sleepkyng,
For me crossfeed is very important in headphone listening. It’s one of those things that, until you have heard it, you don’t know what you’re missing. Even on classical orchestra recordings where there is a lot of natural crossfeed in the recording itself, turning it on makes that annoying sound hole in your head come up solid, and suddenly there is that “ahh” feeling. It’s important to be relaxed to hear the effect of the crossfeed really well. For example, if you are hiking along and an insect flies in your ear, you just brush it away and keep on going without much bother. Imagine that you are sitting outside reading a book and an insect flies in your ear; you would practically jump out of your chair. Almost the whole point of crossfeed is to make this kind of annoyance go away when there is too much of one sound in one ear. When I first got the HeadRoom Max I compared it to the pretty good headphone output in my NAD receiver, and I couldn’t hear the crossfeed effect. Later that night when I was relaxed, the effect was very obvious. I think this excitement effect could also explain why in some public tests audiophiles can’t tell the difference between a $300 and $3,000 amp, but when they get them home they can very easily tell them apart.
A lot of pop music recorded since 1980 seems to me to have relatively little stereo separation, probably because of the influence of Walkman headphone systems and car stereo. Also, most pop music is exciting and upbeat, reducing the perception of crossfeed for the reasons I have explained above.
I have compared my Max, and the Meier HA-2 amp in my system for a time until I sent the HA-2 back mainly because of its crossfeed. I have to say that Jan Meier is a very decent guy to do business with, and now you can get his amps from Todd.
For me, the HeadRoom crossfeed is clearly superior to the Meier crossfeed. The Meier crossfeed greatly reduces ambience and narrows the soundstage noticeably. The HeadRoom crossfeed has no effect on either. Yes, the Meier crossfeed has no effect on frequency response, but when the Max has its crossfeed and compensatory filter on, there is little change in its frequency response. The Chesky Ultimate Demonstration Disc (the one with the ears) is frequently used by Head-Fi members in reviews of components. On the track “Holographic Imaging” there is a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Festival Te Deum, a choral work recorded in a church. The Meier crossfeed almost destroys the ambience and narrows the soundstage, but the Max does neither. Some people have posted that the Meier crossfeed reduces bass, but I have never seen a post criticizing the Max bass with crossfeed. I didn’t hear any reduction in bass with the Meier crossfeed, but maybe I didn’t have the right material. Also, for me, the Max crossfeed generally is just more relaxing than the Meier crossfeed. Jude has also made some criticisms of the Meier crossfeed in a thread with the title “Upgrade to Old Max or HA-2?”, but I can’t find it now because the search function is turned off.
I absolutely do not agree with others who have posted that the crossfeed in either amp reduces tonality or dynamics.
I have considered trying to build my own headphone amp with crossfeed, and the Meier version is the simplest to implement. I wonder if changing some of his variables, such as the amount of the crossfeed, the time delay and the frequency where it changes could solve its problems.
I hope this helps.
