An Original In Every Way: Farewell, Tyll!
I don’t meet too many people who’ve been into headphone audio longer than me, but Tyll is certainly one of them. Before there was a Head-Fi.org (founded in 2001), I was one of many customers of Tyll’s company HeadRoom Corporation — which, for those of you who don’t know, was the first online retailer of premium headphones that I can recall, as well as the first real dedicated manufacturer of audiophile headphone amplifiers that I can recall.
Before I started Head-Fi, I was a community member of the original headphone audio forum HeadWize. In 2001, shortly before I started Head-Fi, Tyll and HeadRoom organized a contest on HeadWize with four awesome prizes available. I rarely enter contests, but I was determined to win what I could from that one. I ended up winning three of the four prizes: A Sennheiser HD600, a HeadRoom Total AirHead (portable headphone amp), and a HeadRoom Max (then their flagship headphone amplifier, and what was arguably the best headphone amp of the time, period). Did the enthusiasm that grew from enjoying those prizes (all of which we still have) play any part in eventually starting Head-Fi? It’s hard to say when you try to put it all together this many years later, but I think so.
While at HeadRoom, Tyll was the first to make laboratory-grade headphone measurements a consumer-facing thing. That tradition continued when he started
InnerFidelity, his headphone measurements forever redefining how headphones would be viewed and reviewed. Would we have a world-class audio measurement lab here at Head-Fi HQ today if Tyll had never started with consumer-facing lab-grade measurements with HeadRoom and eventually InnerFidelity? No.
Some years later, Tyll (still the head of HeadRoom Corporation) worked with the Head-Fi community members in New York to organize the 2006 New York National Head-Fi Meet, which was the first meet this community had seen beyond a regional level. That New York event started a community tradition of annual events around the country that grew, expanded, and morphed into what CanJam is today.
Anyone who knows Tyll knows he’s a true eccentric. There is a streak of crazy that runs through the very core of him — the type of crazy that leads to the derring-do that has made a litany of firsts part of his huge legacy in our headphone world, in addition to the obvious influence of his reviews and commentary.
He’s been hinting to us for some time how he’d retire. He told many of us at the last CanJam SoCal the time had come, so his announcement the other day wasn’t at all a surprise. Nevertheless, when it actually happened, it still felt shocking.
This way you’re retiring, Tyll…it’s pure 100%
you. May the road ahead be kind and generous to you (and Putt).
Thank you for
everything, Mr. Hertsens.