PreSonus HP4 Reviews

3.4/5.0 based on 13 customer reviews

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Randy Akins

The cleanest, loudest headphone amp I've ever heard! Drummers love this for recording as they can finally hear their drums through the headphones instead of over them!

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Customer Reviews

Justin Dean
from Columbus, GA
July 9, 2012Music Background:
Recording Engineer, Producer, Mixer, Musician

Perfect for the price

Huge, clean volume, easy setup, and it looks great!

The only problem I have with the HP4 is that it does not have an on/off switch. Not a big complaint but still something to consider.

Jason Lee
from Honolulu, HI
February 8, 2011Music Background:
Recording Musician

Great device

I got my monitors and three sets of headphones coming out of this and its always been real reliable and quiet. Ive never owned a high end headphone amp so I dont know what to compare it to but it does what i need it to do...control my monitors and headphone levels with ease. Monitor mute button comes in handy a lot. Never used the mono button though lol....

Elijah A
from Columbus, Ohio
May 17, 2013Music Background:
Pro Musician, Producer, Arranger and Composer

Perfect

Prefect piece of gear for a GREAT price. Best part is the SERIOUS amount of volume it can pump out! LOVE that it can control my monitors as well!

Tmoney
from Chicago, IL USA
July 7, 2006Music Background:
Home Recordist, Musician, Previously Live Sound Engineer.

Great headphone amp

Very basic with just enough feature-wise to get by-- balanced ins and outs, monitor section, and mono button are very nice and quite useful. Great transparency and this amp is LOUD. With my interface at unity, I sit the pot at about 2-3 ticks up, of about 15 or 20. I love this thing. Pots do get scratchy, but this isn't the fault of the actual unit, it's a fact of working with audio.

from Richmond, VA USA
September 17, 2011Music Background:
Recording Engineer, Live Sound Engineer, Music Educator

PreSonus HP4

Overall great box. Relatively clean channels. LOTS OF HEADPHONE VOLUME!!!

I like the mono function and that it has a "Monitor Section".

from
February 8, 2011Music Background:
Musician and Recording enthusiast 10 years

3+ year owner

I'm happy with mine....I read the other reviews of ppl having there's short out on them after a short period of time and must say im lucky...cuz Ive had this thing up n running throughout the whole stage of my recording career...its one of those backburner pieces that just never let u down....THANKS presonus... a great piece of my DAW setup.

I run 1 of the headphone outs into an RCA adapter that connects to a nearby stereo system AUX and thru some Bose bookshelves as reference for mixing. I also got a set of HD280's and Equation RP22xs plugged in..

Jawn Campbell
from Morgantown, WV
August 2, 2007Music Background:
Recording Engineer

Better than I expected

I purchased the HP4 in a pack with 4 AKG M80 headphones. The HP4 works well and sounds terrific..PLENTY of headroom. The 'mono' button allows you technically to send two separate mixes to the HP4..although I only use one. My only complaint would be the 'monitor level' knob. the ability to mute my monitors would be awesome, but i won't use this feature because the monitor feed isn't purely pass-thru. you can adjust the volume of the monitors from the HP4. I would have much rather had a passive monitor mute control..and perhaps used the additional amp for a 5th headphone channel. Nevertheless, it's still a great unit and a good buy.

EN76
from hawaii
March 4, 2011Music Background:
Hobbyist :D

not bad

do the job! use my AKG Q701 on these and its pretty good. not bad.

Adam
from Seattle, WA
February 3, 2012Music Background:
Recording Engineer, Hobbyist Drummer

Not suitable for studio monitoring use

This unit is pretty good, but for a few problems that prevent me from using it as a serious monitoring controller.

1. The pots, like in some other Presonus gear I've used, are linear taper, not audio taper. This means that, past 1/4 turn or so, there is very little change in audio level (and massive change before that). This makes it very difficult to tweak the volume at moderate sound levels. I might mod the unit, replacing the linear pots with audio taper pots.

2. At lower volume levels, the two sides of the headphone are not at the same volume level. This could be due to the drive circuitry, or perhaps the pots weren't properly matched. This caused me some difficulty on a mobile live recording job, when I thought I had a problem with a microphone or preamp. It turned out to be the headphone amp.

3. The 51 ohm impedance won't properly drive some lower-impedance headphones, such as Audio Technica M50 (35 ohms), or basically any of the in-ear monitors that some drummers prefer to use in the studio (some of them as low as 14 ohms). The 63-ohm Sony 7506, of course, would drive fine. (Note: when your load impedance is lower than your drive impedance, it will all still work; but, you will get a gradual rolloff in the bass and your headphones will sound "thin".)

4. Due to a combination of problems 1 and 2, it's basically impossible to listen at a low or moderate sound level; if your goal is loud, and your headphones are 51 ohms or greater, this unit will work fine.

Pros:
It's sound quality is actually quite good once you turn it up.

Music lover
from OP, KS
March 19, 2009Music Background:
Record for fun

Not that great

First one I got was defective. There was no increase in volume after the 12-o’clock position. Second one worked. The salesman told me that this amp would be loud enough for a drummers headphone mix during recording. Not true and not even close. It does provide decent sound but my stereo amp that we still use for recording drums, sounds better and is louder. I would not recommend this for those who need the headphone mix loud, but at low to moderate levels this is probably as good as other brands in this price range.

Jeff Greenberg
from New Orleans
February 7, 2011Music Background:
Pro musician, home studio

Good when it worked, but didn't last long.

In less than a year, the outputs began shorting out. I could get it to work for a while by pulling out the output plugs and re-inserting several times. Then it just completely crapped out. I can't afford to buy new equipment every year, so I'll be looking for a different headphone amp.

Gaby Kafka
from Montreal, Canada
October 31, 2011Music Background:
Hobbyist

Piece of junk!

Like many items "Made in China" it doesn't last. All the headphone volume knobs stopped working suddenly (1 week after warranty expired). No volume control and sound can be heard only on the right side. I took it apart to see what's up. All potentiometers are soldered to a board connected via a ribbon cable to the main board. There's no way to fix the pots except by changing the entire board. Not worth what it costs. Spend your money elsewhere.

Jeremy Cimino
from
February 1, 2005

its a nice little piece of equipment unfortunately it has started to sizzle when turning the voume knobs

PreSonus HP4

4-channel Headphone Monitor with 150 mWatts at 51 Ohms

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