By late June I had a tracker with SF Express, Omne's chosen Asian carrier. After confirming receipt of Nabil's email, I checked on his website to spot a collaboration post about Hong Kong's Astral Acoustics having since contributed their Voyager 2 headphone cable. Also, in this edition the headband as shown sports "a larger surface area for more even weight dispersion, a higher degree of adjustability and an overall comfier fit".
New US retailer Bloom Audio listed this combo at $999 ex VAT which the day's currency converter had as €876 – rather more than the €540 converted Malay price listed when I first penned these preview pages in early May whilst the cable was still an in-house production. The collab also led to the below co-branded end plates, with the Astral Acoustics logo on the left, Omne's on the right ear cup.
Rigging up an Irish online order via Bloom to generate an approximate to-the-door price for European buyers, their UPS Worldwide Expedited option just then came in at $90.56. Delivery from the US to Ireland including our charming local 23% VAT equalled €1'156.68. Once Omne secure their first retail partner within the EU, perhaps € buyers can enjoy some price adjustments sans US tariffs and with lower ship fees. This review simply timed such as to meet Omne Audio in the midst of establishing their first resellers outside their Asian home sphere. As more infrastructure falls into place, buyer options depending on location will increase.
"Our MSRP for Hendeka remans MYR 2'499. In the US it's $699 to account for add-on tariffs. As of now we don't have a direct-to-consumer channel. Your currently closest retailer would be Bloom. What you're getting is Hendeka v1 with the original headband and cable. I've elected to ship you that to set a benchmark for what the Hendeka sounds like. The AA collaboration's different cable alters the sound quite a bit. This platform serves as a testbed of sorts for the changes we are making. Once we have an idea of the response to these new headbands, we might make the transition in a small Hendeka update possibly within the next 6 months." When I found the global tracking site for SF Express, I signed up for email notifications and within minutes got confirmation that the package had been picked up and was in transit. It then took four days to Hong Kong departure before continuing East to Anchorage. All my many prior shipments from Hong Kong or Singapore had always headed West for Dubai or Istanbul. SF Express flew the opposite direction. Louisville/Kentucky came next, then demand to settle a €55.61 clearance fee, then Köln/Germany which overshot the Easterly tack. Once Hendeka zagged back West and touched down in Ireland, I had a sudden UPS notice with Hong Kong origins and import fees settled; about next-day delivery pending successful address correction. Had the generation of new papers during the SF Express/UPS changeover in HK dropped a vital digit in our Irish Eircode? I called UPS to confirm my coordinates. Nabil's package duly hopped onto the delivery van the next day. Without the address snafu, door-to-door Malaysia to Ireland dispatch would have been 7 days. Now it was 8. Fair global-village play.
My established competitors of HifiMan's €569 Ananda Unveiled, Meze's €699 109Pro, aune's €639 SR7000 and FiiO's €749 FT7 should edge out a nouveau micro boutique's very first effort on industrial design and slick finishing. If that was to confirm after Hendeka rang my bell, it'd be no cheap dig, just the nature of things. And it's not as though super-established Grado don't still play the artisanal slightly rustic card 30 years later. These aspects needn't be about scale of operations like FiiO or HifiMan; or a founder's alter ego moonlighting as ace industrial designer like Antonio Meze. Some brands simply wouldn't go for the fully accessorized Focal or Abyss Diana look even if they had the resources. It's just not how they tick. It's fair to invoke those distinctions upfront. And again, sonic profiles range from easy and comfy to fussy, twitchy and nervy. Versus so-called modern sound, much vintage fi—think of a Sansui, Toshiba, Yamaha or Marantz legacy receiver—lives squarely on the easy side. It's a warmer less teased-out sound of less extreme bandwidth that prioritizes tone weight, density and rhythmic expression over separation, air and speed. Audiophile fatigue curated by many years of ever fussier sound can finally yearn to return to simpler days when cassette tape and FM radio played unpretentious hours on end. Would Hendeka be that? Lower 'res' for greater fun? That's resolution in air quotes. More natural tone and timing too resolve to varying degrees. Detail isn't just about the 7th second violin's chair creak. Conflating resolution with generic detail is a common error. It mistakes virtual pixel count for the ultimate arbiter of musical enjoyment. Yet once pixel passions shorten playback sessions, they become counter-productive like porn that kills true intimacy with a living partner.
Can a sound profile get pornographic? Without wishing to derail this narrative into X-rated content, I rather think that the correct answer is 'yes'. Hifi systems can get too explicit. That's enough on that subject. Time to get hands on.
