So whats the deal with crossfeed on an amp?

[flognuts]

warning***** noob question *****

when do I use it?

I read it reduces listening fatigue?

[ledge]

Crossfeeding blends the left and right stereo channels slightly, reducing the extreme channel separation which is characteristic of headphone listening and is known to cause headaches in a small fraction of listeners. Crossfeed is used to compensate for extreme separation of sound sources in older stereo recordings. Crossfeed also improves the soundstage characteristics and makes the music sound more natural, as if one was listening to a pair of speakers. While some swear by crossfeed, many prefer amplifiers without it.

courtesy wiki.

ive never had an amp with it, so i cant give a personal opinion. i think the Concerto had it and some headroom amps.

[flognuts]

Crossfeeding blends the left and right stereo channels slightly, reducing the extreme channel separation which is characteristic of headphone listening and is known to cause headaches in a small fraction of listeners. Crossfeed is used to compensate for extreme separation of sound sources in older stereo recordings. Crossfeed also improves the soundstage characteristics and makes the music sound more natural, as if one was listening to a pair of speakers. While some swear by crossfeed, many prefer amplifiers without it.

courtesy wiki.

ive never had an amp with it, so i cant give a personal opinion. i think the Concerto had it and some headroom amps.

thanks yeah my meier one has it, only just remembered it did though. lol

on a side note, blue jean cables arrived today.... very impressive.

[Drubbing]

It's not a biggie - harsh sounding or aggressive phones are far more likely to cause listening fatigue. Meier seems to be the only one who's into it. I've had one of his amps and it doesn't make a huge amount of difference. Negligible if you don't listen to older recording where they loved to play with the extremes of stereo.

[Marcus]

I never use crossfeed myself. It's very rare that I listen to tracks with heavy stereo bias, and when I do I just suck it up for the 2-3 minutes they may last.
Some music has a lot of bias, which the crossfeed helps a lot if you listen to a fair bit of it.

[Zeruel83]

I've wondered this question myself.

I've never had crossfeed in hardware, only software based options. And I've always whether or not it was worth pursuing a hardware based solution. I feel the effect is subtle, and when I use it on software, I tend to go for a strong effect, so the sound feels more in front of me rather than on the sides.

[ledge]

Crossfeeding blends the left and right stereo channels slightly, reducing the extreme channel separation which is characteristic of headphone listening and is known to cause headaches in a small fraction of listeners. Crossfeed is used to compensate for extreme separation of sound sources in older stereo recordings. Crossfeed also improves the soundstage characteristics and makes the music sound more natural, as if one was listening to a pair of speakers. While some swear by crossfeed, many prefer amplifiers without it.

courtesy wiki.

ive never had an amp with it, so i cant give a personal opinion. i think the Concerto had it and some headroom amps.

thanks yeah my meier one has it, only just remembered it did though. lol

on a side note, blue jean cables arrived today.... very impressive.

yeah the bluejeans cables are great value for money.

[grevillea]

I actually prefer my uHA-4 with the crossfeed turned off, but the Meier amps have a very good reputation for the quality of the crossfeed implementation.

[mewse]

I've only listened to the crossfeed on Meier amps, can't compare to others. But I can tell you that I can't listen to any of the stereo Beatles recordings on headphones, without sending the audio through an amp with crossfeed.

In most other cases, the difference is pretty subtle. You can pretty easily tell the difference if you listen to crossfeed vs. non-crossfeed one after another.. but I don't think I'd notice the difference if I was listening to only one or the other (again, excepting older, stereo-extreme recordings, such as the absurd ones the Beatles had).

[Drubbing]

Back when stereo was a new toy sound engineers played with it. The Beatles were so smashed they just liked the spaceyness of it all.

If you're listening to that stuff all the time, it's clearly useful. Must be the musical diet in Meierland.

[Blobby]

It makes a huge difference to the positioning of solo instrument stuff and intros to tracks. If or not you think that difference is better or less tiring or whatever is a personal thing. It doesn't really make any difference in the listening experience for me. After the rest of the band kicks in I can't tell a difference.

[brod]

If you don't think you need it, you probably don't.

[TonyG]

I've only heard the crossfeed functions on the Meier Concerto and SPL Phonitor amps, and the effect was different on each. The crossfeed on the Meier seemed to make music a touch more lush and present, and it "blended" the stereo image a bit, however this was not apparent on all tracks - some were not changed very much but others sounded quite different. I wouldn't say I liked or disliked it - when it worked it just made the music sound a bit different, but not necessarily "better". It was a like swapping between two pairs of very good but different sounding headphones.

The SPL crossfeed is a much more complex and "tunable" system and it definitely had an audible effect on all the tracks I listened to, but again I wouldn't say it was necessarily "better". The Phonitor is intended to be set up so that the stereo image you get from your headphones is the same as that from your studio monitors. The amp can them be used in mobile mixing suites to recreate the room sound of a studio while on the road.