RMAF 2014

I knew going in that Sony's booth would be an RMAF highlight for me. Their new MDR-Z7 headphone with optional cables by Kimber Kables (here, here, and here) driven by the PHA-3 portable balanced headphone amp/DAC were a must hear. I heard, and I was very, very impressed. Samples for review consideration are winging their way towards Montana as I type.

But, as good as that was, there was something else in the Sony booth that absolutely blew me away!

About 15 years ago, as CEO of HeadRoom, I decided that because some high-end power amps for speakers were balanced designs, and because headphones are like miniature speakers, what the world needed was a balanced headphone amplifier. Not long after, HeadRoom introduced the BlockHead, the world's first balanced headphone amplifier.

The BlockHead was not only a balanced design, it was also a true mono-block design where left and right channels were completely separate. It's a bit hard to see in the picture above, but it had two chassis that were held together with a common front and rear panel. It also had two power cords, two volume controls, and, by necessity, two 3-pin XLR connectors for the left and right channels going to the headphones. (Pic of BlockHead internals.) I had no idea I was creating a standard for balanced headphones plugs...hell, on some level it was just a marketing gimmick to gain audiophile attention for headphone amps. (Though I do believe the loss of the common ground, effective doubling of slew rate, and slight reduction in harmonic distortion do make it a superior, though more costly, way to drive headphones.) And it did indeed get attention, here's Jonathan Scull's Stereophile review of the BlockHead.

Well, once balanced headphone amps became a little more common and made in a single chassis, the need for two XLRs disappeared and a single 4-pin XLR started to appear. Then, when Ray Samuels decided to come out with a balanced portable that wouldn't have room for an XLR connector, he introduced what we call an RSA connector as a jack for balanced portable amps. Unfortunately, the RSA connector is a bit too big for portable media player use, so when HiFiMAN and Astell & Kern produced balanced portable players they used 2.5mm TRRS jacks...but they're wired differently! Aaaaaaaargh! We have too many balanced headphone connectors! What we need is one single standard, damit.

Enter Sony and Naotaka Tsunoda's brilliant idea for a new headphone connection standard.

Naotaka believes the world needs a new headphone connection standard and is proposing a 4.4mm TRRRS plug and jack as the solution. I didn't quite catch up to the awesomeness of this idea until I reflected on it subsequently, but this new connector could have some really great benefits, it seems to me.

• Though phones and slim pocketable devices would continue to need the 3.5mm standard (or something smaller—think Lightning jack), all other headphone jacks portable or stationary, could use the new connector.
• Both balanced and unbalanced headphones could be compatible with both balanced and unbalanced headphone amplifiers. If wired properly, anything could plug into anything!
• The headphone jack is quite low-profile and would work well in high-end portable applications.
• Built well, this jack on a portable would be fair less prone to mechanical failure from being yanked around.
• Built-in cable or accessory 3.5mm-to-4.4mm adapters could be very small.
• Designed well, contact resistance for this connector could be quite low.

I think this is a grrrrrreat idea! And Sony is exactly the kind of company that can pull it off. My fingers are crossed.

But that's not why it was the show stopper for me...

When I can draw a direct line between something I did 15 years ago and something Sony is setting out to do today, well, it's both personally satisfying...and weird. I guess I mostly feel grateful to be a part of the headphone world and happy to see the echo of something I did in the past show up so clearly. Cool beans. Go Sony, go!

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