Music sounds better with Crossfeed disabled on rockbox

[chukwe]

I've been using Rockbox(Flac 1st Nano) for few weeks now with Crossfeed enabled.

A day ago, I disabled the Crossfeed and it sounds much better with airy soundstage.

Has anyone tried it? What your experience?

 

[epaludo]

I didn't played much with crossfeed yet.
Just a few times when the function was just introduced a while ago. I'm sure it was in it's early stages and must have been improved a lot, but by that time i prefered the crossfeed off also ...

 

[EFN]

Software crossfeed will never be as good as the Hardware sibling. I never use RockBox crossfeed because it add mud to the sound spectrum. If you are keen on crossfeed check Meier products.

 

[Arjisme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EFN /img/forum/go_quote.gif Software crossfeed will never be as good as the Hardware sibling.

Why would that be true? Not saying you're wrong, but I don't understand why software could never meet or exceed a hardware solution here.

Regardless, I turned on crossfeed in Rockbox last week to try it out and I did hear noticeable distortion vs. not using it. Also, it suppressed the highs. I used the default configuration, so maybe toying with those settings would improve things.

 

[steviebee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chukwe /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've been using Rockbox(Flac 1st Nano) for few weeks now with Crossfeed enabled. A day ago, I disabled the Crossfeed and it sounds much better with airy soundstage. Has anyone tried it? What your experience?

Same, sadly....only use crossfeed (Rockbox or Airhead) now for very hard-panned recordings.
I tried Xinfeed on my Supermini for a few seconds but that was too, too centralised an image.

 

[Sir Nobax]

If an album needs crossfeed to sound good its just a bad mastered album.

I always listen my music pure, like its meant to be listened.

 

[Arjisme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sir Nobax /img/forum/go_quote.gif If an album needs crossfeed to sound good its just a bad mastered album. I always listen my music pure, like its meant to be listened.

With what? Headphones? Open air speakers? Which is how music was meant to be listened to?

Crossfeed is usually used to simulate the open air speaker sound with headphones. Without crossfeed and using my IEMs, my left ear hears only the left channel and my right hears only the right. That's OK anyhow usually. But with older recordings where instruments and/or voices were hard panned to one channel or the other, the headphone experience is much more excessive than with room speakers.

 

[Sir Nobax]

Okay let me say it this way:
I dont like Crossfeed either Mr. OP.

If i want "crossfeed" i'll just encode some CD's to MP3 Joint Stereo, just as crappy IMO.

 

[onocentaur]

After similar experimenting, I too prefer crossfeed 'off' in Rockbox. But I did really like the crossfeed in the Porta Corda mkIII. I've never had them at the same time so I can't compare, alas. I'm considering trying out a Move, though...

 

[jant71]

I also think it adds a bit of "mud". It stays off.

 

[CSMR]

All sorts of nonsense in this thread.
The rockbox crossfeed is very basic. A sharp frequency cutoff and delay. No good IMO. Instead of something like this:
http://www.meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de/headamp.htm
Or something yet more finely tuned.
No problem with digital crossfeed but you need a bit of processing power and you would need someone to write the software specially for rockbox.
You could always take the recordings with the worst stereo separation and add crossfeed on PC.