spritzer

I listened to the Cortina three times, twice off a BHSE and once off the new GC amp. Unfamiliar sources are an issue plus regular meet conditions but there was something about the midrange that bothered me, like an etch to voices which came off as very artificial but I need more time with them to nail it down. I also feel that headband is utter trash, on the second time I put them on my head the headpad caught on the metal springs causing the headphones to make a very lough "twang" sound through the earcups. I prefer the older type on the Voce, seems much more solid and better made. I'm also not sure if these are worth the price, just put them next to the CRBN and it looks like some cheap fake out of China, The headpad and earpads feel cheap and nasty and not high end in any way. This is always a personal thing but they were both sitting in front of me and they don't look, or feel, like a comparable product. The biggest issue for me though are the people who were there from DCA, I mean fucktards doesn't really cover them. I know fullwell I can be brash and bombastic but these people are utter fucking idiots. I went to their table to try the Voce and wanted to know when they were fixed as the original release of the Voce... they were fucking awful. This earpads never made any sense and it's clear to anybody who has messed with electrostatics for s long time. Same issue as with the King Sounds back in the day and they now, too, have moved to new earpads. Now the guy there, who was quick to point out he was the president of the company, said this gem when I said the Voce was awful, "Ohhh you like electrostatics so you don't like bass!" Yeah... and he also wanted to ask if I had ever designed headphones and when I started to listen, he ran over to Justin to bitch about me... which I heard most of. What a fucking idiot. Then we have the lady who was there, when I said matching of earpads was stupid loudly said this "SIR, THEY ARE HANDMADE!!!" Well fucking duhhh, all earpads are handmade outside of the molded ones super cheap ones. Most of my life I've been making things by hand, which have to be extremely consistent and it is easily done with far worse materials than these. Now I reached out to two manufacturers and asked if they had measured earpad effect on the sound. 0.1-0.4dB is worst case and with large production runs of earpads they are much closer. So the bottom line, the people making them are fucktards but I need to spend more time with the headphones. I don't feel they are worth the extra cost over the Voce, which looks much better made, and now sounds far better than they did. Add to that the Audeze CRBN being sold as B-stock for less than 3k$ and this becomes a pretty hard sell.

The KSE headphones are great but the amps are trash. Luckily China has us covered as you can get them now fitted with a Stax plug for very little money. Don't use them on Pro bias though, only normal bias outputs.

Yeah,I'm not so sure about this one but naturally it will be ripped apart.

Hehe, the jetlag is killing me too plus the general NYC issue of "walkingtoomuch". I'll be at the meet 10am sharp though

I look forward to trying these out but the damping does make the worried. DCA feel the need to add damping to everything while being shit at doing it, I mean the Voce was pretty much terrible in ever way. Also the matched earpads has to be the stupidest shit ever, this is worse than Hifiman levels of utter BS.

I've landed in NYC but no plans set for tomorrow. We almost died from too much pizza at John's plus I've been up for almost 24 hours...

Any noise which changes with the volume control points to a source issue as the volume control is at the front of the circuit. The noise is being amplified and attenuated with the volume control. Could also be a ground issue as that would tie into the volume control as well

Indeed, the rails are just not high enough. Even the old SRM-001 has a single 600v rail for the output

The specs, go read the datasheet. Because Stax, under Chinese control, doesn't give a shit? The D10 and D50 have very little to do with Stax in Japan.

I'd take a transformer solution, that is properly driven, over the the Apex garbage. Just look at the specs of those modules, they are truly terrible.

Yeah, it's in many ways worse to have an external PSU but let's not get some actual engineering involved here. Go buy the Woo 3ES with a 500$ opamp electrostatic amp. That is 14K$ all in and has an external PSU... well kinda as they saw the need to have the power transformers right next to the output sockets.

The Koss unit draws 9W from the wall, max so factor in PSU losses, very high rail voltages, that you driving 4 amplifier channels and yup, there is not a lot of power there. So Woo has a new electrostatic amp out, WA7e... who wants to guess that it is a tube pre driving some Apex modules?

My friend has tagged along for the trip so I'll have to check with him but I'm sure we'll up for something on Friday.

They are odd, I'll give them that. I'm going acquire a few more (as they are all so different) and then do a review on them.

Anybody claiming that Stax bias voltage needs to increased, immediately file that with "doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about".

No... just no.

So I should cram a Koss E/90 into a gold box and charge 20k$?

Yeah and this one has more power it seems. Still pitiful but a bit more.

Yup... Apex.

The D10 uses Apex and the listing for this thing clearly states it is a D10 clone, run a bit hotter. I'll take pics tomorrow if I can find some time.

It's a D10 clone so just as bad as the D10.

Why do I have a sneaking feeling this is a direct copy of the T8000. All the controls are the same, same inputs too with the option slot as well... Yeah not good at all.

If you can find any internal pictures then that would be great. Based on the T8000 is not great as that is one crappy amplifier.

That can be debated but I fail to see where they state that the electrostatic output is opamp or even solid state based. They only talk about the tubes in the preamp section.

I was quoted some prices from a Chinese seller last year and these were around 100$ each. Genuine parts and not pulls either. No idea who that seller was but it was through one of those marketplace sites, UT source or one of them. No idea how they can make that amp so cheap but part prices are usually around half in China compared to what we see. Also plenty of stuff that gets "lost".