Quote:
Originally Posted by scottymac /img/forum/go_quote.gif
alright, the crossfeed does absolutely nothing. NOTHING. this has to be defective.
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I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're wrong, since what sounds good to you sounds good to you, whether that costs $20, $200, or $2000. In this hobby there is no "right" sound, but you generally find that a vast majority of audiophile type gear (like your Bithead) are designed to reproduce music as accurately as possible without any kind of augmentation.
You liked the sound of your EAX sound card because you can adjust the bass and treble value, now while you might love the sound of this device, whether it's a Sound Blaster or some other common card, it's doubtful that it's an audiophile type device. There's nothing wrong with this, but if there's a specific sound you're looking for you need to figure out what that is, and then try to make purchases that correspond to your respective tastes.
I have a Bithead, I think it's absolutely wonderful. I use it with my iAudio X5L, and my laptop when I travel. For a $200 it makes my HD-280 Pro's and HD-650's absolutely shine, and the built in DAC is a great feature that relieves me of the painfully bad sound of my laptop's onbard sound card. Is it my DA100 + Woo Audio 4? No, not even close, but it certainly performs exceptionally well for what it is in my opinion.
Different people are also going to experience different "wow" factors. One consideration might be that you're just not that sensitive to this stuff, maybe you simply can't hear the difference. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact people tend to think they can hear huge differences when they actually can't, so admitting to yourself that things sound the same is going to save you a lot of money.
The crossfeed feature is going to be unnoticeable on most recordings, especially newer recordings... but turning on the feature will tend to make your listening sessions less fatiguing even if you don't notice an explicit difference. On the other hand there are some recordings where the crossfeed feature is going to be day and night. I'm extremely accustomed to headphone listening, and I prefer listening with crossfeed off; I believe that headphone listening is a certain type of listening, and would listen to speakers if I wanted to achieve a speaker-like effect.
So before you let yourself get too upset, you need to figure out a few things:
1. What kind of sound do you want? If you don't know what you want, it's very difficult to be upset or pleased with anything.
2. Figure out how much you're willing to spend to get the sound you want. Trust me, $200 might sound like a lot of money to you, but some of us have spent thousands of dollars to find our sound. I'm not saying you need to spend a lot of money, but you need to look for components within your price range.
3. Find components (based on recommendations, reviews, and questions you ask to other members) that fit your budget and your sound requirements.
4. Try them! If you like them, great... if you don't, that's too bad, but live and learn. If you don't like a component try to take something away from the experience, why didn't you like it, knowing the answer to that question will help you avoid products with a similar sound signature in the future.
If you bought your Bithead directly from HeadRoom they have a 30-day no questions asked money back guarantee, so your purchase is secure, you can get your money back. If not, you can sell your Bithead on Head-fi, there are tons of people here who can't wait to spend money on new things, I bought a new Bithead from a member here just this week and I'm listening to it as I type this!
Just remember that everything is relative. I know people who think it's just stupid to buy a $100,000 automobile when a $50,000 one is going to do the exact same thing for you. Some people think $2000 suits are stupid. Some people think $600 video cards are stupid, or $5000 diamond rings.
It's all relative, people spend money on things THEY consider valuable to THEM. If you don't see the value in high end audio, that's perfectly fine!
