Single Power build quality is quite good these days.
Lovely mirror black exterior and the tubes all aglow proudly standing up in all
their glory.
This gorgeous wood unit was built by Frank Cooter, a new member of
Head-Fi and seen here with Grado headphones.
A happy HeadAmp customer must own this stack.
I didn't have time to visit everyone at the show, so a lack of mention is
in no way a slight... I just ran out of steam! The end of the day found me
alternately resting my back in a nearby chair and standing in some pain to
enjoy the pleasure of the Woo Audio WA5 with Sennheiser HD650s and the new
Cardas cable. If only I could carry the amp home.
There
was an amplifier manufacturer panel discussion that took place
Saturday evening and my thanks for their participation goes to Wes
Phillips as moderator, Mikhail Rosenberg of Single Power,
Pete
Millet who is a DIY guru, Tyll Hertsens of HeadRoom,
Justin Wilson of HeadAmp
Audio Electronics, Dr. Rudi Stor of Rudistor
Sound Systems, and Ray Samuels of Ray
Samuels Audio.
Questions covered design philosophy and product development approaches.
Issues voiced by the panel included the importance of starting with a good
basic design, circuit simplicity, high-quality parts, build quality,
reliability, value for money, achieving the last 1 percent of sound quality, art
versus interpretation, cosmetics, preferred headphones for testing, and
headphone-amp interactions.
Conversation then turned to the impact of the Head-Fi community on their
product development and sales. HeadRoom has
only a small minority of customers referred by Head-Fi. Others claimed up to
90 percent of their sales were sourced from the website. Ray Samuels, in particular,
often reads what we write about him and his products, which helps him define
his new product pipeline. So be kind! All agreed that the Head-Fi community,
including the DIY'ers and one-man businesses -- plus the Apple iPod -- are
primary reasons of the explosion of headphone listening.
High-Performance Audio Reviews
