I recently started listening a lot more on headphones than I used to, and have been playing with the crossfeed DSP filter. I appreciate what it does - it largely moves the soundstage out of my head a bit and more towards the front. However sometimes I find myself missing the extra detail and separation I get without the filter.
I realize that not everybody likes an extra-transparent, detailed sound so it’s probably very dependent on personal taste.
Curious to hear others’ thoughts…
My Meridian Prime Headphone Amplifier has a crossfeed feature that I use. There are two levels and I use the lesser of the two. When using my Dragonfly, I use Roon’s DSP crossfeed.
As I much prefer speakers to headphones I have it turned on as I think that it provides a more natural listening experience. Not so much in terms of moving it any further forward - that’s something I’ve never been able to manage all that well with headphones - but more in terms of providing a more coherent listening experience.
I’d be interested to hear a bit more about what you mean regarding a loss of detail as this isn’t something I’ve noticed.
I have been a headphone user for many years and have amassed quite the collection of headphones and headphone amps over that time. I don’t use the Roon crossfeed filter nor any other DSP. Why? I’m just too damn lazy to learn how to use them (yes I know that crossfeed is easy to use but I still don’t use it).
If I’m using my Meze 99, I’ve found that I prefer it without. However, running my Sony WX1000XM2, I’ve found that using cross feed and the github convolution filters are great.
I crossfeed for similar reasons to the one you mentioned. Without crossfeed I find everything a little bit disorientating.
I do agree that a little of the sharpness and detail is lost. I compensate by altering my equalisation. I tend to add a little to the midrange. I also turn up the volume slightly.
Hope that helps.
I’ve set up convolution filters with crossfeed for all my cans. I find headphones great when you need to play music without disturbing anyone, but they are a significant compromise. Even very good ones often have a far from flat frequency response, so convolution filters are great for evening them out. I find headphone soundstaging very strange too - not at all like sitting in the sweet spot between properly toed-in loudspeakers in a room with acoustic correction. The cross-feed brings me much closer to that experience and this is one of the reasons I like Roon so much. I just click on my custom filter for the cans I’m wearing and get lost in the music.
Maybe a better way to put it is loss of “proximity to detail” 
Without crossfeed I feel more immersed in middle of the soundstage, so detail is very very close to me. Crossfeed moves things out in front of me so some of that immediacy is lost. I agree with you that the detail is still there, just a hair less present.
I use and enjoye subtle crossfeed, yes. But not Roon’s. I use the crossfeed in my SPL Phonitor XE headphone amp.
It is a little like being in the band versus watching/listening to the band.
I do and I play with the values a bit. I, however, don’t use it with every headphone I have as I find it can “mess with” what I like about that headphone. This is certainly a “if it sounds good to you” situation and there is no wrong answer. I still prefer big speakers spread far apart… so I don’t do much headphone listening.
I have a “Headphones” DSP preset that I can activate for any of my zones that have a headphones jack. This makes crossfeed easy to switch on from my phone. I don’t know who Chu Moy is, but I like his presets. 
It really depends on the recording/mixing. Many newer recordings do not require crossfeed, while many older ones strongly benefit from it - to put instruments “around you”.
Nope, tried it a few times and always end up turning off.
I actually looked this up… its a fun history read.
Crossfeed DSP is software emulating a crossfeed circuit within a headphone amplifier (but you knew this). Chu Moy is the designer of one of these circuits. His circuit is a modified Linkwitz circuit.
Anywhoo… I suspect that its one bit of crossed software trying to emulate the various circuits (credited to their designers) by using the presets. I don’t think, although it’d probably work better, if the DSP filter itself was a better emulation of the individual circuit layouts. But, I’m just a guy on the internet so who knows.
There are a number of headphone amps which incorporate a crosssfeed circuit if you wanted to roll your own. Plenty of Bottlehead amps have been modified in this way.
It’s a neat bit of tech… real science in how our ears finds directionality from 2-point sources and why headphones make that difficult unless mixed specifically for headphone listening… also why the room can totally screw this up because of the additional reflections it adds.
Cool. I googled a bit as well, but Chu Moy’s original article on the topic does not seem to be available anymore. I don’t turn this on all of the time, but it’s especially great for hard bop from the late 50’s and early 60’s where instruments were often panned hard left and right in the mix.
Since I own and use so many different sets of headphones and headphone amps I would need lots of DSP presets and I just can’t be bothered. If I want more bass and less treble I just switch to a different set of headphones and/or headphone amp. 
I may even have more headphones than my wife has shoes. No wait who am I kidding.
Yeah. It would be pretty cool if Roon supported stackable DSP presets for cases like this. For example, I might want to associate a PEQ curve with specific albums in my collection that need a little “remastering” help to sound good. Ideally, whenever I play those albums, Roon would apply the associated PEQ in addition to whatever DSP settings I’m using for the zone…convolution, crossfeed, etc.
Maybe here is some interesting explanation and examples 
Thanks Stefan just reading through this now 
Mike
