crymsonsunset
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2002
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Perhaps I was expecting too much.
I received my Headroom Airhead (HAh) headphone amp today. Excited, I opened up the package, loaded the HAh with fresh batteries, connected it to the line-out of my Panasonic SL-SX510 and selected Dream Theater's Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence Disc 2 for my first listening test.
Then came the hurt. Well, not really hurt, but disappointment. Extreme disappointment. I thought the purpose of a headphone amp was clarity, detail, drive. I got distortion.
FWIW, I'm using the new 4.5V version of the HAh. Now don't get me wrong, fantastic sounding the headphone jack on the SL-SX510 is not. Still, it can drive the Sony earbuds to reasonable volumes without much distortion. Sure, it distorts like a mofo on crack when you get too wild with the volume knob, but even with some of the loudest program material (just about any Dream Theater album) you can usually turn it up to around 8, and the good ol' 510 might make your ears ring after a while with a pair of earbuds. (NOTE: I'm not hear to debate what is or isn't healthy for your hearing. I'm well aware that excessive volume levels can cause hearing loss.)
What I was expecting from the HAh: Something that would rival the sound I can get by plugging in any pair of headphones I own to the headphone jack on my Yamaha RX-V995 A/V Receiver. High volume with lots of clarity - that is what I desire. I figured that if the headphone out of a $125 PCDP (That's what I paid for the 510 if memory serves) can be generally mediocre and occasionally better than mediocre, then a $120 amp devoted *solely* to driving headphones ought to be insanely good compared to what the 510 could offer. After all, I reasoned, a lot of what I spent on the 510 must have gone towards whatever componentry was required to for a CDP leaving the built-in headphone amp an afterthought at best. This logic is severely flawed, apparently.
Not only does the Panasonic SL-SX510 built-in headphone amp perform far better to my ears driving earbuds, it drove my Grado SR-60s and Koss KSC-35s to higher levels and sounded cleaner than the HAh, even at similar levels.
At low volumes, the HAh performs similarly to most PCDP headphone amps that I've heard. It's hard to be completely objective when it comes to small detail, but some music seemed to have a bit more warmth and the treble was smooth. As I increased the volume, there was audible static and the output quickly became horribly distorted.
I could only achieve any kind of acceptable sound at low volume, and so I tested the "image processor" at a low volume, switching it on and off often to compare the effects.
Excerpts from the HAh manual on what the processor does:
"When listening to speakers, you hear both the left and the right signals in both ears. Not so with headphones- when you stick a pair of speakers directly to your ears (i.e., headphones), you lose the spatial/acoustic cues your mind needs to locate sounds in space.
"Despite this lack of acoustic data, your mind attempts to laterally locate sounds. The result is a troubling blobs-in-the-head sonic image. Your brain ends up frustrated and fatigued.
"The audio image processor solves this problem. Analog filters are used to take an attenuated signal from each ear, slightly delay it (about 300 ms), and feed it to the opposite ear. This is the acoustic information your mind needs to create a believable audio image in your head. This added information eases the burdin on your brain by spreading out the clumped image in your head. Ahh, sweet relief."
Does it work? Yes and no. The processor didn't make me believe that the music was coming from in front of me, but there seemed to be less separation between the left and right channels. It tended to accentuate the midbass and midrange a bit while the treble seemed to lose some sharpness. I found the resulting sound to seem like it was confined to smaller space, not spread across a larger one. Even so, the effect wasn't necessarily displeasing or bad, just different. I had difficulty deciding which really sounded better to me as there were aspects of each the processed and non-processed sound that I thought were good and bad. All things considered, the image processor is nice to play with, but not anything particularly spectacular. And it certainly can't compensate for all of the product's other shortcomings.
I'm so extremely let down. I'm packing up the HAh for return tonight. What a complete piece of junk and waste of money. What gives? Is there any way to get the kind of sound I desire in a portable package? What do you think? What are your experiences with the Headroom Airhead?
I received my Headroom Airhead (HAh) headphone amp today. Excited, I opened up the package, loaded the HAh with fresh batteries, connected it to the line-out of my Panasonic SL-SX510 and selected Dream Theater's Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence Disc 2 for my first listening test.
Then came the hurt. Well, not really hurt, but disappointment. Extreme disappointment. I thought the purpose of a headphone amp was clarity, detail, drive. I got distortion.
FWIW, I'm using the new 4.5V version of the HAh. Now don't get me wrong, fantastic sounding the headphone jack on the SL-SX510 is not. Still, it can drive the Sony earbuds to reasonable volumes without much distortion. Sure, it distorts like a mofo on crack when you get too wild with the volume knob, but even with some of the loudest program material (just about any Dream Theater album) you can usually turn it up to around 8, and the good ol' 510 might make your ears ring after a while with a pair of earbuds. (NOTE: I'm not hear to debate what is or isn't healthy for your hearing. I'm well aware that excessive volume levels can cause hearing loss.)
What I was expecting from the HAh: Something that would rival the sound I can get by plugging in any pair of headphones I own to the headphone jack on my Yamaha RX-V995 A/V Receiver. High volume with lots of clarity - that is what I desire. I figured that if the headphone out of a $125 PCDP (That's what I paid for the 510 if memory serves) can be generally mediocre and occasionally better than mediocre, then a $120 amp devoted *solely* to driving headphones ought to be insanely good compared to what the 510 could offer. After all, I reasoned, a lot of what I spent on the 510 must have gone towards whatever componentry was required to for a CDP leaving the built-in headphone amp an afterthought at best. This logic is severely flawed, apparently.
Not only does the Panasonic SL-SX510 built-in headphone amp perform far better to my ears driving earbuds, it drove my Grado SR-60s and Koss KSC-35s to higher levels and sounded cleaner than the HAh, even at similar levels.
At low volumes, the HAh performs similarly to most PCDP headphone amps that I've heard. It's hard to be completely objective when it comes to small detail, but some music seemed to have a bit more warmth and the treble was smooth. As I increased the volume, there was audible static and the output quickly became horribly distorted.
I could only achieve any kind of acceptable sound at low volume, and so I tested the "image processor" at a low volume, switching it on and off often to compare the effects.
Excerpts from the HAh manual on what the processor does:
"When listening to speakers, you hear both the left and the right signals in both ears. Not so with headphones- when you stick a pair of speakers directly to your ears (i.e., headphones), you lose the spatial/acoustic cues your mind needs to locate sounds in space.
"Despite this lack of acoustic data, your mind attempts to laterally locate sounds. The result is a troubling blobs-in-the-head sonic image. Your brain ends up frustrated and fatigued.
"The audio image processor solves this problem. Analog filters are used to take an attenuated signal from each ear, slightly delay it (about 300 ms), and feed it to the opposite ear. This is the acoustic information your mind needs to create a believable audio image in your head. This added information eases the burdin on your brain by spreading out the clumped image in your head. Ahh, sweet relief."
Does it work? Yes and no. The processor didn't make me believe that the music was coming from in front of me, but there seemed to be less separation between the left and right channels. It tended to accentuate the midbass and midrange a bit while the treble seemed to lose some sharpness. I found the resulting sound to seem like it was confined to smaller space, not spread across a larger one. Even so, the effect wasn't necessarily displeasing or bad, just different. I had difficulty deciding which really sounded better to me as there were aspects of each the processed and non-processed sound that I thought were good and bad. All things considered, the image processor is nice to play with, but not anything particularly spectacular. And it certainly can't compensate for all of the product's other shortcomings.
I'm so extremely let down. I'm packing up the HAh for return tonight. What a complete piece of junk and waste of money. What gives? Is there any way to get the kind of sound I desire in a portable package? What do you think? What are your experiences with the Headroom Airhead?
