About Crosszone
Necessity, as they say is the mother of invention. And it also explains the birth of CROSSZONE, and its unique approach to headphone designs.
The head of Asia Optical, Robert Lai was no stranger to business travel and like many of us who love our music, he was always looking to bring that enjoyment of music with him whenever he was away from home. But he found long term use of headphones caused listening fatigue. He consulted a Japanese audio manufacturer who was a business partner of Asia Optical to understand the reason. Their investigations identified centre localisation as the main cause of listening fatigue on headphones, where all the sound is concentrated in the middle of the head. It feels unnatural.
Finding no solution in the market, he decided to employ an acoustic technician from a famous Japanese manufacturer to build something bespoke, using the precision processing technologies that Asia Optical developed in building lenses and optical engines for cameras and laser applications.
The design they came up with tried to recreate the crossfeed from the speakers that reach both ears, not just the ear closest to the speaker.
This resulted in a very unique driver layout that has drivers reproducing sound from both channels on each side of the headphone.
It took them two years to release their first product - the CZ-1. Since then, the portfolio has expanded but they all still employ this unique driver design.
