Greetings from Munich!
First of all thanks to all the interested members of Head-Fi for your patience with us once again. We appreciate the opportunity to address some of the issues and concerns that have been raised recently on the CanAmp thread.
Next we wish to extend our admiration to Mr. Asr for his beautifully written (and hopefully ongoing?) impressions on our humble little CanAmp. We feel honored that he is interested enough to invest his time and money in order to add to the wealth of other impressions already available here. He has certainly placed it among some most impressive company for his comparisons, some of which we have heard about from reputation but have not been able to experience for ourselves. While the CanAmp has been in production for more than 3 years by now, we are absolutely new to the idea of of the headphone world as a specialty market so we have much to learn still!
Notheless we can’t help but notice that nowhere in his postings does Asr address how the amplifiers under his review perform with entire pieces of music considered in whole, as opposed to component aspects such as “soundstage depth”, “low bass emphasis”, “articulation”, “attack”, “transparency”, etc, etc. These are all handy “audiophile” terms and while they certainly are useful to some degree we think they can only tell part of the story.
In fact, we have never conceived Heed Audio as an “audiophile” company. While we welcome such close scrutiny we still consider musical involvement and value for money to be our chief prioritys. My brother Zsolt considers himself to first and formost be a loudspeaker designer and so tries to apply that sensibility to every product we manufacture. And this past Feburary at the Bristol Show our UK distributor, Rob devised a 4-word slogan that perfectly captures our philosophy:
forget hifi
remember music
We note farther that Asr maintains an ambitious review schedule for publication, in addition to his writings for Head-Fi and also the very innovative “loaner program” he has arranged for other members , but we hope that once the CanAmp has run in to his satisfaction that he can take time out from equipmemt comparisons “in the moment”, pour himself a lovely glass of wine relax, and see where the music leads him!
And if he cares to e-mail me his address personally at: a.huszti@heedaudio.hu we will be happy to send him a bottle of one of our favorite Hungarian wines! But we understand of course, that in the end our wine might not be entirely to his taste or the CanAmp either. That’s how it should be. After all if there was universal agreement on products, most of us in this business would be looking for other jobs!
Which brings me to the matter that has caused us the most concern: the idea that CanAmps delivered today are somehow fundamentally different (or lesser even) than those that had been shipped nearly one year ago when Mike (better known as PinkFloyd) first contacted me and requested a review sample. One member here has gone so far as to speak about the need for an “investigation”.
I have discussed this at great length with Zsolt and he assures me that the design remains absolutely unchanged for better than the 3 years we have been producing the CanAmp. This of course extends to the components and their respective values and specifications. Zsolt continued to explain that there is always the possibility that may be slight cosmetic differences when parts are obtained from different suppliers and even these parts are subject to change in appearance without notice.
As a small manufacturer, these are simply the realities we have to live with. If a supplier delivers a transformer in black with wires protruding one time but in blue without the next, we are hardly in a position to argue with him about it so long as he can assure us that their values are exactly the same. We have never claimed to use exotic or “audiophile-grade” components, but the ones we do use are thouroughly tested for consistancy, both on the bench and in the finished product.
Naturally having read of the experiences of Mike and other adventurous CanAmp modders, we won’t rule out the prospect of introducing higher-grade components at some point in the future but this of course would make for a different product all together in regards to the pricing structure. The CanAmp was designed and delivered for an introductory price-point. While its wonderful that some here have determined that it might perform well above those modest intentions, we remain focused on maintaining its integrity as such.
I’d also like to discuss the idea presented recently that we have somehow been careless of quality control in our efforts to get CanAmps “out the door”. For anyone who has followed this thread from the beginning, it is well documented about our “growing pains” to meet the unexpected demand for this product. Since a big percentage of the orders have come from the U.S. we needed to source a reliable supply of appropriate transformers for North American voltage. Next, a few months ago a quality control issue arose when a capacitor was discovered to be reverse mounted. In the mean time we have made every effort to insure quality control. Our assembly is entirely in-house with Zsolt on the floor every single day. So if there is a problem, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Which is why we can confidently offer a 3-year world wide guarantee on every Heed Audio product. Obviously, we would much rather keep assembling CanAmps than having to fix them!
We are very excited to be at the High End Show this week, as we continue to introduce our new Obelisk range, which we believe will change peoples belief about what is possible from an affordable, yet entirely upgradeable, integrated amplifier (and whos unique non-DC coupled topology just might trickle down into an exciting new breed of headphone amplifier).
We can’t help but see this thread and the overwelming interest of Head-Fi members as an unexpected gift that has provided us with the opportunity to introduce ourselves in places we hardly could have dreamed about 20 years ago, when I first left Budapest (just as things were beginning to open up a bit) for Frankfurt and began distributing the likes of Rega, Roksan, Ion Systems, Spendor, Exposure, Royd, and Creek into Hungary under rather extreme circumstances. So we can only wish to build upon the confidence placed in us by all our new friends here.
Once again, I’d like to express our thanks to all the members here for their time and enthusiasm and all our dealers and distributors, especially Bob and Dan for representing us so very well in the States. As always I look forward to continuing our discussions with many of you by e-mail and telephone.
Yours Sincerely, Alpar Huszti
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I'm enjoying my CanAmp very much, and at the same time waiting for my modding parts to arrive from Farnell.
