[Torula Yeast]

Hello! Recent purchaser of the Micro with desktop upgrade, here, and I want to give you a major shout-out for the crossfeed function HeadRoom features on its amps. On certain recordings, this feature is literally the difference between me being able to enjoy tracks with extreme stereo separation through headphones (my much-preferred way of listening to music) and not wanting to listen to them at all.

Here’s why: As a child, I had Meniere’s Syndrome, which left me about 75% deaf in my right ear. Now, normally, it’s not something I notice much - even though the loss in my bad ear is fairy extreme! This is because the brain is such a wonderful sound processor, that it’s able to take the blobby, low-detail sounds transmitted by my bad ear and mix them with the detail transmitted by my good ear so that I get the illusion of having fully functional stereophonic hearing (well, in most situations). Hence, sit me between two speakers in a room, and everything will sound fine, even in instances of extreme stereo separation.

This illusion, however, falls away if I’m listening to highly separated tracks through headphones. In the instance of, say, the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, I’ll hear the strings just fine in my good ear, while Paul’s voice in my bad ear sounds more like the whaw-whaw-whaw of the adults in the world of Peanuts. Nothing terribly enjoyable about it. But when I kick in the crossfeed on my HeadRoom amp, some of Paul’s voice makes it over to my good ear, and voila!, his voice sounds almost as distinct and detailed as if I were hearing the song through external speakers.

Granted, I can and have downloaded SRS or similar programs that offer “surround sound” through headphones onto my PC, but my HeadRoom amp allows me to experience this with my iPod, so I’m not tied to my PC when I want to listen to my tunes (this saves a lot of tussels between me and my wife about who gets to use the computer!).

Oh, and lest I forget, the amp improves the sound of my iPod in other ways, leaving me one very satisfied customer(!).

Might I humbly suggest that it might not hurt for HeadRoom to offer in its online sales literature that its crossfeed feature is ideal for those who’ve lost partial hearing in one ear but still want to enjoy high-quality, fully stereophonic sound? It seems in just about every office I’ve worked in I’ve encountered someone who also is hard of hearing in one ear, so I’m sure there are many of us “gimpy eared” types out there who have the same frustrations with headphone listening as I do, and there don’t seem to be a lot of headphone amps out there with this feature. Between the crossfeed and the fact that your amps are made in the US (I try to buy American whenever I can), I’d say you can count me as a loyal customer who will look only to HeadRoom if I should someday decide to upgrade.