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Headsave Classic Headphone Amp
December 20, 2004

Update January 24, 2005 - this amp is no longer available for purchase from Headsave

Thanks to an ongoing conversation with a coworker, I’ve been made aware that listening to music via headphones is actually taken very seriously by a large number of avid music lovers. While headphone listening may be considered a secondary and/or budget style listening for big monied audiophiles listening to a traditional mega-buck hi-fi system, there is actually much to be had from the headphone listening experience. And, headphone listening done seriously, is anything but budget, as I discovered.

A thriving Internet community and do it yourself (DIY) cottage industry has sprung up that will build or tweak custom headphone amp designs and there are those that have taken it from the underground scene to the small business level. Some headphone amps are as large and as powerful as small integrated-amps with outboard power supplies.

You can have vacuum tube amps, or solid-state devices and there are even products that mate a pre-amp, headphone amp, and a high quality digital audio converter (DAC), all in one small, albeit expensive chassis. Very intriguing for those that take their music listening seriously. You can learn more by visiting the Head-Fi.org web site.

While I have owned some decent headphones for a number of years (Sennheiser HD 580 and Grado SR100) I have never had a proper headphone amp to drive them with. For some reason I just didn’t take the headphone experience seriously enough to invest in a decent amp even though the cost for a good amp and good headphones can be a fraction of what a state of the art amplification and speaker system would cost.

This is the secret that many do not know about, that the headphone experience can offer incredible bang for the buck vis a vis the traditional and expensive stereo. I came enticingly close back in 1997 to buying a very well regarded headphone amp made by McCormack, but a price screw-up saw me canceling the order and using the money to buy a camera instead. The rest, they say, is history, as this CameraHobby web site will attest to.

But was I selling myself short for the sake of a hundred quid or so in not buying that CAN $800 McCormack? We’ll find out later on in this article.

It was only because my coworker had an interest in buying a new camera that he started reading my web site and then because he also had an interest in MP3 playback and read of my disdain and despair of the Apple iPod in some of my articles, that he started counseling me on alternatives and the finer points of MP3 playback.

My coworker knows a great deal about ripping high quality MP3s and which devices would be best to play them back with, which eventually led to discussions about which headphones and amplifiers would be good to use to maximize the quality. Yah, I know, I know, MP3s are compressed audio files that won’t match the fidelity of the original CD, but then for some old timers, CDs won’t match the fidelity of analog music playback. It’s all relative to what one needs for portability, convenience, and availability of product.

From those discussions I got an invite to a headphone listening party at the coworker’s place and this mini gathering opened my ears. Everybody brought some of their own gear to the party and this allowed all in attendance to move from headphone station to station to compare different amps and headphones. I was quite surprised to see people incredibly passionate about this style of music playback and talking about all the same things that regular hi-fi owners do, e.g., bass slam, mid range liquidity, dynamic range, etc.

In looking at the various offerings and what I could afford (or rather, would actually spare) for a headphone amp, I came across the Rega EAR as the primary choice thanks to the less than CAN $400 price tag. My coworker persuaded me not to buy it until I could listen to some other products at his party, which while being DIY products could offer a lot more bang for the same kind of buck.

Then he told me about Headsave and how these little amps were getting good reviews at Head-Fi.org. These little amps were certainly priced right for me and given their word of mouth reputation I decided to bite and purchased a Headsave Classic. It also helped that Headsave is a Canadian outfit, making shipping and handling easier to deal with.

Headsave is based in Ontario and the owner is just known as Norm, who produces a few different versions of his headphone amps. One is a battery powered portable amp called the Go-Vibe; an AC powered Home-Vibe; and his top model, the AC powered Classic. With each amp, Norm offers op-amp upgrades over the standard version, but it’s best to discuss your particular listening needs and choices with him for an appropriate recommendation.

Norm asked me what kinds of devices I would use to hook up to the Classic amp and which headphones I had. After my response, Norm suggested that I go with the mid-level upgrade for the Classic, to replace the standard OPA2227 for an AD8620/10. There is also another more expensive upgrade to an OPA637/627 op-amp. The headphones used basically determine which op-amp to go with. Details available at Norm’s web site.

I also got the Elpac 24 volt power supply to replace the standard one. Total cost for me including S&H and taxes came to about US $208. Although Norm is in Canada, he prefers to deal in US $ and unfortunately, it also meant that I had to pay our federal government a seven-percent tariff in the form of a consumption tax called the GST (Goods and Services Tax). Purchasers outside of Canada do not have to pay the GST. I made my payment conveniently via PayPal.

The Headsave Classic

Norm has a reputation for great service and he was very good to deal with. He advised me when he would be ready to ship the new version of the Classic that just came out in November 2004 and once I made my payment, he shipped the amp within a day or two. True to his word, I received my amp in two business days via Canada Post. Total time from payment to delivery was a week.

It was an early Christmas for me as I opened up my box and took out the small amp and power supply. The amp is lightweight, but looks very well built with nice parts quality and it’s always cool to the touch thanks to having the power supply outboard. The RCA jacks at the back look really high grade and in checking out the specs at the Headsave web site, I see that they are Cardas connections – old time audiophiles know that Cardas is a leading high-end cable maker.

I ordered the silver case with a blue LED light. It looks quite attractive and certainly a nice change from the ubiquitous black audio components seen in the big electronics shops. Way back in the mid 1990s, I ordered my Classe power amp in silver for the same reason, big black boxes are ugly.

I asked Norm how much time I should allow before listening critically to the Classic and he responded that 50 hours would be appropriate. So, I turned the amp on and left it running regularly with a portable CD player on repeat mode. Of course I couldn’t wait the full 50 hours before donning the headphones and things were sounding good after only 24 hours. However, I did wait for the full 50 hours before doing serious listening comparisons.

It had been so long since I had listened in audiophile critic mode that I wondered how brass tarnished my once golden ears were. There was a time I could listen to a system and tell the salesman that he had his positive and negative connections reversed based on listening to a familiar piece of music and knowing where the precise imaging should be for the instruments. These days, I doubt I could hear the difference between a state of the art reference hi-fi versus a merely average audiophile system.

There was also the consideration of using two different headphones and knowing that I would be listening more to the relative differences between the HD580s and the SR100s more than I would be listening to the amp. But as I got to know the sonic differences between the two quite different headphones, I settled into doing comparisons between the Headsave Classic versus the various players I had on hand. I was also fortunate to have access to a similarly priced competitor in the Headroom Little amp, loaned to me by my coworker.

Comparison Tests

Most of my listening sessions were with the Headsave Classic connected to an integrated amp’s tape out RCA jacks. I know purists will decry such an impure connection, but this is how I would be using the Headsave in the long-run due to my requirements in my home office, which is where the Classic would be used in most instances. But rest assured, I also used the Headsave directly connected to my sources too.

My sources are described below and each was connected with cables that are not of the highest pedigree, but are also not cheap zip cord either. I don’t see the logic in using interconnects costing hundreds of dollars for use with a low cost accessory like the Headsave, but I used my best cables for much of the comparisons.

US $200 isn’t a whole lot of money as far as high quality headphone amps are concerned, but it isn’t that cheap either (or maybe I’m just cheap J. One can spend many thousands on an amp that does nothing more than provide a headphone jack for you to listen privately. My coworker got me onto some products that do a bit more though, as in offering a high quality line-level pre-amp, DAC, and the headphone jack in one small case. The kicker is the price of at least US $1000 for such a unit, which is actually somewhat of a bargain given how much you get for the money. Perhaps a few years down the road and I might be able to consider such a unit.

In the meantime, how does the $200 amp compare to the old headphone jacks built into portable CD players and other such devices? In some cases remarkably superior and in other cases remarkably subtle.

I have a Rotel RA-971 integrated amp in my home office. This amp has my old Arcam Delta 70.2 CD player and Nakamichi cassette deck hooked up to it. I also run my computer’s audio output to the Rotel instead of using cheap and generally God-awful computer speakers – although my Energy bookshelf speakers are entry-level and in some instances, cheaper than some computer speakers. I bought some really cheap speakers for my kids’ computer and every now and then I feel guilty about giving them such speakers because the sound quality is abysmal, but they’re at the age where they could never tell the difference.

I thought the Rotel, with a built-in headphone jack, would give the Headsave Classic a run for its money, but I didn’t even finish listening through one piece of music before I stopped the comparison. The Rotel was absolutely brutal in sound quality compared to the Headsave Classic.

Next up and compared just for a lark, was the headphone jack of my decade-old Nakamichi Cassette Deck 2, an entry level deck from the early 1990s. Some may recognize Nakamichi being “the” name for cassette tape fidelity back in the day when cassette tapes were still heavily used as a convenient recording medium. For you young ‘uns, cassettes were the equivalent of your MP3 players and Sony made the best of the portables in their Walkman series, the iPod of my generation – boy do I feel old now.

I didn’t expect much from the cassette deck, but surprisingly, in a quick comparison listening session, I felt the two were really close in sound quality. Only after more listening was I able to determine that the Headsave was still superior with a more full and refined sound.

Listening to music through the Nakamichi isn’t convenient though. The headphone jack for this entry-level player has no independent volume control and thus it outputs a fairly high sound level, which is ill advised for prolonged listening. In order to get some output control I need to put a tape in the unit and do a Record/Pause, which will then allow me to control volume via the Recording Output Level control – basically, I’m pretending to be in Record mode in order to listen to the source through the Nak’s headphone jack.

Next up were my Kenwood and Sony portable CD players. I was expecting a similar contrast in quality as when I compared the Rotel to the Headsave amp, but surprisingly, the difference in quality was much more modest than I expected.

Listening via the HD580s, I wasn’t sure I was hearing much of any difference, but after switching to the Grados, I was able to discern that indeed the Headsave again provided a richer and fuller sound with greater refinement. But, I wasn’t blown away by the difference. This makes the $200 cost of the Headsave seem rather steep given that the Sony portable can be bought for less than CAN $100. The Kenwood is a bit better than the Sony and costs double, but we’re talking about a portable from 1998 whereas the Sony is a current 2004 model, bought primarily to listen to MP3s recorded onto CD-R’s.

My coworker read these comments before posting this review and he offered some comments that are somewhat based on advice that Tyll Hertsen of Headroom has posted on his company’s web site. Portable devices have cheap DACs and cheap headphone op-amps, so one cannot expect much quality to begin with when feeding a good headphone amp with the output from a portable’s headphone jack via a mini to RCA adapter or cable.

It’s the old adage of garbage in equals garbage out. My coworker also informed me that headphone purists seek out portable devices with true line-out connections to ensure that there is a strong and high enough quality signal to feed their headphone amps, but my rebuttal is how many portable devices actually have true line-out’s? Some devices like the iPod offer a line-out only with a docking station and precious few other devices offer them directly from the player (iRiver and Rio may offer such devices). But what of portable CD players, how many of those have line-outs?

I guess I’ve been a tap water drinking guy while those in the know have been drinking Evian J

Next up was a direct comparison to another dedicated headphone amp that competes in the same price range, the Headroom Little. Headroom has been at the forefront of headphone fidelity for almost as long as I’ve had an interest in audio and likely created the headphone amp industry, as we know it today. Generous mention in magazines such as Stereophile definitely gave it a high profile and their products have always generated some buzz thanks to its technology that purports to move the sound from seeming to come directly inside your head to outside. Some like it and some hate it, but I never had an opportunity to listen to a Headroom amp until now. Personally, I never minded the in your head sound of regular headphones and amps, but Headroom obviously was doing enough that when Sonic Frontiers was still around in the 1990s, they licensed the Headroom technology for their highly regarded pre-amps that came with a headphone jack.

The Headroom Little looks a little like one of those half-size pop cans due to its fat round case, in contrast to the Headsave Classic and its low profile. The current price of the Headroom Little costs US $259 in its basic version, but can be upgraded with a beefy power supply in a same size case, as well as internal parts upgrades. However, doing the full Monty upgrade of the Little takes the price to US $659, which is pretty big bucks to me for headphone listening.

Going over the Headroom web site is a little confusing given the plethora of amps and options available for each one. Personally, I think it’s way too much product to offer with too much overlap in price and features and a huge contrast to the Headsave web site with a mere three amps offered. However, if you count all the different options and upgrades, you could say that Norm also offers dozens of products, all just variations of his three basic products.

I let the Headroom cook for a few hours with a CD player on repeat mode before doing any serious listening. Once I was satisfied the Headroom had time to warm up, I connected both amps directly to my Arcam CD player, as it has two output jacks. Although one set of RCAs is volume controllable, I’ve never been able to discern any difference in sound quality in the years I’ve owned this CD player, despite the theoretical advantage the non-volume controlled RCA output is suppose to offer. I also happen to have two identical pairs of interconnects, so as to keep the connections equal.

As with the other sources, I listened to pieces of music all the way and then switched amps, as well as pausing and switching in mid-play. Incidentally, the second method of testing is probably going to get me into trouble by those who have nothing good to say about non-blind A/B testing. So be it.

After listening to a few different pieces of music with both headphones, I could finally recognize a sonic signature in the Headroom compared to the Headsave. The Headroom was a touch bit darker in sound with the processing and filter controls turned off. I felt the Headsave Classic gave the music a touch more spatial air around the instruments, but with the Little’s processing and filter turned on, the Little seemed to be the one with a bit more air. While I did hear some difference for the in-your-head imaging aspects of the Little’s processing, I thought the effects were very subtle and I wouldn’t object to a processed or unprocessed presentation. Frankly I liked both amps and felt both were pretty much equal except for the minor differences just mentioned.

With the slightly darker character of the Headroom Little, it offered a better match with the Grado headphones than the Headsave Classic. But not enough to lose sleep over it.

After finally deciding that the two compact amps offered a similar level of quality, it came down to money being the deciding factor. As mentioned earlier, I paid just over US $200 for my amp including Canadian taxes and S&H. The basic Headroom Little is likely to come out about US $100 more after its higher basic costs, S&H and Canadian taxes are taken into account.

On that basis, the Headsave Classic offers better value for the money. Parts quality on the Headsave also appear to be superior, e.g. the gold Cardas RCA jacks and a volume control that doesn’t loosen and spin around like my coworker’s Little does. If I already owned a Headroom Little, I wouldn’t bother looking at the Headsave amps, but if I didn’t and US $200-$300 was what I was looking to spend, the Classic wins out. Heck, you could buy two amps, a Classic and a portable Go-Vibe for the price of the Little.

Musical Notes and Impressions of the Grado SR100 and Sennheiser HD 580 Headphones

Erich Kunzel, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Time Warp (Telarc)
Space music at its best and recorded with the best technology of 1984 that still holds it own for recording fidelity. After listening to a couple of tracks from this CD, I finally got the measure of the differences between the SR100s and HD580s through the Headsave Classic.

The Grados have no bass slam, compared to the Sennheisers, in favour of a more forward presentation and high frequency response. While there is more “air” and sparkle with certain types of music, the Grados can sound quite harsh with less than stellar recordings.

In listening to the Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica pieces, I expected good bass wallop, the kind that can only come from a full sized, modern orchestra. Battlestar Galactica (loved that show when I was little kid) is exactly the kind of bombastic piece that allows the full power and majesty of a 100-plus orchestra to breathe. The HD580s allowed that full weight through whereas the SR100s definitely lacked bass oomph. At the least a full bass octave is missing in action and maybe even two (I wrote this before conducting some tests, further below).

Enigma – MCMXC A.D. (Virgin)
Techno music, new age; however you classify this group’s music, I just find it good and at times compelling. They broke into the music scene well over a decade ago with the Principles of Lust – Sadeness. A seemingly weird mix of Gregorian style chant with erotic synth music and a driving bass beat that just seems to me, to be the kind of music to playback during some light night carnal activities (I’d use another word to describe it, but I’m trying to keep this PG rated J). Not the kind of thing the Catholic Church would probably want associated with music sourced from their history J

Getting back to the missing bass with the SR100s, and the Principles of Lust really loses out in its intensity without that driving bass slam that the HD580s provide. The SR100s really seem to be limiting with large orchestral and rock music. It’s like listening to mini-monitor speakers that are very fast and nimble, but have such small drivers that little decent bass weight is available. The HD580s in comparison are like full range speakers that are a bit slow at times and a bit too polite with some music, but damn, that bass reach makes up for a lot of the top end deficiencies. Additionally, the smoother sound allows you to listen for longer periods of time than with the SR100s and we’re not even discussing physical headphone comfort at all, which the HD580s walk all over the SR100s for.

Are the SR100s doomed? No, they can still work with some types of music and recordings.

Glen Gould – J .S. Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias (Sony)
Fans of Glen Gould know that this virtuoso likes to hum while he plays and his humming can be heard in the background of his recordings. Listening with the SR100s and this humming is almost a part of the performance. In fact there are times when I can hear Gould roll his tongue as he hums along to the piece. There’s a definite sense of high frequency air for the recordings on this CD and the Grados provide a clarity and immediacy that the HD580s do not provide.

This is not to say that I cannot hear Gould’s humming when listening with the HD580s, but the humming is more distant and in the background; less intrusive for the piano playback. The SR100s really get into revealing the playing style of Gould and made more apparent the “mistakes” I thought I heard from Gould. I hesitate on this matter because criticizing Gould is to criticize a national icon, one of Canada ’s best-known musical prodigies and probably its most neurotic.

When I first listened to Gould’s interpretation of Bach’s music, I was dumbfounded with delight. Here was a pianist who did not adhere to politeness and that seem to drive the piano furiously while others played with a pedestrian outlook. His playing style was a revelation and still is, but I never picked up on the little missteps until I listened through the Headsave Classic and the Grados. This is of course subjective and I speak only as a listener of music, not one that has any training and ability to play back any instrument, so those with such backgrounds may consider me a wee bit whacked on this topic of artistic interpretation.

Sir Neville Mariner, Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields – Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Phillips)
A Mozart five-CD set was amongst the first CDs I bought, so it has a sentimental place in my heart as a marker of when I started my spiral into the audio money-pit. I’ve always found the ambience of this piece to be very lush and romantic no matter which system I played it back on and it’s one where a very polite sounding system can make the sound overly “sweet.”

It’s the kind of piece that the SR100s finally found an appropriate match to close in the distance for the listener and give it a more pleasant presentation. If generally speaking, the SR100s place the listener in row B or C, for this particular recording, the SR100s place you in the row H area, whereas the HD580s go from row L or M and way up to the balcony.

After listening to this, I got the impression that this is where the SR100s can do well when mated to the Headsave Classic, for smaller and more intimate groups or solos, where a listener may wish to be “close” to the performance.

I listened to many more pieces of music, but the sonic characteristics remained consistent to what has been written above.

I did some basic tests with a Radio Shack sound level meter and a Stereophile Test CD to see how the two headphones fared in bass output. Using the 200 Hz test tone, I set the output on the Headsave Classic to provide enough volume for a +6 db setting on the sound level meter. I played the successive bass tones on the Test CD down to 40 Hz, at which point I could see no appreciable movement of the meter’s needle from the HD580s.

In the upper bass, the SR100s are not too far behind the HD580s, but as we go lower in bass response, we see an immediate fall off in what the Grados can output for low frequency response. The HD580s drops off in a gradual manner right down to where some major bass fundamentals are available from bass guitars and bass drums.

The test just confirmed what I was hearing, but I will say that the Grados have superior resolution than the Sennheisers. If I wanted to really hear into the mix and details of the recording, the Grados definitely shined in that regard even if I couldn’t stand to listen with them for musical enjoyment for prolonged periods of time due to their uncomfortable design.

Conclusion

So, did I miss out in not buying a dedicated headphone amp back in 1997? I’d say yes I did miss out, but then if I hadn’t missed out, you wouldn’t be reading this web site J

Many of the devices we use straight do not have the quality and power to drive high quality headphones. Without a good headphone amp to boost the signal to drive the Grados and Sennheisers properly, we miss out on the major reason why we spent big bucks for these kinds of headphones.

Not every test and sample revealed huge differences in quality, but in every case, I heard a fuller sound and superior refinement than just using the regular headphone connection. While some of the differences were subtle, I am reminded of an article written by Philip Greenspun of Photo.net fame.

He wrote about how he had the opportunity to have an Audio Research pre-amp in his system for an extended period of time and of course he did a direct A/B comparison to his own pre-amp and found little difference in sound quality. But after several months of living and listening to the Audio Research pre-amp and then one day having to give it back to the owner, when Greenspun went back to his old pre-amp, he found his listening session to be strangely empty and devoid of the pleasure he had had when the Audio Research amp was in the system. This despite the direct A/B comparisons indicating little appreciable difference in sound quality. As I recall, he rectified the problem by buying an Audio Research pre-amp of his own.

I think I would be in a similar position in terms of having the Headsave Classic in my system. Directly comparing it to another device did not provide a slam-dunk type of improvement except in the case of the Rotel integrated amp. The differences were subtle and it took several sessions to hear the sonic character of each device. But having used the Headsave Classic regularly since receiving it, I don’t wish to return to the non-headphone amp days and having to drive my Grados or Sennheisers directly from my portable players or computer.

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