- Kail Audio HP-1 are wireless cans with immediate shift of audio profiles
- Sonic profiles for bass heavy and popular consumer headphones
- Launch for $ 199 / £ 199 / € 199
If you make sound to other people listening to, you know how much of a pain it is to listen to more things – but of course you have to do it, for what sounds good at neutral studio monitors can be too basy on a few beats or fuzzy on airpods.
This means to accumulate more earplugs and over-ears than you have ears, which is expensive and in my case also very annoying because I continue to forget to charge some of the wireless.
Kali Audio can have a better option.
Do you fancy a set of the reference over ear threadless headphones that can switch to mimic the sound of the BASY boomers or airy settings? That’s what the new HP-1 promises to deliver, albeit without naming any specific headphone models. They are a single pair of headphones with a triple-split personality.
Kali Audio HP-1: Key features and price
The Kali Audio HP-1 headphones are over-ear closed headphones with 40 mm drivers, a promised 18Hz to 22 kHz frequency range and custom digital signal processing profiles. There are three different votes: Studio, Bass-Tung and Consumer, all available instantly via pressing a button.
There is a 3.5 mm cable (important for latency-free music production) and the headphones also have Bluetooth for more relaxed listening, even if it has only the basic standard SBC and AAC codecs, rather than APTX or LDAC.
The life of the battery is promised to be 40 hours and there is active noise cancellation when you need to take your show on the road.
The first profile, Studio, is the standard that is for these headphones and it is designed to deliver transparent and accurate sound when you mix or master like any other pair of Studio headphones.
Tap a button and you switch to bass tuning mode, emulating the sound of “Headphones that are popular with hip-hop and EDM creators and fans.” The difference between fairly flat headphones and the more prominent low-end of such headphones can be quite significant, so this setting should help keep the bass tight rather than overly boomy.
The third voice is a consumer who, according to Kali Audio, “repeats the sound of popular headphones sold with phones and computers”, which is an impressively formulated way of telling me you mean AirPods without telling me you mean AirPods.
I haven’t tried these headphones, so I can’t say how they compare to the headphones they aim to emulate. But if Kali has broken the sound profiles, these can be a good opportunity for those of us who cannot afford to buy a library with headphones clean for mixing. With an official of $ 199 / £ 199 / € 199 (around AU $ 400), Kali Audio HP-1 is good within easy reach of bedroom manufacturers as well as those with larger budgets.
