Head-Fi

Head-Fi is an audiophile internet forum, established June 20, 2001 by Business Matter, Inc., specializing in headphone audio. It was started as an alternative to the non-commercial HeadWize internet forums when they were taken offline by HeadWize administrator Chu Moy (aka Cmoy) due to unmanageably large bandwidth bills. At the time, Head-Fi's willingness to accept advertisers was a significant change from the staunchly non-profit HeadWize and the manufacturer-operated HeadRoom company forums.
Head-Fi has a number of subforums, dealing with equipment and music, as well as a general discussion forum. It is one of the largest high fidelity discussion websites, with over 80,000 registered members, 4,000,000 forum posts, and 500,000+ unique monthly visitors.
The Head-Fi.org Community
Head-Fi has been involved in numerous efforts to raise money for charitable causes such as one conducted, along with Grado Labs, between late 2005 and early 2006 for the Eden II Program that raised over $4000. Other efforts are frequently started by members and site staff alike, generating similar funds for relief funds and other charitable causes.
Head-Fi slogan
Welcome to Head-Fi, sorry about your wallet.
Head-Fi's slogan, Welcome to Head-Fi, sorry about your wallet, is indicative of the buying patterns of audiophiles. A neophyte to the differences between high fidelity and lower quality headphones is often hit with an "upgrade bug" of impulsive purchases upon being exposed to such a drastic difference. The likelihood of buying more expensive and superior sound quality headphones is diagnosed by Head-fi members as 'upgraditis'.
Forums
Head-Fi's forums are broken into subcategories for efficient navigation. These include equipment reviews, classified ads, general music discussion and meet-ups.
Head-Fi History
*First Head-Fi International Meet: The First National Head-Fi Meet was held at the Ramada Inn/Adria Hotel Conference Center in Bayside, New York on Saturday, April 22nd, and Sunday, April 23rd, 2006. The meet occupied 3 salon rooms and another adjoining room for a total of on Saturday April 22nd. Both the Shure E500 and the Grado GS1000 premiered their worldwide release at this meet.
*Second Head-Fi International Meet: The Second International Head-Fi Meet was held at the Radisson Hotel San Jose Airport in San Jose, California, on Saturday, April 21st, and Sunday, April 22nd, 2007.
*Grado HF-1: The Grado HF-1 was made exclusively for Head-Fi.org. This was a plastic and wood open supra-aural headphone. This headphone had a production run of 481 sales to date (450 original November sales, one replacement (December), seven waiting list sales, three March sales and 20 April sales; each headphone was numbered 001-481).
*John Grado Head-Fi Interview:: A permanent "stickied" thread on the forums.
*Meier Audio Corda HeadFive Headphone Amp: A commemorative headphone amplifier to celebrate Head-Fi's fifth anniversary, made by Meier Audio for Head-Fi's forum members. All 500 units were sold.
*Meier Audio Corda HeadSix Headphone Amp: The HeadSix is another commemorative headphone amplifier, made to celebrate Head-Fi's sixth anniversary. 600 of the portable amplifiers will be sold.
*Major Head-Fi outage: The most significant outage in Head-Fi history occurred between November 11th and November 25th of 2007. On November 11th, a placeholder page was displayed explaining that an extended site outage was in progress, caused by a controller card failure in the NAS that was, at the time, being used both to host the site's databases and to store all recent backups. The site was revived two weeks after the NAS failure on November 25th with a slightly altered forum interface and some data missing: internal links to posts and threads were broken, and pretty much all links to photos on sister site photo.head-fi.org were broken.

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