason for not bothering is on receiving the pcb I found out that the design is based on virtually unobtainable FETs which i believe have to be matched to within a fine Tolerance.

Daft design, seeming to align with the ‘must have’ Pass design principles!

 

[theREALdotnet]

This test result shows the classical signs of inadequate power cord and lack of cable risers.

 

[Lambda]

"It’s all nice and big and discrete components.... it must sound good..."

Well making it big makes it susceptible to noise (we see this in the measurements)
and "slow" so you can't have lots of feedback without having it unstable (we see this in the measurements as high distortion)