spritzer

I moved the cable chat over to another thread but yeah... this is not great:

I figured it was worth its own thread to look at these aftermarket cables that have popped up. Now I don't really want to be a part of the whole cable mess but with electrostatics it is rather simple... the main component is capacitance. The cable will always add some and it determines how hard the entire system is to drive. So TLDR, more capacitance... everything is worse. The amp has to work much harder to try and push current into the top and bottom end. As a baseline, I tested a spare SR-X1 driver I had here and between the +/- inputs it is right on 40pF. We want to keep this as low as possible to keep the load low. So first off we have this ebay find, staight out of China: I was roughly 130$ shipped for the 2.5M version but I've seen them go for a lot more than that. It has the off the shelf Stax connectors on either end and they are nice enough quality. The wire is the cheapest, thinnest crap possible though. As a comparison the plan was to use a SR-X1/007S/009D cable but I only found a SRE-725 extension cable. Same length at 2.5m but is might be a tiny bit worse as the flat ribbon needs to connect to the Stax socket on the other end with wires will cross a bit doing that. Should be a small one but worth noting. I tested between the L+ and L- (I also compared against the R+ and R- but it should read the same) using a basic Uni-T capacitance meter at 1kHz. Both cables strewn out as long as they go on a wooden floor so minimal impact from that. So first off, here is the Stax SRE-725: That is 0.061nF or 61pF. Not bad and what I'd expect from the Wide PC-OCC cables. Now here we have the ebay cable... That is 0.46nF or 460pF. Yeah... that is not great is it. So as a comparison, the whole system capacitance with the Stax cable is 101pF, with the ebay cable it is 500pF. Yeah... this is utterly terrible and will make the headphones sound terrible. Now a second possible issue is how much voltage can the cable withstand. Again here we are hooked up to the L+ and L- simply because those pins are the easiest to get to with the large clips. This cable passes at 1500V with flying colors, almost 30 seconds and at almost 6 gigaohms so no issues there. I'm guessing this is actually double insulated as there is not a whole lot of wire in there.

These are available for preorder now: https://apos.audio/products/sjy-argos-electrostatic-headphones?utm_campaign=hyperfuse_last_day+%2801KZW4554JVNW58G1HET4TN43W%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alex_nongdpr_never_subbed_active_180&_kx=cd77Rbf3yu6_OAujM-M4VU1ihuQFsjtyVcb-jl8r-OKxvi62Czezy2yxdLQUUnAj.Ldk8SW&variant=48186260947180 List price is 1800$... yeah no that is a hard pass for me. Just as a point of reference, how bad this has to be for me not to buy one. I'm a degenerate electrostatic headphone collector with pretty much every set ever made in my collection... even weird prototypes which never went anywhere.

It was mostly adjusting the design to different parts and the weird stuff were the PCB caps that Stax decided to use... plus the enlarged the amp chassis for no particular reason. In terms of being better than the 252S... nope.

Yeah, I'm not surprised as they are essentially a pile of caps stacked on top of each other. They are the easy solution but there are ribbon cables out there. I really like the 20AWG silicone rubber one which was rated to 600V but in did far more in testing. The new cable on the EH-1's is excellent, very much like the Wide PC-OCC Stax cable but with smaller conductors. Even the Monolith electrostatics from Monoprice had custom cables on them back in the day. Btw. here is a picture of the ebay Stax braided cable for posterity:

I thought I'd see if any of these cables are out there and what do we have here: Ebay Stax cable I bought one to do some testing on it but who thinks those wires can handle 1kV and are low capacitance...

Damn, never seen that happen. Most of the wires that I come across are just plated aluminum, even the silver wires as they just dual coat with copper and then with silver. It's super easy to check, just cut a bit of insulation off and hit it with a mini blowtorch or a hot lighter. If the wires curl up, that's aluminum. It is clearly a crap cable off aliexpress and there are plenty of ribbon cables available. It's just lazy and bad engineering. With the Hongshu EH-1 out now, this will be a very tough sell. I have no idea of the price but the EH-1 is 650$ with an amp and they are pretty damn good. Also no venting on the drivers there...

I haven't had much time for DIY headphones recently but I just sent for some parts to be made and one might be a truly unique stator principle. More on that later but I've been using these lately and finally post about them after seeing that SJY pile of fail: I found this Hifiman Edition X for next to nothing as the pads were trashed and both drivers were blown. Gotta love that Hifiman build quality... Anyway, the plan was to design some drivers for this shell and then make my own version of the Shangri-la as the stock ones are frankly utter crap. Given the complex shape of the baffle in these I put it off for months but finally got off my ass and made these: This is the same piece but reversible for each side. There is just enough space in the housing to cram Stax Lambda drivers in there and I just happen to have quite a few in stock... shocker. Then we ended up with this: The back grill was glued into place but with the driver glued to the baffle, it holds it all in place as there is no extra room in there. I added the coarse foam to back to make them look more stock as I didn't have any of that black cover Hifiman uses. The baffle uses the stock neoprene gaskets from the planar drivers and it's okey for the seal but not quite perfect. The drivers in these are Lambda Signature units (no real reason I chose those, just what came to hand) and the cable is a Stax extension cable. I added the strain reliefs to the housing and the cable is so tight in there that it doesn't need any more fixing in place. Then they were finished off with some sheepskin earpads off Aliexpress as the stock Hifiman units are trash. These are the drivers with the protective mesh in place (just as they were in a Lambda/Sigma) but I also ordered some baffles with slots cut in them so I could put in thinner drivers to have a bit more space behind the drivers.

So a new electrostatic seems to be incoming: https://apos.audio/products/sjy-argos-electrostatic-headphones?utm_campaign=hyperfuse_last_day%20%2801KZW4554JVNW58G1HET4TN43W%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alex_nongdpr_never_subbed_active_180&_kx=cd77Rbf3yu6_OAujM-M4VU1ihuQFsjtyVcb-jl8r-OKxvi62Czezy2yxdLQUUnAj.Ldk8SW I've been keeping an eye on them for a while, no idea what that company is but hey, more the merrier and all that. I just saw the new updated page for these and it is just what the fuck, are they retarded? First off, "fully vented drivers" being spun as something that is positive. Hello, what is the number one rule of planar design? Something about an infinite baffle? No? Anybody here have any fucking clue what they are doing? No? Let's spin our engineering ineptitude as a positive Yes, that is what the drivers need, room to breathe. A common problem with all planar drivers is that they are just being suffocated. What a novel idea and people making planars for 70+ years have clearly all been wrong. Seriously, who thinks the actual reason is that the drivers are horribly unstable so the extra pressure from a sealed baffle would knock them out of balance. So instead of fixing that, let's just employ marketing wank. Then we have the cable... what the actual fuck. Just look at this thing: Anybody who makes a braided cable for electrostatics needs to be taken out back and beaten repeatedly with a copy of the Art of Electronics. The whole point of the fucking cable is to minimize capacitance... not add to it!! Now this looks like the cheap crappy headphone cables coming out of China so I very much doubt it's high voltage credentials. I also love the Y split on a commercial set of headphones... a piece of clear heatshrink. It's also 1.5meters in length, probably to cut down on the pile of extra capacitance this turd adds to the load. Then you can get a proper extension cable and have the headphones reach anything as these are hardly portable.

Of course, it should be in this thread when ever they came out. It is essentially just the 252S with some weird stuff added to it.

I don't think they ever hid that they were made in China but they are great transformers. Very consistent in quality which is hard to come by these days. Plus they oversize all of the cores so they run cooler and with less chance of any nasty behavior. As somebody that has ordered transformers in bulk from China, they stop being cheap very quickly once you ask for some proper specs or even worse... actual bloody copper in them.

I'm looking forward to those as I'm slowly working on my own version just for me, i.e. fixing how they sound. :) I got these recently: https://poloyoaudio.store/products/hongshu-eh1 It is my third one of these as they design has been maturing over the years. I'm waiting on a replacement set as mine had some noise issues in one driver so I'll do a proper write up as they arrive but I do like them a lot. The earpads are crap but there is a lot of potential there.

Shit that's bad. I'm sure all those 10% carbon comp resistors add a magical tone...

Found some more pics of the Viva STX which I'm okey borrrowing knowing how much this guy has taken from here. Seriously, this thing is so fucking bad. I think this might be the same unit as was posted before, very similar burn marks on that electrolytic cap... which is always a sign of quality. Rifa caps and all that but that switch floating on some hot glue. Yup... pure quality for only 12k$.

Which has probably been bounced back as that is not my domain name.