spritzer

Indeed, you have no clue what you are talking about and you come to us... and expect what exactly? This isn't Head-fi where nobody has a clue what the hell they are looking at, we spot BS from miles away and shills as well. You may think this stuff is as good as it gets but for me that just points to inexperience more than anything else. Nothing wrong with that, everybody starts somewhere but barging in and claiming you have a clue what is going on... it's not a good look.

While I'm at it, here is the cable they use: Just took some quick picks with the phone, can't be arsed to spend any more time on this: So those are the cheapest XLR's money can buy and possibly the oddest cable I've ever opened. The signal is carried on those thin wires but the bias is on a massive copper mesh for some reason. Now somebody spent a lot of time making this but that doesn't mean any of it is a good idea. First off, the teflon is clearly very thin when the proper 600V stuff is not and in what world is it a good idea to have the highest current capacity for the bias wires? The bias supply is tied directly to the mains, if the bias resistors fail and all hell breaks loose... you don't want what is essentially a mains cable coming up to your head.

I tried to read that article... holy crap do you honestly believe those cables and idiotic footers make a difference? For fucks sake... Also first good point is build quality... sure. Thanks for the internal pics though as this thing sure is a hot mess. So you have a tube amp... and you could use that to directly drive the stators but nope, they went the worst of all worlds. They take a push pull amp, step that down to speaker level and then step it back up for the electrostatics. WHY!!!?? In what universe is that a good design choice, double up the transformers and cram it all in a small chassis... right next to the power transformer and the inductor. You would be much better off with a cheap tube amp off ebay (the China specials) and a SRD-7. That way there is at least some isolation. Same bias supply as the transformer box, despite this being a tube amp and thus safe, high voltage AC being present which is easy to step up. Hell, a dedicated tap off the transformer would suffice. I just love that one nut in the back right hand corner just not fully fixed. Shows the amount of care. All the same earthing issues as the other amps as it uses the 3D printed corner pieces which don't conduct.

I've seen detailed internal pictures of both of the other units and yeah... pure utter trash. Every corner has been cut, product which springs for ChangX capacitors... yeah they really care about quality. If I'm so wrong, post internal pictures and tell me how wrong I am using actual facts, not feelings.

Ahhh yes, the age old "ohh this model is way inferior to the others"... despite it having the same driver setup. The issue isn't down to voicing, it is the fundamental setup of the drivers, they just don't work. They are simply not stable so when you try to compensate for the lower sensitivity with more drive voltage, it all falls apart. Plenty of others have compared them in the Mafia and yeah... there are no favorable reviews to be found. One thing that should also be clear, none of these are actually amps, they are basic speaker amps driving the same transformers across the range. The transformers are ok, nothing more than that but the rest is just a dumpster fire. Now let's start with the truly dangerous stuff, none of the chassis is actually earthed or uses proper high voltage parts. Sure the back panel is earthed but the other 5 chassis panels are in no way electrically connected to it. Since they like to run non isolated bias a fraction of a millimeter away from the front panel... yeah this is a big problem. Then we have the whole fake XLR's from China being asked to carry 600VDC and high voltage AC though a cable which is a bad joke. It's actually worse than the Hifiman one and that says a lot... I can't remember if I ever posted a picture of it but I'll try to do that later. Reading something on HF? No... I don't waste my time on that unless there is solid technical background. Impressions are all but meaningless.

Amps are dangerous, the headphones aren't great... There is potential there but they just didn't get the point.

I wouldn't touch any of these, they are utter trash, all of them.

Just check the offset and balance, if they are within spec (+/-20VDC) then it should be fine.

1.6A should be fine and you can always measure the resistance of the windings. There should be a resistance reading when measuring from one end of the windings to the other when they are set to 240V.

Looks good to me and not sure about the fuse as that is some silly audio grade fuse...

Yeah, those are the one Milos was working on.

For actual 220VAC line voltage, feel free to move the white wire back to its former position. The rest of Europe is pushing well above 240V so that's what I always set the amps to.

I would always use isolated wires for mains use and the bias shouldn't drift much but who knows with the age of the unit/capacitors/tubes.

Yes, the gray links need to be removed. You can use one of them to make the new connection.

40th is fine for our use unless we go to 600V or higher. We learned this the hard way back in the KGSSHV days.

Restore the cut windings, move the white wire from brown to blue on the voltage selector board, remove both black jumpers and replace them with a single one from gray to purple. That is the 240V setup, never use the 220V one. The amp has unregulated power supplies so the bias will drift with the input voltage.

I've never seen that exact setup but it is basically the same as others. See those two gray links, they are the adjustment but you also need to move the white wire as seen here:

Some of the parts suppliers have the Mk2 headpad for sale and it should be direct replacement. Now if the old elastic has streched then I'd just cut a bit off it. Works a charm

True... I did order a L500 Mk2 to I can swap the cable out for the older all copper one to see if that makes any difference. It won't but hey... any excuse to buy more headphones...

Last I heard Phenomenon is gone, website and all.

Well the review is live...

I’m going to post this in its own thread as so many people are asking me for X9000 impressions, and it makes sense to have them somewhere where they are easy to find. I was also going to take some pictures to add to this review but I’m just wiped. Might add some later if these ever present storms let up for some good light. I’ve now had the SR-X9000 here for over a week so time for a writeup... as my email inbox is full of people asking for just that. 🙂 First impressions were very promising, the build quality is superb, and those drivers are just a marvel to behold. I do like the new replaceable cables even, though it is a bit of a copy of the King Sound setup, and they really should include a 2.5m cable and a 5m one, the 1.5m makes no sense to me. The earpads might be a tad too big in terms of open area for their own good but they are well made and comfy. That new arc design is also excellent, far better than the 009 mess. The inspiration from the SR-Omega is clear but the build quality here is far, far better. Same loose feeling fit too; they mostly just hang off the head with minimal clamping. I really like how they drew inspiration from them, but I also have some issues with how that was executed… more about that later. The system I’ve been using them in is my main rig, Denafrips Terminator DAC feeding a Carbon CC all being fed from my main PC. Now for the sound, these are clearly voiced in the same direction as the 009/009S but not as horribly colored as those two. They sound open and lively with decent bass and the forward slant is there but far better than the predecessors. I remember thinking… “these are what the 009’s should have been 11 years ago” so yeah, not bad at all. For some recordings they really work but yeah… a few tracks in and the cracks began to show. A bit of a backstory, I’ve likened buying Stax to being in an “abusive relationship” for the last 15 years. Back in 2007 they brought us the 007Mk2’s with all of their issues. Sure, they could be fixed easily enough with some blutac but yeah it was a sign of things to come. At CanJam it was confirmed there was a new version of the 007Mk2’s out and they were even worse (the Mk2.5 as we called them), the blutac helped but could not fix the terrible voicing. Then it was announced a new flagship was incoming and the SR-009 landed in 2011. Now we all remember the clusterfuck that was, drivers failing left and right and forward sound with pitiful bass response… yeah, I’m not a fan. One bright spark was in 2014 when I got a new set of 007Mk2’s and they had clearly been changed for the better. The port finally kind of worked and the voicing was more like the Mk1’s. Then we got the limited edition 009BK (2016?) which I found to be a small improvement over the 009 but still that same sound and finally the 009S is 2018. Less said about them the better, quickest I’ve ever sold one of my flagship phones there… That brings us to the present and since the wait for the SR-X9000 was so long, I had time to bolster my collection to compare against them. I got a used set of 009S just to make sure I didn’t like them (that was still the case), a Voce (not arrived yet due to some shipping snafu’s) and finally the one I really wanted, a SR-Omega with early 007 Mk1 drivers. I had a set a decade or so ago and it’s really the only set of headphones I truly regret selling. I also got my final set of Audeze CRBN’s to compare against the new kid on the block. I had a lot of fun doing so and after a few hours I gravitated to a direct A-B test of the SR-Omega/007 against the X9000. Makes sense as they are a similar idea, put a more modern driver into that same basic housing design. That did reveal the two main issues with the X9000’s, the bright edge to everything which is just borderline annoying and more distracting than anything. Second are the imaging issues… First off, the brightness, with the 009’s they were really intolerable, and I’ve never been able to just sit down and enjoy a listening session with 009’s. It’s not that bad here but it’s always present. Some tracks it just blends in and becomes part of the sound while on others it stands out and takes away from the immersion. What makes it worse is that there is no logic to which tracks have that edge to them, bright ones which I would expect to have it… well it just blends in while darker ones have it. Must be a resonance issue as there is so little damping here. Now with the imaging, I think Stax made a mistake having the outside screen angled like that. On the SR-Omega it is perfectly parallel with the drivers but on the X9K, it is maybe 3mm further out towards the front. This or some part of the driver structure might be the culprit for the odd imaging. Let me clarify, they throw a large soundstage but it’s very much a “three blob affair”. Nothing wrong with that really but it’s the front imaging which sounds off for me. It’s all a bit to distant and boxed in while not being as focused as the 007 soundstage. When you pick up on it, it becomes very apparent and distracting. As comparison, let’s take the SR-Omega and SR-007Mk2. The SR-Omega throws a wide soundstage but it’s all a bit loose and diffused. Now the 007’s (all of them really) have a much tighter, more focused soundstage which also does something unique, there are layers to it. With the SR-X9000 it’s more like the SR-Omega (which makes sense) but more localized to the three blobs and the middle one has that odd boxed in effect while being a bit distant. Now other than these two things, these are well made and high performing sets, but these two things annoy me enough for them to not make my top/best ever list. The SR-007’s are more laid back and “darker” but also more neutral and truer to the original sound. The SR-Omega/007 is a more fun and looser version of that sound but those slight deficiencies just make them a welcome change, doesn’t make them any less neutral. They simply act as a bridge bringing those two sounds together, absolute purity of the 007 with the more warm and loose nature of the SR-Omega. I feel I should also talk a bit about the new kid on the block, the Audeze CRBN. Now I’ve had a few of them here, prototype units to the final production version and it really is the antithesis of the SR-X9000 is terms of fit and sound. The CRBN is snug as it hugs your head with thick and supple earpads. The sound is far more damped so it is darker but still very open and expansive. Now they aren’t perfect, they have that slight issue with the midrange presence due to the heavy damping, but it is minor overall. They are really what the HE90 could have been back in the day, more diffused than the 007’s but with proper bass. Nice way to tie back the 007's were always being compared to the HE90 back in the day. Lastly, how are they to drive. Well… as one would expect with a driver this size, they need a lot of power to behave. That brightness will quickly get out of control, especially at higher volume levels when the headphones don’t have enough power behind them. I’ve only tried them on a couple of amps so far so I’ll need more time with that, but I’d say powerful and neutral amps will suit these just fine. Conclusion/TL; DR These are good but not as good as they could have been. They are too forward sounding though not as bad as the SR-009, 009BK or 009S. I crave neutrality over everything else, the headphones should just present the sound with as little an impact on it as is possible. If they fail to represent a part of the spectrum, that’s fine but if they add something… then I have a problem with it. The brightness and imaging issue does disqualify them due to that, but I will keep them around, nonetheless. With some material they work well and plus I’m in a collecting mood… 😉 I'll probably add to review later on as I spend some more time with them. Finally, I’m going to be a bit cynical and think Stax are doing this sound signature on purpose and not for the obvious reasons. This is exactly the type of sound which grabs you on a quick audition or impresses the useless audio reviewers out there who don’t know any better. Back in 2002 the 007’s got no love at all as they are the definition of “unimpressive at first audition”, let along not many amps around at that time which could drive them. Stax are clearly now trying to make money and not audio purist just trying to make the best product possible, nothing wrong with that, so I’m glad this wasn’t a complete hack job like the 009S.

I've had them for a week now so a review is incoming.

I agree, it just looks like unplated brass with some age on it.

That thing is bizarre. 🙂 Rather odd too as Stax were so paranoid of using metal housing for these things, hence the ground reference in each cup using resistors off the audio line.