Project: Stereo Cross-feed Network for Headphones

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PeteHL

Joined Dec 17, 2014
473
Here is the design of a simple passive circuit to improve listening to common stereo recordings with headphones. This is something along the lines of what Siegfried Linkwitz proposed decades ago, although the type of processing of my network is significantly different.

Here is a photo of the network that I built for connecting to a pair of headphones of rated impedance of 60 Ohms. Component values of my network are based on rated impedance of the headphones that the processing is being done for.


My network is placed between stereo amplifier and headphones (in cascade). Inserting the network between headphones and amp only slightly lowers volume. Impedance of the network with connected headphones as seen by the amp is never lower than the rated impedance of the headphones (assuming that headphone impedance versus frequency is fairly flat).

There is a full explanation of of how my design was derived here (my posted article);
www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Design/Xfeed-Net.pdf

A primary purpose of most such cross-feeding circuits, including mine, is to create the impression of sound sources localized in front of the listener, rather than in the head. IMO, my network is very successful at making that shift of localization.

Here is the schematic of my network and equations for calculating component values of it.

Your comments about the design are welcome, but what I would like most of all is for other listeners to stereo music with headphones to build it and tell me whether or not they agree that (subjectively) this is a good design.

[Moderator's note: Image sizes reduced]
 

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