Headwize Memorial

Headwize was an excellent resource for me and I was sad to see it disappear. I kept visiting back with the Wayback machine to read up on different articles.

Well I'm happy to see that it has been preserved in this way

https://headwizememorial.wordpress.com/

 

Nice read, bookmarked!

The Headwize story echoes the fate of my favorite Audio DIY magazine from the 90s - Sound Practices.

Thanks for posting!

 

I should give special attention to this project in particular:

https://headwizememorial.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/a-pocket-headphone-amplifier/

This is the original CMOY headphone amp which is not only significant in the world of head-fi, but all DIY electronics. This has been an intro project for thousands of people and still sounds great to this day. I remember reading about it in Popular Science, which shows how widely this was regarded.

 

Aw yes. My first audio DIY. Fond memories. Especially the time I got pulled aside by airport security when I tried to take my CMoy in an Altoids tin onto the plane and had to explain to them what the hell a headphone amplifier even was.

 

Thank you for this @Cspirou . I dropped in there from time to time in the old days.

 

I remember HeadWize well. When Chu Moy started the HeadWize website, he almost single-handedly created the headphone enthusiast community. Its forum was the hangout for headphone enthusiasts before Head-Fi existed. HeadWize was a labor of love for Chu Moy and he didn't want to turn the website into a business and did not accept advertising.

However, HeadWize had frequent outages for technical and financial reasons. Then came a period when the website went down and the outage dragged on for months. There was no other central place where headphone enthusiasts connected. Jude stepped in with Head-Fi and was knowledgeable about running a website, both technical and as a business. Head-Fi became established as an alternative destination while HeadWize remained down. When HeadWize returned online, the two websites coexisted and people began signing into both forums and posted to both. However, momentum had shifted to Head-Fi with its professionally managed website, stable uptime, and more advanced forum software. Chu Moy remained true to his vision of HeadWize as a noncommercial hobbyist and enthusiast site, but there really wasn't room for two headphone forums with much overlapping content for the same audience. Head-Fi dominated in the end but HeadWize and Chu Moy have a special place in the evolution of the headphone world.

 

The forum was very rich with information for anyone wanting to learn. For me it was the only real DIY forum, and so much was lost when the site went down. Glad to see some of the library content brought back. I hope CMoy knew how much people appreciated what he had created.

.. dB