After trying out the Maxed Out Home loaner, here are my opinions on how it fairs against the Sugden Headmaster. Please note that this is nothing more than my opinion, and should in no way substitute for your own pair of ears. It should also be noted that many Headfiers think I hear wierdly or differently, so this entire review may in reality be irrelevent to you.
[size=small]The Maxed Out Home[/size]
Build Quality: Absolutely top notch. Rock solid RCA jacks, big bold volume knob, solid switches. Nothing loose or shaky here. My only concern though is with the Neutrik jacks. The older (?) Neutrik jacks present on the McCormack MID and older Max and seen on the new ASL Twinhead locked onto the headphone plug. And I mean it actually locked onto the plug. Once plugged in, I could not pull the plug out of the older jacks without first pressing the release switch. If I tried otherwise, the amp would end up on the floor. The newer Neutrik jacks, while quite pretty, don't seem to actually lock on to the plug. Whether or not I press that release switch makes no difference, I can pull the plug out either way. Is it supposed to be like this?
Sound Quality: (High Gain at all times) With all switches on flat, one word comes to my mind, and that is smooth. The sound is smooth, unfatiguing, very liquid. Not a solid state type of sound at all to my ears at first listen. Unfortunately, despite what Headroom says, I still think that the overall sound is rolled off in the highs.
With the filter on bright/brighter, the sound suddenly seems to bloom and open up. The MOH gains a new degree of transparency and detail, and the headstage expands by a large amount. Now I think we're getting somewhere. For me at least, having the brightness switch on is rather a requirement, in that it tremendously opens up the sound. In regards to the past, having heard an old Home and Max, I do think this brightness filter is an improvement, in that the degree of brightness seems more "right". In the past the brightness filter was thinner and more tizzy, and not as natural sounding as it is now. The older filter plainly sounded artificial when turned on.
With the filter off, crossfeed on, the bass suddenly increases but remains nice and tight, and the midrange gains a sense of airiness and extra warmth. The top end remains rolled off. Typical crossfeed sensations happen as well at this point.
With the crossfeed on, filter on, the sound is closer to "flat". Once again, typical crossfeed sensations. There is more I'd like to say about the crossfeed, but I will critique it a bit later.
[size=small]The Sugden Headmaster[/size]
Build Quality: It's hard to talk about the Headmaster without eventually saying something about its looks. The stark, butt naked industrial look is at once both boring and downright beautiful. Simple, plain knobs, simple smooth and straight cuts and curves. And yet sitting there it just exudes a sense of quality, and one can't help but feel the pride of ownership.
The build quality is top notch. Solid slabs of aluminum deck its top and bottom plate, along with the rest of its chassis. Brightly polished gold plated jacks run across the backside. Polished aluminum knobs deck the front. My only critique would be on the knobs, in that the metal that surrounds the knob plain feels a bit thin to the touch. A bit more heft to the knobs (i.e. the knob on the Max) would have been nice. The input selector knob also feels a tad bit wobbly at times. And I can't help but wonder about how everytime I plug in interconnects, I hear a hollow thwunking sound from the back.
Sound Quality: This amp utterly changed my system. This piece single handedly changed my mind about the Sony MDR-R10s, and completely revealed to me everything the Sony DVP-S9000ES was capable of...and not capable of. Whereas in the past the R10s merely hinted at what they were capable of doing, the Headmaster takes the R10s and completely unleashes what the R10s are capable of.
For starters, the Headmaster is completely reckless and ruthless. It is the epitome of transparency. Of all the headphone amps I have heard to date, the Headmaster reveals the absolute most amount of musical info. It reveals like a bottomless pit. Everything your source is capable of, or not capable of, is revealed entirely. The Headmaster holds no punches, and reveals everything.
As such, I find it hard to tag a tonal signature onto the Headmaster. I have heard many times in the past people calling it bright. Then even more astounding is I've even heard it being described as warm. I think the bottom line is its just utterly transparent to your source ultimately, and will sound most like your source. If you have a bright source, it will be bright, if you have a warm source it will be warm. If your source has good extraction of details, then the transient response, decay, attack, and speed will shine through on the Headmaster to the utmost extent.
[size=small]Sugden Headmaster vs. Headroom Maxed Out Home[/size]
Now the fun begins.
For starters, here's a list of associated components:
Source: Sony DVP-S9000ES + Absolute Power Cord
Interconnects: Cardas Neutral Reference
Headphones: Sony MDR-R10, Etymotic 4B
Misc: Both the Headmaster and MOH are equipped with Absolute Power Cords
Using the MOH at the flat setting, there was absolutely no comparison. The Headmaster sounded much, much better. The best analogy I can think of is that the MOH sounded like I was looking at a sunny, bright blue sky through dark, tinted windows that were closed. While switching over to the Headmaster was as if somebody had suddenly thrown open those windows wide open to their fullest extent. With the MOH in this state the Headmaster sounded much more open, transparent, detailed, etc. The MOH bordered on sounding downright bad...dark, murky, convered up details, lack of transparency, squished congested headstage, etc. The MOH just did not sound cool at all.
With the brightness switch on, crossfeed off, the MOH became much closer competition with the Headmaster. Now the MOH sounds much more lively, open, and just as transparent and detailed as the Headmaster. The headstage expanded much more to match the openess the Headmaster displayed, and the congested stuffy sound I heard with everything set to flat was gone. I do however still think the Headmaster takes the cake here. The MOH with brightness on indeed sounded "bright" compared to the Headmaster. The Headmaster's highs sounded naturally crystal clear and lacked any sort of hardness or harshness, while the MOH exhibited a bit of the traits one could associate with an overbright piece of equipment. The Headmaster sounded more natural in the highs here, while the MOH sounded a tad artificial. Finally, the Headmaster sounds more airy around the highs and mids, while treble sounds deflated and flat on the MOH. This is part of the reason why the Headmaster sounds more natural in the treble than the MOH, with the tonal difference being the other part. Above I mentioned that this is what I believe should be the minimal default listening setting for the MOH...well, the truth is it needs to be at this setting to even challenge the Headmaster.
Now in regards to the bass, the Headmaster betters the MOH up until the crossfeed switch is activated, which boosts the MOH's bass. In all other cases, the Headmaster packs a bigger, deeper wallop than the MOH...switching back to the MOH suddenly shows a loss of bass authority.
The Headmaster does not have crossfeed, so a comparison can't be made between the MOH and Headmaster really. However I do have another amp that utilizes the other crossfeed style available on the market, the one implemented by Jan Meier. I also have heard the older Headroom crossfeeds. If I had to rank them, I would prefer Meier's crossfeed first, followed by the older Headroom crossfeed, followed by the new one. The new crossfeed style adds a large amount of reverb that is quite audible. This unfortunately leads to an unnatural hall ambience feeling in everything I listen to, and it also feels as if somebody had turned on the reverb switch behind my back. Decays stay for an unnaturally long period of time when the crossfeed is on. It goes to the point where things that aren't supposed to decay end up getting decay added to them. I'm all for crossfeed, but not when it comes at the cost of messing around with how the original recording sounds. Thus do I like Meier's personally...it makes the least audible changes to the original recording, while maintaining the naturalness crossfeed is meant to provide.
EDIT
Well, I decided to give the MOH one last listen before shipping her back out. I also decided to try some jazz on kelly's suggestion, so I popped in some Keiko Matsui and donned the R10s/Ety 4Bs.
Switching through all the switch combinations, I do not hear a single trace of reverb or echoes on this CD with either the R10s or Etymotics.
My only guess now is that the crossfeed can be recording dependent...those recordings particularly that have a more echoey nature to begin with might get that magnified. And I think part of it has to do with the extra airy warmth and fullness that the crossfeed injects into the music. It kind of works like this, and I'm sure Max owners will agree with me on this one this time: switch on the crossfeed, and you'll add in the crossfeed feature, and the associated bass, and if needed, the filter. But then switch off that crossfeed, and suddenly you feel as if something drastic is missing in the music. It suddenly sounds thinner and lifeless.
This is exactly akin to the same feeling you'd get if you had a soundcard that had allowed you to add in an artificial 3D feel to the sound. Switch it on, and suddenly you get more bloom and life to the sound, especially effective on cheap speakers. Switch it off, and suddenly things sound boringly plain.
I believe this feeling is part of why I thought there was some form of reverb being added in...the sudden loss in the music when the crossfeed was turned off was just similar to the same feeling I'd get if I switched off the 3D sound enchancement feature on Creative Lab's Soundblaster soundcards. Now I'm not saying the crossfeed is a 3D enhancer when it is on, but rather when you switch it off, the sensation is similar to switching off a 3D enchancer.
So, call it a big false alarm if you will. The Headroom crossfeed does NOT add reverb, but rather turning it off will give you the sensation akin to turning off reverb. Which is what I believed confused my brain previously. So yes, you folks were right. I do hear wierdly. And it was also a miscommuncation in words on my part. Reverb was probably too strong of a word to use to begin with.
[size=small]Misc[/size]
There is one big criticism I have on the MOH, and it has to do with the input selector. Quite simply and bluntly put, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING HEADROOM?!? Sticking an INPUT SELECTOR on the BACK of the MOH??? And not just anywhere on the back of the MOH, but smack dab right in the middle of where most audiophiles would connect big fat pretty looking RCA connectors from their big fat interconnects, making that switch all but untouchable? Co'mon. Imagine if somebody really used this thing as a preamp...I can't imagine having to dig behind all the cables in the back of a system just to reach that tiny switch! This is where the amp is in danger of getting the sledgehammer treatment and Headroom is in danger of getting cursed till their next amp update.
On your next update of these amps you have just GOTTA move the input selector to the front. Either that, or leave out the input selector and make both inputs active. I don't think any other amp/preamp maker out there in fact puts their input selector on the back, geesh...
[size=small]Conclusion[/size]
Well, I think it's pretty plain that I prefer the Sugden Headmaster more here. So what went wrong with Headroom's MOH? I think it's a case of design goals. I always like to go back and consider a manufacturer's design goals whenver I can't figure something out. I think Sugden designed the Headmaster to simply be as transparent as they could possibly make it. That's not to say Headroom doesn't try to shoot for that as well, but they also have another major goal that they have to implement into their amps, and that is the crossfeed feature. Crossfeed is something they do hope the customers of their amps will actively use. And I think in implementing this goal, they start introducing several other variables that end up making their amps more and more complicated, such as the filter to counter tonal differences introduced by the crossfeed. Headroom has to make their amps work like three amps in one...flat, filter on/crossfeed off, filter on/crossfeed on. There were times when I felt pretty overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choices I had at my disposal with the MOH. And these were choices I would not have minded being taken away from me, if it could just have been possible to get the amp to sound right without me having to mess around with it. Such is the case I think with the MOH's flat setting vs. the Headmaster, and such is the case of the Headroom crossfeed vs. Meier crossfeed. In both latter cases, I did not have to touch anything further for them to both sound right to my ears. And I like that. Music shouldn't have to end up requiring a rocket launch pad console board to sound right.
I'd like to thank Headroom for allowing me the opportunity to audition one of their top amps. By all means I think those that can audition these amps, should go for it. The best way, and IMO the ONLY way to tell if you like something or not in the audio world is to listen for yourself. There is simply no substitution for your own pair of ears. The MOH may not have been my cup of tea, but there are still many, many happy owners of Headroom amps out there.
And of course, if Headroom is reading this, I warmly welcome any comments/criticisms/flames you might have. Particularly if I stepped over bounds in assuming anything...I really do think some things are best explained by an engineer.
For a massive pic of everything, go here:
http://www.phase7.com/~flumpus/MOH%20vs.%20Sugden.jpg
[size=small]The Maxed Out Home[/size]
Build Quality: Absolutely top notch. Rock solid RCA jacks, big bold volume knob, solid switches. Nothing loose or shaky here. My only concern though is with the Neutrik jacks. The older (?) Neutrik jacks present on the McCormack MID and older Max and seen on the new ASL Twinhead locked onto the headphone plug. And I mean it actually locked onto the plug. Once plugged in, I could not pull the plug out of the older jacks without first pressing the release switch. If I tried otherwise, the amp would end up on the floor. The newer Neutrik jacks, while quite pretty, don't seem to actually lock on to the plug. Whether or not I press that release switch makes no difference, I can pull the plug out either way. Is it supposed to be like this?
Sound Quality: (High Gain at all times) With all switches on flat, one word comes to my mind, and that is smooth. The sound is smooth, unfatiguing, very liquid. Not a solid state type of sound at all to my ears at first listen. Unfortunately, despite what Headroom says, I still think that the overall sound is rolled off in the highs.
With the filter on bright/brighter, the sound suddenly seems to bloom and open up. The MOH gains a new degree of transparency and detail, and the headstage expands by a large amount. Now I think we're getting somewhere. For me at least, having the brightness switch on is rather a requirement, in that it tremendously opens up the sound. In regards to the past, having heard an old Home and Max, I do think this brightness filter is an improvement, in that the degree of brightness seems more "right". In the past the brightness filter was thinner and more tizzy, and not as natural sounding as it is now. The older filter plainly sounded artificial when turned on.
With the filter off, crossfeed on, the bass suddenly increases but remains nice and tight, and the midrange gains a sense of airiness and extra warmth. The top end remains rolled off. Typical crossfeed sensations happen as well at this point.
With the crossfeed on, filter on, the sound is closer to "flat". Once again, typical crossfeed sensations. There is more I'd like to say about the crossfeed, but I will critique it a bit later.
[size=small]The Sugden Headmaster[/size]
Build Quality: It's hard to talk about the Headmaster without eventually saying something about its looks. The stark, butt naked industrial look is at once both boring and downright beautiful. Simple, plain knobs, simple smooth and straight cuts and curves. And yet sitting there it just exudes a sense of quality, and one can't help but feel the pride of ownership.
The build quality is top notch. Solid slabs of aluminum deck its top and bottom plate, along with the rest of its chassis. Brightly polished gold plated jacks run across the backside. Polished aluminum knobs deck the front. My only critique would be on the knobs, in that the metal that surrounds the knob plain feels a bit thin to the touch. A bit more heft to the knobs (i.e. the knob on the Max) would have been nice. The input selector knob also feels a tad bit wobbly at times. And I can't help but wonder about how everytime I plug in interconnects, I hear a hollow thwunking sound from the back.
Sound Quality: This amp utterly changed my system. This piece single handedly changed my mind about the Sony MDR-R10s, and completely revealed to me everything the Sony DVP-S9000ES was capable of...and not capable of. Whereas in the past the R10s merely hinted at what they were capable of doing, the Headmaster takes the R10s and completely unleashes what the R10s are capable of.
For starters, the Headmaster is completely reckless and ruthless. It is the epitome of transparency. Of all the headphone amps I have heard to date, the Headmaster reveals the absolute most amount of musical info. It reveals like a bottomless pit. Everything your source is capable of, or not capable of, is revealed entirely. The Headmaster holds no punches, and reveals everything.
As such, I find it hard to tag a tonal signature onto the Headmaster. I have heard many times in the past people calling it bright. Then even more astounding is I've even heard it being described as warm. I think the bottom line is its just utterly transparent to your source ultimately, and will sound most like your source. If you have a bright source, it will be bright, if you have a warm source it will be warm. If your source has good extraction of details, then the transient response, decay, attack, and speed will shine through on the Headmaster to the utmost extent.
[size=small]Sugden Headmaster vs. Headroom Maxed Out Home[/size]
Now the fun begins.
For starters, here's a list of associated components:
Source: Sony DVP-S9000ES + Absolute Power Cord
Interconnects: Cardas Neutral Reference
Headphones: Sony MDR-R10, Etymotic 4B
Misc: Both the Headmaster and MOH are equipped with Absolute Power Cords
Using the MOH at the flat setting, there was absolutely no comparison. The Headmaster sounded much, much better. The best analogy I can think of is that the MOH sounded like I was looking at a sunny, bright blue sky through dark, tinted windows that were closed. While switching over to the Headmaster was as if somebody had suddenly thrown open those windows wide open to their fullest extent. With the MOH in this state the Headmaster sounded much more open, transparent, detailed, etc. The MOH bordered on sounding downright bad...dark, murky, convered up details, lack of transparency, squished congested headstage, etc. The MOH just did not sound cool at all.
With the brightness switch on, crossfeed off, the MOH became much closer competition with the Headmaster. Now the MOH sounds much more lively, open, and just as transparent and detailed as the Headmaster. The headstage expanded much more to match the openess the Headmaster displayed, and the congested stuffy sound I heard with everything set to flat was gone. I do however still think the Headmaster takes the cake here. The MOH with brightness on indeed sounded "bright" compared to the Headmaster. The Headmaster's highs sounded naturally crystal clear and lacked any sort of hardness or harshness, while the MOH exhibited a bit of the traits one could associate with an overbright piece of equipment. The Headmaster sounded more natural in the highs here, while the MOH sounded a tad artificial. Finally, the Headmaster sounds more airy around the highs and mids, while treble sounds deflated and flat on the MOH. This is part of the reason why the Headmaster sounds more natural in the treble than the MOH, with the tonal difference being the other part. Above I mentioned that this is what I believe should be the minimal default listening setting for the MOH...well, the truth is it needs to be at this setting to even challenge the Headmaster.
Now in regards to the bass, the Headmaster betters the MOH up until the crossfeed switch is activated, which boosts the MOH's bass. In all other cases, the Headmaster packs a bigger, deeper wallop than the MOH...switching back to the MOH suddenly shows a loss of bass authority.
The Headmaster does not have crossfeed, so a comparison can't be made between the MOH and Headmaster really. However I do have another amp that utilizes the other crossfeed style available on the market, the one implemented by Jan Meier. I also have heard the older Headroom crossfeeds. If I had to rank them, I would prefer Meier's crossfeed first, followed by the older Headroom crossfeed, followed by the new one. The new crossfeed style adds a large amount of reverb that is quite audible. This unfortunately leads to an unnatural hall ambience feeling in everything I listen to, and it also feels as if somebody had turned on the reverb switch behind my back. Decays stay for an unnaturally long period of time when the crossfeed is on. It goes to the point where things that aren't supposed to decay end up getting decay added to them. I'm all for crossfeed, but not when it comes at the cost of messing around with how the original recording sounds. Thus do I like Meier's personally...it makes the least audible changes to the original recording, while maintaining the naturalness crossfeed is meant to provide.
EDIT
Well, I decided to give the MOH one last listen before shipping her back out. I also decided to try some jazz on kelly's suggestion, so I popped in some Keiko Matsui and donned the R10s/Ety 4Bs.
Switching through all the switch combinations, I do not hear a single trace of reverb or echoes on this CD with either the R10s or Etymotics.
My only guess now is that the crossfeed can be recording dependent...those recordings particularly that have a more echoey nature to begin with might get that magnified. And I think part of it has to do with the extra airy warmth and fullness that the crossfeed injects into the music. It kind of works like this, and I'm sure Max owners will agree with me on this one this time: switch on the crossfeed, and you'll add in the crossfeed feature, and the associated bass, and if needed, the filter. But then switch off that crossfeed, and suddenly you feel as if something drastic is missing in the music. It suddenly sounds thinner and lifeless.
This is exactly akin to the same feeling you'd get if you had a soundcard that had allowed you to add in an artificial 3D feel to the sound. Switch it on, and suddenly you get more bloom and life to the sound, especially effective on cheap speakers. Switch it off, and suddenly things sound boringly plain.
I believe this feeling is part of why I thought there was some form of reverb being added in...the sudden loss in the music when the crossfeed was turned off was just similar to the same feeling I'd get if I switched off the 3D sound enchancement feature on Creative Lab's Soundblaster soundcards. Now I'm not saying the crossfeed is a 3D enhancer when it is on, but rather when you switch it off, the sensation is similar to switching off a 3D enchancer.
So, call it a big false alarm if you will. The Headroom crossfeed does NOT add reverb, but rather turning it off will give you the sensation akin to turning off reverb. Which is what I believed confused my brain previously. So yes, you folks were right. I do hear wierdly. And it was also a miscommuncation in words on my part. Reverb was probably too strong of a word to use to begin with.
[size=small]Misc[/size]
There is one big criticism I have on the MOH, and it has to do with the input selector. Quite simply and bluntly put, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING HEADROOM?!? Sticking an INPUT SELECTOR on the BACK of the MOH??? And not just anywhere on the back of the MOH, but smack dab right in the middle of where most audiophiles would connect big fat pretty looking RCA connectors from their big fat interconnects, making that switch all but untouchable? Co'mon. Imagine if somebody really used this thing as a preamp...I can't imagine having to dig behind all the cables in the back of a system just to reach that tiny switch! This is where the amp is in danger of getting the sledgehammer treatment and Headroom is in danger of getting cursed till their next amp update.
[size=small]Conclusion[/size]
Well, I think it's pretty plain that I prefer the Sugden Headmaster more here. So what went wrong with Headroom's MOH? I think it's a case of design goals. I always like to go back and consider a manufacturer's design goals whenver I can't figure something out. I think Sugden designed the Headmaster to simply be as transparent as they could possibly make it. That's not to say Headroom doesn't try to shoot for that as well, but they also have another major goal that they have to implement into their amps, and that is the crossfeed feature. Crossfeed is something they do hope the customers of their amps will actively use. And I think in implementing this goal, they start introducing several other variables that end up making their amps more and more complicated, such as the filter to counter tonal differences introduced by the crossfeed. Headroom has to make their amps work like three amps in one...flat, filter on/crossfeed off, filter on/crossfeed on. There were times when I felt pretty overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choices I had at my disposal with the MOH. And these were choices I would not have minded being taken away from me, if it could just have been possible to get the amp to sound right without me having to mess around with it. Such is the case I think with the MOH's flat setting vs. the Headmaster, and such is the case of the Headroom crossfeed vs. Meier crossfeed. In both latter cases, I did not have to touch anything further for them to both sound right to my ears. And I like that. Music shouldn't have to end up requiring a rocket launch pad console board to sound right.
I'd like to thank Headroom for allowing me the opportunity to audition one of their top amps. By all means I think those that can audition these amps, should go for it. The best way, and IMO the ONLY way to tell if you like something or not in the audio world is to listen for yourself. There is simply no substitution for your own pair of ears. The MOH may not have been my cup of tea, but there are still many, many happy owners of Headroom amps out there.
And of course, if Headroom is reading this, I warmly welcome any comments/criticisms/flames you might have. Particularly if I stepped over bounds in assuming anything...I really do think some things are best explained by an engineer.
For a massive pic of everything, go here:
http://www.phase7.com/~flumpus/MOH%20vs.%20Sugden.jpg
