I listen to a lot of music with headphones. My wife hates most Jazz, and I live in an apartment, so playing music at decent levels is problematic for me, most of the time. So I have been going down the headphone and headphone amp rabbit hole.
A problem that not even the most expensive headphones seem to be able to resolve, is avoiding sounds that are hard panned to one side. In headphones it sounds unnatural and irritating because it’s isolated to only one ear, and sound quality takes a huge dive. Of course, in speakers there is some leakage to the other ear so hard panned tracks are much more tolerable.
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album by Charles Mingus, is particularly unlistenable on the second track , as the piano is in one ear.
I discovered that a couple of brands who make mostly recording studio equipment, have headphone amplifiers with cross feed, which allows headphones to replace monitor speakers in the recording studio. I discovered this by chance when I read about which HP amplifiers are best matched to my new Heddphones on the manufactures site.
Cross feed is a method where the two channels are mixed very slightly, with various adjustments. The SPL site explains it for those of you who are curious.
So I tracked down a SPL Phonitor SE, made for the home audio market with cross feed. For most modern recordings it makes no difference. But for the Black Saint, it was pretty remarkable as the effect brought the above mentioned piano to life, upping the sound quality more than I expected.
For those who use headphones a lot, a headphone amplifier with cross feed is worth investigating. I was lucky to find a shop demo unit at half price.
Interesting. Some higher end DAPs have the same function such as my Astell Kern SP3000. Maybe others?
I played around with this when I got the device and didn’t really like the effect but I can think of some older recordings in my collection where the stereo separation is a bit artificial or crude on headphones where I might try it again.
It depends on how it is implemented. On a couple of headphone amplifiers, and maybe DAP’s the processing is very sophisticated, on some other devices, I have read that it is much is cruder.
SPL first implemented their cross feed on expensive studio amplifiers, and it is much more controllable on these amps.
It is not something I would use on most music I listen to, but on Black Saint, and probably a few other old recordings, it makes a huge difference.
Just for information, Chord’s current DACs with inbuilt headphone output, e.g. Hugo I used to have, and Dave I now have, include a crossfeed facility with three degrees of mixing. Until reading your post I didn’t see the point, as even on the rare occasions I’ve used headphones (and not since 1970s with my hifi system) I haven’t experienced problems with things I’ve played.
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album by Charles Mingus on the beginning of the second track is a pretty extreme case of an instrument panned to one side. I read the Beatles and some Stones albums can suffer badly too. On three good headphones it sounds awful.
Most modern albums are free of this effect and do not need cross feed.
The early Beatles albums tended to have vocals completely one side and some (IIRC) instruments completely the other, not terribly coherent with speakers in a room. i’ve never played through headphones but must be a prime candidate for crossfeed - actually maybe I should try the crossfeed over speakers…
I’m not sure if you are using a digital source but if so you could try using foobar2000 as your player. This has a crossfeed tool:-
Software implementation of Meier Audio's natural crossfeed filter
After reading your post I experimented with this and it is very effective on early recordings such as Bob Dylan and Dave Brubeck LPs which have naive stereo . Its fully adjustable up to near mono.
I recently bought some Stax Spirit 5 cordless headphones so I will be giving the crossfeed tool an extended trial.
As nearly all of my vinyl is now converted to 192KHz files I have found no player which is better than foobar2k to the extent that it is my final output for serious listening even if I use UPnP or other methods to stream from other locations
Did you try Audirvana? It has the advantage, at least on a Mac Mini which is how I use it, of being able to dedicate the machine to it, and bypasses Apple’s sound architecture to feed a dedicated USB bus direct to DAC. As I have Dave as my DAC, it offers crossfeed should I ever want to use, though actually I’m not sure it is available other than when connecting headphones. But I think those ealy Beatles albums are the only ones I have with the divided stereo, and in the rare event if playing I can live with it.
No, I am using it with my HiFi system using AV out on my Naim amplifier.
I am thinking about using a headphone amp and DAC with a computer, for a second system and Foobar2000 might be a good candidate. So the software implementation might let me use my old HP amp.
I was pretty amazed how on Black Saint the piano on the second track came alive.
I am ripping all my CD’s to a streamer ( I have about 2000 and its a long gradual job) . It is pretty cool to be able to control the music I am listening to with an iPad. I am also rediscovering a lot of forgotten music.
For anybody considering a headphone amp, the SPL Phonitor series, is worth consideration just for the cross feed. They sound really good too.
