Once unpeeled from its foam-lined hard case and protective cloth bags over the cups, Hendeka's shiny gloss-black braided cable looked and felt super plasticky. I saw why Astral Acoustics had intervened; though admittedly for quite the price. I also thought the foam-filled pleather headband as beneath the quality of its solid-metal ends, the grooved sliders and cups all of which told a more premium story. I was of two minds about the velour pads too. Whilst undeniably comfy, I find suede-type textures a veritable magnet for facial tuft and dead skin cells. I prefer smooth non-clingy surfaces. Personal preferences. As to fit, my tall fat noggin had just two slider grooves sit beneath its retainer and a full quad free above it. That meant plenty of untapped headroom. True egg heads, rejoice. Meanwhile small heads might run out of adjustments in their direction? Though the sharp forward geometry and matching cable exits all indicate the intended wear orientation, engraved white channel identifiers still live inside the head band's metallic ends for the otherwise confused.
Accessorizing confusion: three small silver bolt heads per inside slider block; two silver bolt heads per gimbal; four gold bolt heads per ear cup; gold slider end stops.
The ear pads are wedge-shaped so thinner in the front. As my photo shows, getting them off and back on again needs just a small twist. My failed industrial design education didn't find Hendeka's material mix wholly congruent. Whilst the metal gimbals are small enough to not really telegraph the offset, the far bigger slider/band metal junctions more clearly mismatch the hue and surfacing of the 3D-printed cups. This assemblage would look better if those metal parts too were 3D printed to unify the look. Ditto the four gold hex bolts on the ends. Equivalent ones on the gimbals are silver. So are the small inside bolts on the slider blocks. Meanwhile the golden shaft ends continue a minor 3-tone theme yet sticking to either silver or gold would be more seamless. In short, Hendeka's optics and haptics are a bit of a mixed bag; nothing deal-breaking at this ask but still worthy of mention as areas Hendeka v2 might revisit. Since this isn't a rigged Miss Universe competition, let's move onto sonics. My desktop amp was overkill for the occasion so upstairs I went to a Shanling EM7 Music Center which combines streaming, D/A conversion, preamplitude and headfi.
Below shows that setup. 1TB microSD card local library on the Shanling. CD on smsl's PL200T transport via coax. Salting this battle field was a LHY master clock's 10MHz/50Ω square-wave pulse clocking the transport. From my hardware this was the most price-appropriate context so my Hendeka HQ. Malaysia's monotheistic Islamic state religion practiced by ~63% of its populace has no demigods like elephant-headed Ganesha of the Hindus. But Islam does have its own hierarchy of created beings which include human prophetic messengers like Muhammad, Moses and Abraham; and angels like Jibril and Mikhail. "While there's no theological counterpart, many Muslims living in pluralistic societies actively participate in cultural celebrations and share in festivities surrounding deities like Ganesha. This is often done as a mark of communal harmony, shared cultural heritage and brotherhood rather than religious worship." So my four-armed dancing Ganesha could stay and continue to remove obstacles; not that this hifi had any just then. Quite the opposite. The reason was simple. On the ff score—usually musical notation for fortissimo but here fussy vs friendly—Hendeka fulfilled its official design brief. This was robust colour-rich sound of boisterous bass, high rhythmic impact and uncomplicated high freqs. In culinary terms I had filling home-cooked comfort food, not chichi nosh that leaves us hungry, our wallet ready for a refill. In short, just as Nabil & crew had promised. With that profile confirmed, Hendeka then contrasted against my domestic alternates to get more specific on sonics whilst skipping comments on styling, build and materials. First up the 109 Pro from Romania's Meze. Throughout all comparisons, the cable between contenders remained identical to eliminate that variable.
Hendeka | 109 Pro. Very different textural tuning. One simple Armenian folk song with dynamic female vocals and close-mic'd violins mapped it. Meze's textures were in high gloss polished to a bright sheen. Upper-mid/lower-treble energies injected splashiness which over headphones approximated white noise mixed into the massed bowed strings whilst doing a similar if less intense thing to the voice. This somewhat synthetic sizzle enhancement completely vanished over the Omne. Its texturization was a natural matte/satin, its inter-image space absorptive black bereft of Meze's spritzy fireflies. I'd once heard a similar effect with speakers against large bay windows plus large sidewall glass. As soon as light-proof curtains interceded, that glassy splashiness disappeared. In that earlier instance it had been caused by HF reflections. A second lesser difference was that Omne's dynamics scaled more dramatically whilst the attendant absence of treble splatter remained entirely fatigue-free. From the perspective of pure listening pleasure and ease, Hendeka aced this encounter.
Hendeka | Ananda Unveiled. The Chinese planarmagnetic had the more sophisticated and elucidated top end without at all veering into 109 Pro turf. That advantage instead factored as more air and harmonic explication. The Malaysian dynamic had more overall body from a fleshier midrange and demonstrably stronger punchier low end. On rhythmically bouncy or groovy fare, this portrayed more locomotion and drive thus triggered a more physical than mental/abstract reaction. Whilst we'd call the HifiMan ultimately more resolved, this resolution gain was accompanied by relative leanness against the meatier more gut-level Omne. With my bigger noggin and narrower Ananda's greater clamping force, I also found Hendeka more comfortable to wear.
28/100 on Shanling's throttle got plenty loud.
Hendeka | SR7000 | FT7. Both my regular podcast headwear of aune's closed-backed dynamic and my favourite sub €1.5K planarmagnetic in FiiO's current flagship played it softer than Hendeka. Basic logic should infer that Hendeka must have been harder. Not if the implications are crisper-edged attacks or subliminal steeliness. Far better descriptors would be extra grip, impact and authority. Images registered with more pop; against stronger contrast; with more backing. I suspect that small-scale dynamics traversed slightly bigger swings. Granted, the FiiO staged noticeably wider so imaging freaks would gravitate to it. Meanwhile Hendeka's bass had more weight and shove than either. Whilst harcore hifi inspectors would call the reed-green aune the most technically accomplished and balanced of these three, hedonists would still seek out the Omne first. Like a snake eating its tail, this segues right back at Nabil's brief for their first project. Their Hendeka isn't the widest stager, airiest illuminator or most persnickety detail chaser. As a maiden effort from a still very small boutique, neither does it pretend at highest style or slickest finish. On those counts both aune and FiiO came first. That simply didn't leave Hendeka as the 5th wheel of my comparator quad. Where does that situate our Omne? At a very particular fork in the road.
FussyFi. It's a way to do hifi that trends away from a novice's pure innocence of uninspected enjoyment. This needly soon needy path veers ever deeper into first curiosity then concern even conceit over various aspects of the playback experience. One becomes fully informed and proudly critical; a knowledgeable expert fluent in our field's insider lingo. One has identified and sequenced personal preferences to insert demands on a playback system that double as prerequisites to any real enjoyment. An affair born of raw passion has turned obsessive; geeky; unhealthy. The innocence which kicked this entire journey off has long been lost. What once was easy, spontaneous and natural has become a Gordian knot that won't undo. If you send off your kid to college/uni and gift them a small hifi for the dorm room, do you really hope to groom the next gen of audio dweebs? Or do you select something that's simple, reliable and fun instead? In those terms, Hendeka would make a perfect first if serious headphone. Yet even against competition which someone far along the geeky path might have collected, Hendeka still exerts an undeniable pull. It extends an invite to rekindle the impromptu fun at the start of any journey that eventually turns obsessive. A fussy-fier must then break down Omne's contrarious recipe into its molecules to understand, disagree and challenge. Such a one would want far more in-depth comparisons. Yet given this specific fork in the road, such an approach would have been wholly counterproductive. Why dissect fun on the mortician's slab when it so plainly is?
If fun is at play, what else do we need? That's precisely the question Omne's Hendeka asks. Can you guess how my gut answered it? A fussy-fier might look for comeuppance by insisting that as wholesome and lovely as honest good fun is, why not enhance it—insert any or all of the usual audiophile buzzword suspects—for more fun? The likely futility of said argument ended up at the very heart of today's gig. Whilst my alternates offered a little more here or there, perhaps even more than just a little… it didn't make their fun quotient any bigger. Au contraire. For fun in the sun, Hendeka shone brightest. This raises an interesting conundrum. How to pursue more of a particular quality like soundstage width, air, separation, resolution & Co. if we weren't allowed to diminish the fun factor by even one iota? Without stealing from fun Paul to let fussy Pete get ahead, what options do we actually have against Hendeka? It's not how I expected to wrap today but it's how this delicious cookie crumbled…
Omne comment: "Hi Srajan, just read the review in full and will echo the same sentiment I had when first reading the preview. I'm glad how the final two paragraphs transferred from concept to words because they summarise an interesting conundrum that I'm sure reading headfi enthusiasts will enjoy pondering. On behalf of the Omne team, Daniel, Leong and myself, thank you for such a beautiful writeup and phrasing it in a position which occupies its own niche and does not insist upon itself because it just is. I'll keep you in the loop for other products that we have in the pipeline in the years to come. Sláinte." Nabil
