Highend Headphones Showroom Launch Party + National Audio Show!

[HiFi Lounge]

Hi Everyone,

A couple of dates for everyones diary’s, the first is Saturday September 27th which is our new shop launch for Highend Headphones, all being well it will all be kitted out and up and running by then as there still seems so much to do but now that the floor is down and the security all finished it is just a matter of getting all the furniture in place and plugging everything in, it seems to have taken ages to get this far so both myself and Wendy can’t wait to open the doors to everyone.

Many of the manufacturer’s will be on hand to answer and questions and help run the event, also for one day only we will be offering 10% off any headphones, amps, dacs or cables that are bought at the launch event so a great time to save a few pounds.

Also in our smaller demo room Final Audio Design will be running workshops where you can build your own Heaven II earphones, this has never been done before outside of Japan where it always proves to be a a massive success. The Heaven II’s get great reviews and by building them yourselves you can tune the bass to a response that suits you, these will be limited in numbers so we may have to to a first come first served basis, more news to follow on this.

Both Wendy and myself are really looking forward to putting Highend Headphones out there as there really is no one doing Headphones like this in the UK where you can come and try all the best headphones and amps all under one roof, in a beautiful setting with no pressure sales, just sit back, relax and choose the right headphones for you.

We will have refreshments throughout the day with croissants and coffee for the early risers and nibbles throughout the rest of the day.

If you are planning to come along please feel free to let me know at paul@highendheadphones.co.uk, look forward to seeing you on the 27th!

Headzone @ The National Audio Show September 21st/22nd!



We certainly don’t like to make life easy for ourselves as the week before our new shop launch we are packing up Highend Headphones and taking it all to the National Audio Show at Whittlebury Hall over the weekend of September 21st and 22nd as we take over the whole of the ‘Headzone’ Hall.

This is a brilliant audio show that I have attended for the last few years but this year we have been in discussion with the organisers for some time to taking the Headzone area to the next level, so there are going to be 12 stands that we are going to fill with the help of the manufacturers that have offered their support, we will be taking all the brands we represent but the below will have their own stands -

• Fostex - Showing the new TH-500’s along with the TH-600’s and TH-900’s
• Ultrasone - Showing the awesome Edition 5, Only 20 pairs available in the UK + the rest of their range
• OPPO - With the new PM-2 Headphones along with the PM-1 and HA-1.
• Chord - Showing the amazing little Hugo, this product really is a game changer
• Grado - With the full range of their new ‘e’ Series of headphones
• Audeze - Showing their complete range of LCD-2’s, LCD-3’s, LCD-X’s and LCD-XC’s
• Astell&Kern - Bringing along the best portable players in the world with the AK100 II, AK120 II and AK240
• Atlas Cables with Aedle Headphones - running 4 identical rigs showing the difference cables make in a highend rig by swapping over different cable ranges.

Plus Highend Headphones will have a large part of the display area to represent all the other brands like, Stax, HiFiMan, Beyerdynamic, Abyss, Sennheiser, Final Audio Design, McIntosh, Trilogy, Burson and Bryston + others so it is certainly going to be a week getting set up for this one. The Headzone area has now been moved into the Brooklands Suite which is right near the main entrance so very easy to find this year, please see the floor plan below to where to find us -



Also for any purchases at the show we have worked with everyone to be able to offer 10% off for anything purchased at the show, if you would like anymore information regarding this please feel free to get in touch.

Please find a link below to the National Audio Shows website below and we hope to see you there.

National Audio Show 2014 | Home Audio Show | Chester Group

Chester Group | Leaders in High Performance Home Audio & Future Technology Shows

So it looks like September is going to be a very busy month

Thanks,

Paul

[RichB]

This belongs in the Trade Area?

[Marco]

Indeed - and where it now resides

Marco.

[YNWaN]

I very rarely listen to headphones (I've got a Naim headphone amp that I literally never use) but I always go into the headphone room at Whittlebury. There is always such a good range and its easy to try the various exotics. Last year I listened to both the Audeze and the Abyss.

[HiFi Lounge]

I very rarely listen to headphones (I've got a Naim headphone amp that I literally never use) but I always go into the headphone room at Whittlebury. There is always such a good range and its easy to try the various exotics. Last year I listened to both the Audeze and the Abyss.

Please pop by YNWan and say hello, my struggle at the moment is to try and get as many headphone amps as possible running off as few sources :-)

[HiFi Lounge]

Hi All,

Just thought I would post a quick update as with the National Audio Show next weekend followed by the launch of Highend Headphones showroom the week after it is going to be a busy couple of weeks, I seemed to be awake half the night last night trying to figure out how to connect up 20 headphone amps for the show with as few sources as possible, so far managed 11 amps from 2 sources, well that is in theory anyway :-)

The reason for this post is that a large milestone in the setting up of Highend Headphones happened last week as the chairs turned up, not really headphone news I guess but trying to decide on the look and feel of Highend Headphones seemed such a big task that once we had decided I really couldn’t wait for all the furniture to arrive, we decided on classic Chesterfields for the seating which were all hand made in the UK and took about 8 weeks to arrive, I was starting to worry a little as it is all starting to get a little close to launch now but once they arrived they were certainly worth the wait, we looked at many companies who produce Chesterfields but we decided on Distinctive Chesterfields who we couldn’t fault at all -

http://www.distinctivechesterfields.com/

One of the other chairs we bought from Ebay that had really seen better days and we had it totally re-furbished to something that really does look quite stunning, that is if like me you like Purple :-) It was done by local guy called Daniel Rycroft who we can highly recommend -

http://danielrycroftupholstery.co.uk/

Anyway below are a few pictures of what we hope everyone will find very comfy headphone listening chairs -





Before Refurbishment!





After, Obviously :-)





Anyway hope to see loads of you for the National Audio Show next weekend and then at our new Headphone showroom launch the following week, also don’t forget that we are offering 10% off any headphone products over those 2 weekends so a good time to save a few pennies.

Cheers,

Paul.

[HiFi Lounge]

Hi All,

It has been a bit of a frantic week trying to get everything organised ready for the National Audio Show this weekend but we are nearly there.
After taking a big HiFi rig to last years National Audio show the idea this year was to to just take a few headphones and amps, the trouble is over the last few months that idea has grown to the point that we are now pretty much running the whole headphone area at the show, below is a picture I have just taken of all the amps we are taking and this is without all the headphones, really do think we are going to need a bigger van -





We have also now got the 4 of the below banners just arrived that we will be using to help decorate the Headzone at NAS14-



Regarding the Highend Headphone shop launch next Saturday 27th we have now been running the below ads in HiFi News and HiFi Choice to hopefully get the word out there + we will be giving these out at the show -



And finally, Wendy is heading over to a local artist’s house this morning, who also happens to be a customer, to choose 2 of his paintings to hang on the wall of the new main showroom and Steven who has done all our art in HiFi lounge next week will be painting the below in the entrance to Highend Headphones. So as you can see the last few weeks have been consumed with headphones but I can’t wait for this weekend for the show and next weekend to finally open the doors to the Highend Headphones showroom and share with everyone what we seem to have been planning for months now -



Hope to see you at one or both of the following 2 events.

Cheers,
Paul.

[HiFi Lounge]

Hi Everyone,

I’m a bit late posting this but it took a while to catch up after showing at the National Audio show at the weekend, but the good news it that we pulled it off, after what seemed like months of planning I’m pleased to say that it all went off pretty smoothly and we’ve had some great feedback since the show which is great news, so I guess that means that Highend Headphones is now out there as a real company :-)

Firstly I’d like to thank three guys who started off as customers and have become friends for helping run the stand, first a big up to Ross for helping set up on the Friday and help run the stand on both days, who knew he was such a good salesman, especially when it came to Stax, and also a big thanks to Ady and Kyri for all their efforts at the weekend, thrown in totally at the deep end but they both took to it like a duck to water, we really wouldn’t have coped without their help, thanks guys, also a big thanks to my nephew Sean and his girlfriend Sophie for making sure everyone got a leaflet when they walked in the entrance and for general promotion duties, what a team :-)

Finally I’d like to thank all the manufacturer’s who supported us by taking space in the Headzone under the Highend Headphones banner, so thanks to Chord Electronics, Audeze, Astell&Kern, Grado, Atlas Cables, Aedle, OPPO, Ultrasone and Fostex for all your efforts.

So in the end it was extremely hard work, from squeezing everything into the van, how taking a few headphones turned into what we ended up doing I’m still not sure, to setting up, running the stand and breaking it all down at the end of Sunday, but it was all very rewarding and great fun.

It all went reasonably smoothly, it did take a while to get 20+ amps running from 4 sources , at one point I really did think that I had bitten off more than I could chew but at the last minute, well around 9.30pm on Friday it all came together. The only real issue we had was that we went in on Saturday morning and the credit card machine had a critical failure over night but fair play to Worldpay as they sent a guy out with a new machine within 3 hours who stayed to get it all working and we were back up and running by midday, great service.

Here is a couple of blogs from Chris Martens from HiFi+ regarding Headzone this year -

http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/hea...w-2014-part-1/

http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/hea...w-2014-part-2/

Anyway thanks again to everyone, look forward to doing it all again next year, below are a few pics of our adventures at the weekend -

A week before the show we went for a quick look



Off we go.





Time to get busy.























Let the show begin.





In the blink of an eye it was all over!





What a team, minus Kyri, and still smiling :-)



So now it is just the small task of carrying on setting up the Highend Headphone shop in readiness for the launch on Saturday, still so much to do.

Cheers,

Paul.

[HiFi Lounge]

Hi Everyone,

It has taken a little while to post this, it has been a busy few days, but both Wendy and myself wanted to say a huge thanks to everyone who came along to the launch of our new shop ‘Highend Headphones’ and helped make it such a special and fun day, as ever it was great to see so many familiar and new faces.

We’d also like to thanks Shaun who came along from KS Distribution and ran the Final Audio Design workshop where customers could build their own Final Audio Design in ears which proved to be very successful, it involved a little patience and a tube of glue so I decided to stay away but everyone else were really happy with the results.

It took a few late nights last week to get it ready and my main concern was that we hadn’t tested the network to get music to all the amps but luckily it held out until the end of the day when it got a little flaky and is still playing up today but at least we got through the launch event :-) Some more investigating needed later.

We’ve just got the smaller room to kit out now which we will use as a portable systems room for Astell&Kern, Hugo etc with in-ears and cheaper headphones. Once that is done we will start to think of some open day ideas, we have been talking to Chord Electronics about perhaps doing a Hugo event later this year or maybe early next year so look out for that one, and also I like the idea of a headphone listening party where we hook up 20+ amps and run over 20 pairs of headphones with everyone listening to the same classic albums, just an idea, but could be fun.

So a big thanks again and now we are open if anyone would like to explore how fantastic listening to music on great cans can sound please get in touch to arrange a demo and please keep an eye on the Highend Headphones website as we are constantly looking at new and exciting developments in the headphone arena.

www.highendheadphones.co.uk

Please find a few pictures from the event below -

This is the favourite part of the new shop :-)





Final Audio Design Workshop Proved Very Popular.









And in the main room it was starting to get busy.





















Champagne anyone?





And that was that.

Thanks again,

Cheers,

Paul.