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Originally Posted by Voltron /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I bet Travis the CEO is way relieved that you did not turn out to be the raging maniac that your Hulk pics (or panty pics! ) might have indicated.
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Oh geez! I forgot about that pic. He's gonna have to see it one of these days, and then he'll be like the rest of us: unable to unsee it.
I've been staring at my belly button for a day and a half now, and I'm inspired. So I'm going to take opportunity to make a few "visionary" comments about the headphone market and this community.
Sometimes I think this hobby isn't so much
about headphones as it is
around headphones.
Isn't it odd that something as intimately internal as headphone listening has spawned this buoyant social activity of folks hauling baskets of gear to meets, listening to each others music, admiring the geeky DIY handiwork, and having dinner and giddiness together afterward as if they were life-long friends....which,of course, they are.
How did this happen? Why does this happen about something as silly as headphones?
'Cuz it's not about the headphones really, it's about the people. The most amazing thing you'll find at a meet is Edwood jumping up and down exuberantly yammering on about something or other, or Bozebuttons casually opening the eleventh box housing some six-figure work of audio art, or Voltron gently smiling and telling a sweet story about someone drunk in a tub, or, maybe most amazingly, a sweetheart of a middle school teacher who can survive rabid 8th graders during the day, and a bunch of knucklehead audio phreaks at night. (Hi Ed, Tom, Al, and Vicky) My guess is that for the foreseeable future, this hobby is first and foremost about folks enjoying each other. The music and gear they love are just the toys they like to play with which brings them together.
The headphone amps themselves will change some over time, but not too much. Heck, some of us still have turn tables at home. A headphone amp is a beautifully simple thing, my guess is that at the high-end, we'll see an infinite variety of variations upon the few simple themes. The sources for the headphone amps in this hobby, however, will be all over the map.
I've got some ideas about DSP DACs, and I know many other makers thinking haywire things about DACs. And have you seen the Aspire One netbook at your local Costco? $299 for a tiny WindowsXP laptop with a 140gig hard drive. Talk about your perfect portable music and media player, that's as cheap and does way more than an iTouch! I gotta Squeezbox in my garage and a Transporter in living-room, and I love helping April with her homework with French jazz radio streaming in the background. I think the headphone hobby with its open-mindedness toward sources is what will cause it to more than join the “audiophile” market but will rather actually end up on the leading edge of it with younger folks who've embraced these new technologies.
I don't really want to say too much about the future of the portable world but one of these days everything will be CD rez digital wireless in one way or the other, and then the
only thing you'll need to carry is the headphone amp.
I wish I could predict good health for the DIY part of this activity. It used to be that the DIY part of the audiophile world was pretty big and strong compared to the market as a whole. Now, the DIY percentage of the audiophile world is quite limited. I would hate to think the same thing might happen in the headphone world.
The headphone DIY world is astonishingly high-quality. Not only are the designs and performance of many of these amps excellent, but the documentation, educational opportunities, and economic potential of this activity are all surprisingly healthy. But I don't think ongoing success is guaranteed. It's not easy to build gear; it's especially difficulty to figure out what's wrong when something isn't working. And the quality of DIY gear and the purchase itself can be touch and go.
I've always found the DIY segment stimulating competition, and I hope I might be able to encourage the DIY segment in some way. Unfortunately selling kits is horribly not-profitable....but I'll be trying to think of something.
The short term future … well the short term future is friggen sketchy. I guess I'd suggest you be careful with your money and only purchase things that would be very valuable to you. And I guess I'd go so far as to suggest you look at sponsors of this site first for your purchases. (I'm always surprised who I don't see on there.)
The only thing I'd ask for HeadRoom in particular is that since we've got 16 years worth of amps out there, you be sure you're listening to one of our current amps as you evaluate amps---especially the Ultra Amps, they're really good.
