The AirHead/BitHead Replacement????? - Page 3

I thought I'd chime in again to echo Sherwood's comment.

The crossfeed seems to be a Headroom trademark, a signature item. I did not consider any other brands when moving up to an ultra micro because I appreciated the crossfeed in the bithead (not even total bithead).

Whatever you do, I recommend you find some way to at least have the crossfeed as an option even at the lowest level. Otherwise, I think you risk losing a competitive advantage. In fact, I would talk up the crossfeed even more. It should make intuitive sense to people that recordings aren't normally binaural, so this is the closest way to get to the intended sound.

...I'll have to say as well that I'd be okay if it were to disappear. Now that I have my micro amp, my ears will accept only the best crossfeed performance. And some SQ increase at that price point would be welcome, to say the least!

First, thanks for all the good comments, they ran pretty much as we expected.

We've decided that we will not have crossfeed in the next version of the AirHead/BitHead, here's why:

We find that crossfeed is used by roughly half of our customers regularly. It's not the slam dunk we think it should be. We strongly believe in the theory, but find that many are just used to the presentation headphones give naturally and prefer that. So, the first point is that it's only used by half our customers.

Even when a customer does use it, it's not particularly easy to hear. We find that we very often get calls from customers wondering if their unit is broken because they can't hear the crossfeed turn on. We think it's a good thing that the crossfeed is subtle, but it does create some extra work for us as we talk people through the process of testing it on the phone.

The lower the cost of electronic circuitry around it, the more it degrades the sound quality when turned on. One thing we've noticed over the years is that as electronics got faster and cleaner sounding, the 'muddying' effect of the crossfeed has lessened. Saddly, that means that on the less expensive products, the blurring effect of the crossfeed is more noticable. This is worst with the AirHead/BitHead.

Even with the crossfeed off, we still need to have an input buffer and a summer stage that we don't need if there is no crossfeed circuit. This ads two extra active stages of circuitry which degrades the potential sound quality achievable. It also adds parts cost.

Those are the technical issues, now for some marketing logic.

The target demographic for these products are entry level audiophile, and below. It's very likely that the average customer of the AirHead has never heard of a headphone amp before. It is the job of this product to carry the idea out there into the mainstream audience that such a thing as a headphone amplifier exists, and it can significantly improve your listening experience. If that's all it does, it will have done well. To add to that the burden of having to educate the consumer about crossfeed and the psychoacoustic problems it solves may be more than this little product can bare. These customers aren't expecting crossfeed; they don't have any idea what it is; and it will likely make the product harder, not easier, to sell due to the more complex benefit statements that are required to transmit to the user.

It is extremely important that when someone plugs in to an AirHead (it won't be called that BTW) the sound quality improvement is clearly audible. Since, for the most part, customers won't even be using very good headphones, it is critical that the amp be extraordinarily clean sounding and authoritative.

Lastly, we want to make this product as small and thin as we can, the crossfeed circuit will likely force us to make it slightly bigger than we would like. And, it will make it less expensive to build, we'd like to include two parallel headphone jacks and two parallel input jacks, so that customers have a choice as to the orientation of the input and output plugs, and to have a spare if the jack begins to fail (saddly a common occurance with 1/8 mini jacks.

To summarize, the new AirHead/BitHead will not have crossfeed because:

• That demographic doesn't expect it.
• They wouldn't know what it was or how to test it if they had it.
• We want to 'WOW' them with sound quality.
• We need the unit to be as inexpensive as possible.
• We don't want to make the space for it and increase the size of the amp.
• We'd like to spend the money on other features.

I'd love to hear any additional comments you guys have, if any.

I think it is good that you did not carry this along any further. You made a decision and you going to get a product out that is upgraded in a market that is full of entry level products; therefore, you already have your challenges.

Very good reasons to drop the crossfeed. I do agree that it's the HeadRoom signature thing, but you can use that to your advantage, in a way: "Like this? Buy our high end products with crossfeed!"

When I purchased me first headphone amp, after a lot of reading, research, looking around at what was available, I choose the Total Bithead. I wanted an amp with a DAC for use with my computer. I wanted a crossfeed circuit (even though I had never heard one before). If the Total Bithead had not had a crossfeed circuit, I probably would still have purchased it. I did want a DAC and I liked the features (like 2 headphone jacks).

My second headphone amp (which I purchased last summer) is a Decware Zen Head. It is a very nice unit and has an excellent crossfeed circuit (amazingly good). I understand the benefits of a good crossfeed circuit. But I've been educated.

I think going without crossfeed on the new "Bithead" is a good move if the SQ is dazzling. Good luck with the new product. I'm sure that it will be excellent. I would expect no less from Headroom.

Cheers!

Tyll, I greatly appreciate that you went to your customers in an open forum to solicit thoughts for future offerings. Further, your conclusion was well articulated, shows careful deliberation by your company and your response here provides us with an in-depth understanding of that process. It is rare for a company to provide this level of technical and marketing information to its customers, which at least makes me want to be a loyal customer.

As someone who has a BitHead, and bought it as my first headphone amp, I thought that the crossfeed circuit should have been kept, but you convinced me that this was not the right direction for your company to take. Obviously, I cannot argue with sound quality as a primary focus, even if the crossfeed makes sense and sounds more natural to me. Hopefully once people get their BitHead/AirHeads (or whatever you replace them with) they will want to learn more about HeadRoom and want to try the crossfeed filter. Thanks again!

Plus they will more than likely plenty of TBH's with crossfeed available from those who now want the better sounding version and sell their old ones to make all the "I want crossfeed" potential buyers happy. Me, I'm keeping mine as I'm pleased enough with the sonic quality for what it is. If I want better, I pull out my Portable Micro Amp w/ DAC.

Well, i think I'll throw in what I'd want in the bithead replacement.

First, a rechargeable Li-Ion battery would be great, with charging through the USB port. I hate using alkalines and removing and charging nicads is a pain.

Personally I don't find much use for a second headphone jack, and wouldn't miss it in the next version. Dropping crossfeed was a good idea too.

And finally upgrade the volume pot to something higher quality (with a knob with integrated power switch instead of a dial).

If I could have something like that, with the Bithead's SQ at ~$200, I'd be sold in an instant.

I'm thinking of an airhead as well and would prefer a USB rechargeable solution rather than having to change batteries.

Would that make it too expensive?

My recommendation would be to drop the batteries all together for a Bithead and use the USB power exclusively. If necessary, build in some capacitors or a small rechargeable battery to handle any power requirement that would go beyond what would be provided by USB.

Drop the analog input, it's just extra complexity. If you want analog in, buy an Airhead replacement. I have never used the analog component on my airhead.

Maybe you could consider some sort of iPod interface directly, with all the LODs out there, I think there'd be a demand.

The cost to make an Airhead into a Bithead is relatively minimal. No reason to work on two completely different designs when one will do. Making a Bithead USB power only makes it extremely inflexible compared to the current offering, and as they are moving towards pure SQ there is no way to get better power from USB than from batteries.

Same for me!