The Max Module
This little gold & black Max electronics module is nothing short of an audiophile work of fine art found in our HeadRoom Max / Max Balanced amps. It's also available in our HeadRoom Home, Home Balanced and Desktop Amp lines. The deep Class-A 'Max' module surface is practically littered with tiny audio chips costing over $15 bucks a piece, 0.1% metal film resistors, and polyphenylenesulfide (poly film) caps that are silver soldered to 2 oz. gold-coated copper traces which blur into a glittering haze over a black solder masked four-layer circuit board. Speaking of circuit boards, this is the first time we have increased the size of our electronics module circuit board. But fear not, since it remains pin-for-pin compatible with our most of our older (post-2001 model year) HeadRoom Home and HeadRoom Max headphone amp units. However, the Max module must always be mounted on edge due to heat dissipation issues, an intensely tricky and highly technical maneuver in older amps, thus making it a rather pricey retro-fit installation when done as an upgrade in older HeadRoom units.
The 'Max' module uses what many hard-core audiophiles insist is the best audio op-amp available -- the Burr-Brown OPA627 -- for the internal input buffer, crossfeed, summing, and power amp voltage gain stage; it certainly is about the priciest! The output current buffer is our own HeadRoom-tweaked version of the very highly-regarded Diamond Buffer discrete transistor design originated by Walter Jung. All active stages are forced deep into full 'Class-A' bias with constant current sources.
Writing this copy we realized the benefit statement of the Max module IS the features statement. The quality of the entire build of this module is simply out of this world, and when coupled with the finest of headphones and the most superb of audio front ends, the results are pure transcendent sonic bliss as realistic as musicians playing inside your head.