out of the box, burn-in, some impressions
Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent Kang  OK. I have just received my Headsix and it sounds fantastic out of the box. Smooth, warm, and very musical. But what's odd is that even when it is turned "off", the amp plays music off my IPOD at a low volume. Does anyone else experience this with their Headsix?
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I found it a little unpleasant out of the box, same as the comments before me... compressed soundstage, and lacking some dynamics.
Fast forward, after about 20 hours of burn-in, significantly improved, most of the out-of-the-box complaints are gone, and doesn't seem to be changing much any more(i.e. further burn-in seems unnecessary or hardly significant).
I also experience what you described, when the amp still plays music when the amp's power supply is off. Kind of freaked me out at first but makes sense given the above explanations.
Initial impressions: a pretty fun sounding amp, fairly accurate and fairly neutral, has that "wire + gain" sound signature, at least to my ears. Sound signature does differ slightly from my Creek (probably a no-brainer comment, since no two non-identical amps will have exactly the same sound signature), but it's hard for me to express in words the exact differences.
Quality-wise, I was expecting the Headsix to be a lot worse than my Creek OBH-21SE desktop amp. After all, it's a small fraction of the size, is driven by a 9V battery that takes up over 1/4 of the enclosure, and costs only $150 before paypal fees. The Creek, on the other hand, is a full-size (albeit with a small footprint) desktop amp with only RCA-ins/outs, its own regulated power supply, a very nice volume control knob, and costed me about $400 (street price). The Creek is definitely the winner in overall quality, but it's pretty amazing to see how close the little Headsix comes. Having owned only the Creek amp at $400, if someone blindfolded me and made me guess how much the Headsix costs, I would probably guess more in the $250 range.
