HeadRoom Balanced Home w/Max Module and Max DAC: my review!

[TheSloth]

I received my HeadRoom Balanced Home with Max Modules and Max DAC about a week ago and feel I have now had enough listening time with it to write a reasonable review. This is actually the first Balanced Home off the production line, and I am currently the only Head-Fi'er to own one.

First Impressions:

Firstly, the packaging is slightly different to that used for the Micro and Desktop lines. Instead of the foam cut-out, into which the amp and accessories fit, the amp sites directly inside the box, spaced by two large polystyrene blocks that space it from the bottom and sides of the box very effectively. It's certainly more in keeping with what I expect from a high end piece of audio equipment. The only included accessory is a standard 18AWG power cord, which needless to say I haven't used - all tests are performed with 14AWG Volex power cords.

The Home, Balanced Home, Max and Balanced Max all come in a similar enclosure, and it's certainly solid. HeadRoom quote the weight as just under 20lbs. Compared with the next line down, the Desktop line, it looks huge. The switches and volume knob are at least twice the size of those used on the Desktop and Micro amps, and control all the usual HeadRoom features such as crossfeed and treble filter. The front panel also houses four Neutrik combination 1/4in and XLR jacks, capable of driving two pairs of balanced headphones or four pairs of single ended headphones. The rear panel includes two single ended inputs, one balanced input, single ended and balanced outputs, and USB/Coax/Opto input. There is a switch to change between digital and analogue mode, to change between single ended and balanced mode, and to select one of the two single ended inputs. The balanced/unbalanced switch however only applies to the analogue inputs, as the inbuilt balanced DAC is always outputting a fully balanced signal. The signature colour of the Home line is blue, and fittingly there is a pleasant blue light when you switch on the amp that is set in the middle of the HeadRoom logo - this isn't one of those blinding blue lights that seems to be so fashionable at the moment, it's just the right brightness.

The Sound:

Firstly I should note that all balanced tests were conducted using the Cardas 10' balanced cable, which was new to me with this amp. Because of that, I decided to try the amp first with my trusty single ended Blue Dragon cable. Having owned a Desktop with the same electronics and DAC modules, I was expecting it to sound identical. Though I didn't have the Desktop to do a/b tests, I'm fairly certain that the Home had a little more 'headroom' (sorry...) - it seemed to have more power at it's disposal, and had an even more effortless quality to the sound. This is possibly due to the separation of power supplies, and the lack of a connecting cable, however it could just be that it looks a hell of a lot bigger, and so sounded so. The whole point of this was to 'go balanced', so I couldn't resist any further and connected up the balanced Cardas cable. When I restarted playback, the track was a solo female aria (Bach). I was instantly struck by the purity of sound, which was clean, clear and perfectly defined to a degree I had never heard before. The in-head sound-stage was suddenly more coherent, with the singers positioning more precise than I had heard it. The next track was a Chorale for full chorus, with the chorus making up a continuous body of sound from left to right without a break. Hearing it on the Balanced Home was the first time I had ever experienced this sense of a continuous canvas of sound from left to right from a headphone. I just closed my eyes and wallowed in the amazing holographic presence - of course it was not an out-of-head experience, but it was by far the most complete in-head experience I had had.

One expectation I had from reading about HD-650's in balanced drive was of a drastic change in the amount of bass. That certainly hasn't been my experience. The difference seems to be in the amplifier's ability to control and articulate the bass. Double Bass pizzicati are particularly difficult for both speakers and headphones to reproduce, due to the very low but tight bass that they produce. The single ended Desktop driving my 650's tended to bloat these pizzicati a little, getting a little caught up in the mid bass resonances without fully articulating the fundamental tone. The Balanced Home is quite the opposite - it beautifully controls the mid-bass resonance, while articulating the extremely low musical tone instead of simply creating the physical sensation of it. I have at times said that I felt like the 650's can sometimes inflict a continuous mid bass onslaught, a 'quality' that is completely controlled by the Balanced Home. When the bass is demanded, it is stronger, more audible and tighter than the Desktop. When there is little bass activity however, it is kept under control, with no sense of unnecessary resonance or colouration (yes, I'm from England...).

The Home excels at dynamics, with a sense of complete effortlessness. No dynamic shift, no matter how extreme, ever feels strained, and it is able to deliver a kind of slam and impact that I didn't know was possible with headphones. This is another area where the bass control is evident, removing the cloudiness that uncontrolled mid-bass can create on a bass drum impact for example.

Much has been said about how the 650's sound signature changes when driven in balanced drive, I haven't really heard that change in the way it has been described. My 650's still sound like 650's, and retain everything I like about them. Driving them in balanced mode seems to build on their strengths, and in that sense does take them up into a whole other class of sound reproduction. It is however the same laid back Sennheiser sound that the 650's are famous for. I happen to love it, however if you don't, this amplifier probably isn't going to change your mind, though it may make you think twice. If you do love your 650's however, I am certain that plugging them into this amplifier and driving them in balanced mode will make you love them a whole lot more.

Crossfeed...

This deserves it's own little section, as it sounds better than any previous HeadRoom crossfeed circuit I've heard do far. (I just got distracted for a few minutes by Schubert 8th symphony that I am listening to while I write this. This system just keeps grabbing my ears and taking over my brain! And no, I'm not using the crossfeed with this recording. And further off the topic, what idiot numbered the Schubert symphonies? 1-6, then 8 unfinished and then 9. What happened to 7?!). I think the reason this crossfeed sounds so good is due to the elimination of the natural undesirable crosstalk that would normally occur at the 1/4in connector. In this balanced system, the only crosstalk that is getting through is that which is specified by the crossfeed circuit. Again, not an out-of-head experience, but definitely more natural sounding for some recordings.

As a pre-amp...?

My other use for the amplifier is as a preamplifier for my QUAD powered monitors. I don't want to spent too much time on this, as it's probably considered a secondary function by most readers. It is however the best sounding preamplifier I have ever owned. I haven't really owned extremely high end preamplifiers before, but I did own a QUAD 99 Pre, and the Balanced Home is an order of magnitude better. I have yet to try the XLR outputs to connect my monitors, however am excited about the improvement that that may bring over already excellent sound.

Weaknesses?

I was tempted to write 'none', but I suppose I can think of one thing. The sound overall has a very slight 'smoothness' to it. There are three possible reasons, none of which are fundamental to the design of the amplifier. The first is the Alps 'Blue Velvet' 4 channel continuous potentiometer. My understanding is that the Alps is likely to have a very slight smoothing effect, relative to a good stepped attenuator. I'd appreciate HeadRoom's comments on that, because I honestly don't know for a fact. The second possibility is the Cardas cable. I've never been a huge fan of the Cardas headphone cable, and have a feeling that it may be tuned very slightly on the warm side. I fell in love with the Equinox cable which seemed to be a tad more neutral, and have a balanced one on order, so I'll report back when it arrives. The last possibility is that the 'smoothness' is simply the truth of the recording/headphone combination.

I am not a huge fan of the Neutrik combo jacks. They are fine for XLR use, however can be very slightly too large for some 1/4in plugs (notably earlier generation Cardas plugs), resulting in a slightly loose fit.

Balanced...

After that monumental thread on the possible advantages of balanced drive, I thought I would just mention that this amp is certainly balanced drive done right. There is nothing in the analogue circuits to 'artificially' invert a single ended signal to make it balanced. If you do not have a balanced source, you must run this as a single ended amp. The on board DAC is however a fully balanced DAC - there are 4 discrete channels, and the inverting of the left and right signals is done in the digital domain, thereby preserving the signal integrity. Those 4 channels are fed into 4 of HeadRoom's discrete Max (or Home if you don't upgrade it) modules, which produces the signal to drive the headphones. If you plug in single ended headphones, all the DAC channels remain active, however only 2 of the electronics modules are used, as per their single ended amps.

Conclusion

I've said it before in another thread, but this amplifier has a way of making the drivers of my 650's disappear in a way that no other amplifier I've heard is able to do. I stop being aware of a 'system' producing music - the music comes through with such precision, clarity and depth that the system just disappears. That is something that I think most of us are looking for in our music reproduction systems, and I'm extremely happy to have found it here. The Desktop was and is a wonderful little amplifier, and has a very similar sonic signature to this one, however it lacks that disappearing magic that just leaves you with the musical presentation without any flaws to latch on to and become obsessed with. I can't pay it a bigger compliment than that.

If you can afford one, get one! I suppose, if you can afford a Balanced Max, get one of those instead, but I'm willing to bet that this amp is at least 99% of a Max at a significant price difference.

With Head-fi discount, this amp costs $3419.

I brought this to the NY meet a few days ago, so anyone who heard it there who has anything to add/disagree with, please chime in!

[sum]

Argh, well new addition to the toy wish list. Thanks for the great review!

[Salt Peanuts]

Thanks for a nicely written review. I completely forgot to take a listen at the meet (along with other things that I forgot about till I got home).

Originally Posted by TheSloth

And further off the topic, what idiot numbered the Schubert symphonies? 1-6, then 8 unfinished and then 9. What happened to 7?!

Schubert sketched the Seventh Symphony at some point, but left it unorchestrated, and then started working on the Eighth Symphony.

[TheSloth]

Originally Posted by Salt Peanuts

Schubert sketched the Seventh Symphony at some point, but left it unorchestrated, and then started working on the Eighth Symphony.

Highly debatable. It was considered for a time that there was a lost symphony that became known as the 'Gmunden-Gastein' Symphony (that's supposedly where it was written). There was/is actually no evidence for this, and the sketches that he was working on during his stay in Gastein have been shown to incorporate parts of both the '9th' Symphony, and also the Grand Duo Sonata for Piano 4 hands. It was once speculated that the Grand Duo started out it's life as a plan for the '7th' Symphony, but again, there is no evidence to suggest that either. Traditional numbering and naming schemes for Schuberts works have always been fairly useless, as most things were published after his death. The opus numbers are completely out of sync, which is why the Deutsch numbers are used instead. Even those are a bit off however, as for example Deutsch uses up D849 for this magical Gastein Symphony which never existed, throwing all the numbers after it off a bit. He also includes the song 'Die Taubenpost' as the last song of the cycle Schwanengesang, which it isn't, and should really be D958 (which of course is taken already).

What are you doing Sloth? This is a headphone forum...

[Salt Peanuts]

Originally Posted by TheSloth

What are you doing Sloth? This is a headphone forum...

Providing me with more information on Schubert's works than I thought I would ever receive in this forum, of course.

Now there would be much less confusion today had he not gotten syphilis that may potentially have been his undoing (why I know he had syphilis, I have no idea).

[TheSloth]

Originally Posted by Salt Peanuts

Providing me with more information on Schubert's works than I thought I would ever receive in this forum, of course.

Now there would be much less confusion today had he not gotten syphilis that may potentially have been his undoing (why I know he had syphilis, I have no idea).

Oh god, here we go again. He did indeed have syphilis, however he didn't die from it. In many ways, he was fortunate to die when he did, because the latter stages of syphilis are quite horrific. He actually died while he still had early stage syphilis. Once and for all, Franz Schubert died of Typhus fever. Oh, and while we're at it, he wasn't gay either.

Ok, now, any comments on the Balanced Home?!

[justhavingfun]

Great review! Wish I have bought one of those mega bucks winning Lotto ticket but I can always dream about your dream head-fi gear. Thanks for the review.

[Romanee]

Beautifully written! Intelligent, focused and to the point.

Your amp is one of a number of items I couldn't get to before the meet ended. The only thing I can add is that I get the impression from your review that the amp is definitely something I would like to hear.

[en480c4]

Originally Posted by TheSloth

I stop being aware of a 'system' producing music - the music comes through with such precision, clarity and depth that the system just disappears.

I think that's the best compliment that can be made about an amp, or any part of the reproduction chain.

Thanks for a great review... it definitely sounds spot on with my (very) limited time with this amp at the Boston meet with my unbalanced 650/Zu combo.

[philodox]

Wow, quite the purchase. I've been very interested in the Headroom balanced DAC's recently due to their approach, which as you have said is spot on. I wonder how many other companys are doing the phase inversion in the digital domain and using 4 seperate DACs?

[TheSloth]

Originally Posted by philodox

Wow, quite the purchase. I've been very interested in the Headroom balanced DAC's recently due to their approach, which as you have said is spot on. I wonder how many other companys are doing the phase inversion in the digital domain and using 4 seperate DACs?

To take that one a little further, I wonder who is using 4 DAC's, and OPA627's in the analogue section, and then charging $499 for it...

[philodox]

Originally Posted by TheSloth

To take that one a little further, I wonder who is using 4 DAC's, and OPA627's in the analogue section, and then charging $499 for it...

Well, provided that you are also willing to drop a big stack of cash on the amp... I'd like to see them offer their Home and Max DAC's on their own. A discrete output stage would be nice as well... but that would drive the price way up.

[n_maher]

Originally Posted by philodox

I'd like to see them offer their Home and Max DAC's on their own. A discrete output stage would be nice as well... but that would drive the price way up.

I've talked with Tyll about this at length and it just isn't going to happen. The way I understand it is that the overall cost savings for the user was not significant over the combined DAC/Amp.

Nate

[TheSloth]

A system shot: (excuse the crappy camera)

[Solude]

The first is the Alps 'Blue Velvet' 4 channel continuous potentiometer. My understanding is that the Alps is likely to have a very slight smoothing effect, relative to a good stepped attenuator.

The second possibility is the Cardas cable. I've never been a huge fan of the Cardas headphone cable, and have a feeling that it may be tuned very slightly on the warm side. I fell in love with the Equinox cable which seemed to be a tad more neutral.

First off welcome to 'Team No Dinky Amplifiers Please'

Somewhere along the way you got these reversed. The Alps is more hi-fi or eletronic sounding than DACTs which are more transparent and smooth in comparison.

The Cardas is a not based on the Cross line-up and as Jude mentioned in his review quite bright and revealing. Ie its based on the Reference line that is also a high resolution, better have a nice source, type of cable. The Equinox is more forgiving, warm with bloom and good resolution.

Now forget about the reasons and go enjoy your amp. I promised everyone a Dynalo vs. Dynahi comparison for Saturday but man all I want to do is listen to the Reference