With his passion for music, Mario has always looked for excellence in his audio equipment. But when he was looking for new high-performance headphones, he encountered the frustration of having to choose between closed-back or open-back headphones. That meant, among other things, the need to have one pair of headphones for home and another for traveling. He mentioned it to his lifelong friend and fellow music-lover, Pascual. After checking that there were no high-performance headphones on the market that offered the possibility of switching between the two states, open and closed, they decided to do something about it.
This is how the project to create the world’s first convertible high-end headphones, the Palma DHS, was born. Little did they imagine the complexity that this challenge entailed, nor that it would take more than three years to achieve it.
To help them develop the headphones, they contacted Delfín, another music enthusiast with an extensive career in the world of professional sound, and Jaume, an engineer with a long and successful career in the world of audio. Jaume started from scratch to build the perfect headphones with one non-negotiable condition: to obtain a pure and exceptionally defined sound in either of the two operating modes, with two clearly differentiated acoustic experiences.
Much of the secret lies in the design of the housing, which was carried out with a very similar approach to developing a speaker. One of the first conclusions reached was to manufacture them in wood to optimize acoustic performance. After evaluating several options, they concluded that Sapele wood was the best possible choice.
After more than three years of development we are very proud to present the Palma DHS-1, the world’s first convertible audiophile headphones. A big part of the challenge has been devising a system that hermetically opens and closes the chambers with the same precision and effectiveness on day one and over many years of intensive use. In order to achieve this, we designed our own mechanism that is protected under the European Patent EP: 23383080.1.
Comfort is essential when it comes to enjoying and focusing on your favorite music for hours on end. Undoubtedly, the priority throughout our design process has been to provide the best conditions to enjoy music.
Although it may sound like a contradiction, our goal is that you will never be able to hear the Palma DHS-1s. The objective has been to make our headphones acoustically invisible, so you can simply enjoy your favorite music in its purest state, as if you were there.
It’s been anything but easy to achieve, but the end result is worth the years of effort. The frequency response curves, the opinion of musicians and other sound professionals make us feel very proud of the path we have traveled, while encouraging us to continue our quest for the perfect sound. Now we want to hear your opinion.
The Palma DHS-1 will be available from September 18 but you can make sure to get yours by making a pre-order now. Just give us your name and email and we will contact you as soon as they are launching.
Thank you so much for your interest. We have just sent you a confirmation email of your pre-order. We will let you know as soon as the Palma DHS-1 are available so you can complete your purchase.
Best regards
The Palma Headphones Team
