Fing

Reminds me of a children's programme we used to have here in the UK called 'Captain Pugwash'. Nice urban legend in it about some of the characters having colourful names, such as Seaman Staines, Roger the Cabin Boy, Master Bates and Simon The Bar Steward. Shame they weren't true

I'm not sure. I'm not even sure Mikhail is sure

Considering I contributed a number of times to that thread, I did indeed read it. However, that doesn't mean I'm not going to use this cable and just throw it away. It'll should be better than the CD3000 cable that it replaces and I just want to know what it sounds like first before trying other types of cable. I hope that meets with your approval, but in case it doesn't I don't actually care.

Yeah - I have Purk to thank for pointing out the existence of the Concerto I must have glossed over it as being too much of a one-off when I saw the current SP model thread on HF.

jrgeoffrion on HF very kindly sent me some details of his Concerto + some pics. I hope he doesn't mind letting me post em up here: Amp: Tubed Power Supply: Shoot him a msg on HF for more info + specs if you're interested. Mine'll be different in that there'll be more tubes in the power supply and it'll have an XLR instead of SE dynamic section. Now to sell a kidney.

Apologies for the late entry. Thought this would be a good cautionary tale. I think I started the year with AKG-271S, Grado SR-125, Etymotic ER6i a 4G Ipod and a X-Can V2 and a speaker rig. Then in March I bought a couple of Creative EMU 1212M soundcards (one for work, one for home) a pair of AKG 701 and a Doge. In April, bought a pair of ATH-W5000, ATH-L3000 and AT-HA5000 and ordered a pair of Darth Beyers and a Yamamoto HA-02. In May, bought an AT-DHA3000. Quiet months in June-August. Probably too busy enjoying the L3000 + DHA3000 and having fun getting into cycling which I hadn't done since I was 18. In September it all went pear-shaped. Bought two pairs of Sony R10, AKG K1000, ordered a Supra SDS SE from SinglePower, which morphed somehow into a fully-loaded Supra XLR demo unit with around $7k worth of upgrades and a Wavelength Crimson. In October, bought a pair of Denon D5000, a SP Extreme Platinum and a MHDT Lab Paradisea+ DAC. Was part of the HeadAmp Pico pre-order list. Picked up a pair of Koss KSC75 somewhere along the way. Have since sold the AKG 271 + 701, Grado SR-125, Darth Beyers, W5000, X-Can V2, Doge, AT-HA5000 and AT-DHA3000. This year I've bought a Sony CD3000 which I plan on replacing the drivers and cable with R10 versions of the same. Also in the process of getting a Sennheiser HE90 - bought a Stax SRM-T1. Currently waiting for Mikhail to spec up a Concerto XLR Accent-T for me....

Yeah - I still don't like my bass light pair of R10. I never listen to them. Amazingly clear treble but no guts. Bassy music is just a joke with them and I don't listen to enough classical to justify switching over from my other pair. I'm going to balance these suckers into a Supra XLR and see what's what. I've tinkered with the L3000 / Extreme and got them sounding fantastic now. Mostly tube rolling. Wish I could make the Scotland meet with these guys. The L3000 really deserve their bass reputation.

Considering that the cable used to be ordered as a spare part for $950, I'd say resell it for $$$$ I too find it difficult to believe that it's the sonic equivalent of bell wire. I didn't really "get" the R10 until I got a nice mint pair. From Alex as it happens. You totally don't need a SDS-XLR to experience the potential of how good these headphones are. Just a decent source and a revealing amp. The level of effortless refinement amazes me every time I listen to them.

That's hot

I'll be bringing a Stax SRM-T1 that Spritzer kindly sold me ) I was also going to run a pre-amp into it, as I read in one of the Stax threads that this will improve the sound. I don't suppose that affects the output voltage in any way?

I've just heard from the HE90 seller and he's telling me that when I bring the amp to test the headphone I should only use the low voltage output on the amp as the headphone may be damaged by using the higher voltage output. Is this true? The 'polarisation' voltage on the HE90 is 500V whatever that means and the output voltage of the HEV90 is 400Veff. Does that mean the 580V of a Stax 'Pro' output is too high for it? What is the output voltage of the Normal jack and what would be the result in using it be? All this these different voltages are pretty confusing to me I'm afraid!

The D5000 is not a bad work headphone. I am constantly comparing it to the L3000 I also have here at work and though I prefer the tonality of the L3000, the Denons do have a more emphasised upper and lower register as mentioned earlier. This results in a slightly more spacious sound and is good, especially with bass-heavy music. My D5000 is modded with Dynamat in the earcups, around the drivers and inside the earpad frame to tighten up the bass.

Thanks to Spritzer for answering my plea successfully so quickly! Luckily the seller said he will provide a HE90 -> Stax adapter as part of the sale so I won't be removing nothing from nothing ;-)

Thanks everyone for the recommendations. I will probably try and source a Stax SRM-T1 or 007T rather than get an aptly named Illusion. Spritzer / anyone - if you happen to have a spare SRM-T1 or similar, please let me know ) Cheers! Wai

I wish I had your willpower n_maher. I had pretty much said the same thing myself. Then this opportunity presents itself....

Elephas needs to sell me his then

Can any HE90 owners suggest a 'budget' amp for driving a pair of these headphones? There are a few Stax SRM-007T on Yahoo Japan that won't plunge me further into horrible debt ($600-ish). How would they do? This is really only until I can save up for something a lot nicer. Cheers, Wai

http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d6/firmfroggy/Crimson/

Being a resolutely PC as source person, I thought about getting a Cosecant and ended up with a Crimson instead. The triode outputs, battery power, NOS and upgrade-ability of the modules swung it for me, since it currently only supports 16bit 44.1KHz playback. Gordon tells me that there will be a 24bit module that will also support 16bit as well as 44.1, 48, 88.2 and 96KHz playback in January, in ASYNC ISO mode, whatever that means. I have no complaints about the sound. Superb tone and microdetail. Unfortunately I don't have any high end sources to compare it with.

Results for anyone to see. Asking because I know that not a lot of people listen to music as quietly as I do. I find it essential to listen at this volume however otherwise I get fatigue. I know the o'clock ratings are fairly arbitary since there's no accounting for source, amp or headphone and is thus merely a rough guide. Cheers!

Use a step up transformer

I felt bad so I modified it ) Oh. And I'd wait for a 'dedicated' H2 amp rather than plugging it into any old speaker amp. I do regret missing the opportunity of auditioning the H2 at the UK meet with my speaker amp, but considering the number of other items I was bringing, I felt I didn't need to hear it that bad. As it was, I'm kind of glad as I think the H2 is still too much of a work in progress at the moment. Continual revisions are occuring and the difficulty of matching it to amps is certainly a problem. When they figure it out I'm sure it'll sound fantastic.

Bleh. Here I am trotting out my speaker tube amp that no one's heard and am not likely to hear from DIYHifisupply. It's called Ladyday, model 3 and uses 300B tubes in a WE310A as inputs and a 274B as rectifier (substituted military RCA 5U4G as replacements). Built and delivered it cost me a bit over $2K. You can probably get a cheaper variant for a bit less.

My 4G Ipod would die every so often. The sad face would come up. If holding down the middle and menu buttons to reset it didn't work, then a moderately hard whack fixes it. Not sure about the cause - something about the harddrive arm getting stuck? Yours does sound a bit broken though - hope you get it back soon.

I've tried the Yamamoto with the L3000 and W5000. It's a good pairing with the W5000 but doesn't seem as suited to the L3000 which imo sounds better out of the DHA3000 anyway. I do consider the Yamamoto to be quite un-tubelike in the way it portrays music. For me it is very linear and direct. It doesn't miss much nor does it add much either, which is not surprising considering the tubes used are for telephony and it only has a single gain stage. It loves my new pair of R10 but the tone is a little rolled off on my older pair, which I think are harder to drive. It is a very versatile amp and hugely better than the Doge 6210 or X-Can2. Unfortunately, it's not as good as the SP Extreme Platinum I have but then that's not surprising since it costs half of that. Good advice from Grawk on acquiring a SinglePower amp - wait for the one you want to come up for sale. I bought my Extreme Platinum for $1500. A good friend of mine bought a stock Supra for around $1500 I believe. Moon Audio have a SinglePower page that might be slightly out of date but gives you a rough idea on costs: http://www.moon-audio.com/Singlepower.htm