Review: Hagerman Audio Labs Tuba : “Top Brass”

Headphone pairings:

Sennheiser’s HD600 and HD650 have rightly been considered two benchmarks in terms of headphone performance for the past couple of decades. They are both still contenders those looking to pursue slightly different takes on a neutral reference signature, with their 300-ohm dynamic drivers considered to ‘scale’ well with different source gear and amplification.

The Tuba happily gets the HD600s singing at my preferred sound pressure level at 10 o’clock on the volume pot out of the “HI” output, with gobs of power and headroom to spare. The piano decay and Thom Yorke’s vocals on ‘A Punchup at a Wedding’ are as lifelike and enjoyable as I’ve ever heard them, and the bass is delivered with beautiful texture and weight. 

Switching-over to the HD650’s and Beck’s newest single, ‘Uneventful Days’ and I was hit with some of the most impressive bass and liquid vocals I’ve heard out of the venerable Sennheisers (it’s also a terrifically-produced track that sounds amazing on a great headphone set-up, check it out). 

My ‘barnyard’ oxidised ZMF Eikons are an aesthetic match made in heaven with the Hawaiian-born tube amp. Both pieces of gear sport ample cuts of dark-stained wood mixed with dark metal furniture, and chunky, purposeful dimensions. It turns out they’re also a magical sonic match, with the Eikon’s romantically-tuned-twist-on-neutral voicing absolutely coming to life on the Tuba. Those biocellulose drivers sound like they were made to be matched with the Tuba, which delivers the most ridiculously smooth yet powerfully-dynamic rendition of ‘Without You’ from L.A rapper and multi-instrumental wunderkind, Anderson .Paak. In a word, tasty.

Hagerman’s advertising for the Tuba outlines that the HI/LO output options were created specifically with Sennheiser and Grado headphones in mind, so it felt appropriate to test out the Tuba with another wooden pair of headphones, in this case, the Maple GH1 from Grado. Like all Grados, the GH1 is super-efficient and at 32 ohms are easily powered by most sources. The Tuba wakes-up the Grados at a fraction over 9 o’clock, and after playing a little ‘Ground on Down’ from Ben Harper, it’s clear that the touch of velvety smoothness that the Tuba sprinkles over the top is a spectacular match for the treble energy and innate ‘forwardness’ of the Grados. The acoustic guitar and vocal performance of Chris Stapleton on ‘Either Way’ with this pairing is enough to make you forget that you’re actually sitting at a desk with headphones on your head. 

The 13 ohm Aeon Flow Open from MrSpeakers (now known as ‘Dan Clark Audio’) proved to be an interesting test of the Tuba’s versatility proposition. The Aeons proved to be the toughest power test for the Tuba, requiring me to push it past halfway to get satisfying volume and dynamics from the lightweight planars. Unsurprisingly, the bass performance of the already warm-tilted Aeons did bloom somewhat, causing it to be a little flabby but still enjoyable for the most part. Destroyer’s ‘Downtown’ is a very laid-back performance on the Aeon Flow + Tuba pairing. 

I did test out the Tuba with a couple of IEMs I had lying around to see if there was any audible distortion or hiss – the hyper-transparent Etymotic ER4XR proved to be a great match with the Tuba, with a completely dead-black background and vividly intimate and dramatic rendering of Fleet Foxes’ ‘Mykonos’.

To touch on source-pairings briefly, I did spend most time pairing the Tuba with the Chord Mojo as a DAC source. The sweet, warm presentation of the Mojo creates a lovely lifelike synergy with the Tuba, and with well-produced music it completely makes you forget that you’re listening to a digital source. I did also use the iFi Pro iDSD as a source, but for some reason, it tended to cause clipping and distortion on the Tuba for some reason (perhaps its line-level output was higher than standard and was causing it to clip?). 

And naturally, keeping things all-analogue I had a great time playing-back vinyl with the Tuba. The indulgently warm and bass-y Meze 99 Classics and the Tuba were a treat to spin LP after LP, the combination smoothing-back the odd snap and crackle here and there, and delivering a fuzzily-warm sound as well as nicely contrasting metal and wood finishing.

Click-over to page 4 to hear about our final thoughts and conclusions.