ENIGMAcoustics to Debut Dharma D1000 Electrostatic Headphones and Athena A1 SET Headphone Amplifier

After showing pre-production prototypes at CES earlier this year and later at CanJam 2015 in Costa Mesa, ENIGMAcoustics will officially debut the Dharma D1000 Hybrid Electrostatic Headphone and the Athena A1 Headphone Amplifier at the 2015 Munich HIGH END Show. Taking place over weekend May14 – 17 at the MOC Congress Center in Munich, audiophile manufacturers generally regard it as the most important show of its kind in the world. ENIGMAcoustics confirmed that it had chosen Munich for the official launch of its first portable audio products for this reason, and will begin full scale production following the show.

The ENIGMAcoustics display will be in Hall 1, booth T05. Visitors are cordially invited.

Dharma is a hybrid electrostatic headphone. Utilizing ENIGMAcoustics’ patented SBESL™ (Self-Biased Electrostatic) technology, it delivers the focus, transparency, and sonic purity of electrostatics without the need for an external source of a bias voltage. This allows Dharma, unlike other electrostatic headphones, to be used with any headphone amplifier. It is a lightweight, comfortable electrostatic headphone that utilizes a proprietary Wagami paper diaphragm for bass and mid-bass reproduction, and a phase linear high pass filter to imperceptibly transition it to the electrostatic tweeter. The result, according to company spokesmen, is thunderous and powerful bass blending with delicate, nuanced high frequencies.

The Athena A1 is a true audiophile single-ended triode vacuum tube hybrid headphone amplifier. It, like Dharma, benefits from two technologies, blended in a hybrid configuration to utilize the strengths of each. Athena employs a single-ended triode vacuum tube front end, running in Pure Class A, and a low impedance Class-A MOS/BJT hybrid output stage. It has the high input impedance and pristine sound quality of a vacuum tube design, with the high current, low output impedance, and slam of a well-designed solid state amplifier. This allows Athena to drive both high and low impedance headphones, and, according to the company,’…do it with musicality and a listen-through sound quality that will challenge very best headphone amps on the market.’

ENIGMAcoustics also announced that early production of Dharma has already sold out as a result of pre-orders far beyond anything the company had anticipated. New orders taken at the show and after will ship in July out of June production. ‘We are pleased beyond words with the response we’ve received’, Sales Manager Wei Chang remarked. ‘There really is something magic about electrostatics,’

The Dharma D1000 has a US list price of US$ 1,180; Athena A1 US$ 1,480.

Source: Press Release