spritzer

The port mod is always a good idea. The port is a band aid on a bullet wound...better close that sucker up.

I shot this last night on the way home. This is about 10 minutes to midnight so the high point of the madness hasn't been reached. The phone kinda crapped out trying to shoot this but I was at the end of the driveway to Bessastaðir, the presidents residence overlooking the greater Reykjavik area.

Well which Mk2 is that? If it is the post 2010 version then the biggest difference is the midrange as those has this "honk" to it which the latest one doesn't have. That and the bass port is more refined on the new ones which is a non issue if they are port modded but worth a mention.

Nope, nothing aside from the purchase date and even that can be unreliable as dealers might have old stock sitting around.

Those are great drivers but I'm far too cheap to use them for some project when I can spend 2K$ and get nice electrostatics. I'm thinking something much cheaper...

Yeah and I only have two electrostatic units so one per channel. If you aren't worrying about the bass, then the baffle can be quite a bit smaller. I might go look into some super stiff dynamic drivers now...

So those are exactly the same as the kit Stax offered way back, one kit per speaker. I need to dig that out but the plan was always to have an open baffle with a super quick woofer and a small enclosure in the bottom to house the electronics. I need to do that at some point...

Yeah people haven't been too kind with the impressions (when we leave out the HF and media BS) but I had to take one for the team...

No, I don't think so. There are new avenues to go down but I think current Stax just don't "get it" in the sense that they did back in the day. Now old Stax did a number of missteps when we look back but there was constant innovation and they never shipped something like the 507's which just sounded vile. Some were bright, some a bit dull, some had other issues but the tonality was never way off. Stax now are trying new things and refining the old designs but I don't see any true innovation at all. I don't really agree wrt Sennheiser as the HE-1 is just a rehash of the HE90 with no real progress and so much of the system is just purely there for the wank factor. It is certainly a better packaged system and in terms of industrial production Sennheiser never cease to impress but the sound...yeah leaves a lot to be desired. I really, really wanted one until I heard it but now I don't really care for them unless I can buy a set of the phones solo and rip out the amps. I must admit though that the resurgence in electrostatics is enjoyable though they aren't all great. The Monoprice one gets a bit tiresome after a while given it's massive bass deficiency but they are nice and comfy. I'm running the Voce now on Ether2 pads I think (the ones with the square opening) and they are an improvement over the stock ones but having just swapped over to the 007Mk2's...the difference is startling. How anybody could give the Voce "best headphones of the year" award just goes to show how useless and clueless the industry media is. Anyway, the Shangri-La was a surprise too as it sounds decent, horrible build quality but at least they sound ok, I've already bought the Jade II with the amp but I'm not sure when they are shipping out to me. If they sound similar then throw on them a new cable and it could be a decent set.

To me there is no comparison. The 009's don't sound real to me and while the 009S is an improvement, you can hear a large chunk of the sound just missing so yeah, the 007's walk all over them. Over the last 7 years I've categorized the 009's as the "hifi" sound, they initially impress and it might work with some material but push them and...well they crumble.

For me the 009S is a clear upgrade as it fixes the skewed tonal balance of the original but it's not perfect. While they fixed that skew it exposes the other issues the 009's had, most prominent the bass suckout and limited bloom.

The cap alone isn't a crossover but a highpass filter so yeah it doesn't do too much. I did disconnect the cap and the HF was reduced but the electret doesn't do a whole lot. I did do some experiments yesterday and hooked up the drivers to a Stax amp. It did work well so I threw up a quick baffle design so we'll see how they play on their own.

Stax do claim that as the 009S stands for "special" so for us who didn't quite drink the cool-aid.

The cap is the only crossover component plus the natural response of the drivers. The signal goes through the cap and into the transformer with the other end grounded.

Now here is something that has been out for a while but I've never really looked into. Now these carry a wide variety of names and there is a plethora of models but they are all pretty much the same, hybrid units with an electret driver to cover the top end and a regular dynamic driver for the rest of the spectrum. I decided it was time to look into this so I bought two units, the Mitchell and Johnson GL2 and some Cyberdrive unit for 30$ which looked the same as the GL2 minus the wood. The GL2 arrived first so some pics: Here the baffle which shows how the drivers are setup Small transformer and 10uf/50V NP cap are all there is to this and the electret driver is clearly angled. Now with that thick plastic sheet on the back of the driver... yeah it won't play nice but then again the housing design here is crap so that's probably why they did this. Let's just call it extreme damping... I played around with them for a bit and tried to upgrade the cap from the ChangX shit they had in there. Minor improvements but these are pretty crappy headphones to begin with. Now a couple of days ago the Cyberdrive units arrived. I forgot to take a picture of them before I stripped them down but they look like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/CYBERDRIVE-Noise-Cancelling-Over-Ear-Professional-Hi-Fi-Deep-Bass-Wired-with-for/223201026938?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649 Now from the outside, these are clearly made by the same OEM as the GL2 even though the finish may be a bit...crap on some of the pieces. All of the chrome pieces look really cheap but they are identical to the same parts on the M&J set. Now for the nitty gritty... Yup, same baffle piece.... Same everything really except the cap is a different brand but that is to be expected as the production could be spaced a bit apart. Same PCB and the same transformer too... Yup... everything is the same so any claims that the M&J units are somehow better (as I've seen on HF) are just as baseless as most things over there. I have little doubt the entire product line has the same stuff in there. Since these are horrible headphones that I'm never going to use, let's do some digging: It's hard to see but the angle on the electret driver is some good 30°compared to the baffle and it partially obscured by the dynamic unit. I need to dig out the LCR meter to measure the drivers but I did some quick measurements on the transformer. It is clearly some off the shelf unit and the primary measured as almost no DC resistance (0.1ohm) and the secondary was 3.3K so high ratio indeed. I am going to do some more experiments with these though so I'll update in the future.

Might be but I for one just don't care about the 009's anymore. I would have swapped out my 009S for a new one but not the 009's....

I'm tempted but... even I'm not crazy enough to buy one of those.

Symmetry....

Who knows what the oldest 007's fetch these days. I for one wouldn't overpay for one as the newest units are the best 007's IMO. As for the KSE1500...well no. There is one pin which senses the headphones being there or not but I haven't looked into what's in there. The biasing is also not really compatible with the Normal bias standard...

Yup, doesn't make any sense. They still state that the 009 is the "correct" version and the 009S is just for crazy people who don't love the older version.

Yup, the product that makes zero sense. The market is flooded with used 009's and this is the standard version, not the new and improved one.

That would be a much closer comparison. It's been too long since I've had a L500 here to make any meaningful comparisons but they are pretty close from memory. The L700 is easily superior though...

Those pesky users doing completely normal things and the product blowing up. They should know better!!

Well...these arrived this week via the Gilmore express and to make it easier for anybody looking for info on them, a new thread it is. As Kevin documented before, the amplifier is a dinky little thing and a direct clone of the Stax SRM-001. The amp is pretty much useless though as it doesn't have any volume control and you can't use it from a portable device as it needs a full 2Vrms input signal to reach usable volume levels. Here is a picture of the entire system plus what Kevin Posted: Opamp feeding a quad of fet's and into the output transistors. All AC coupled... Yet again another clone of older Stax stuff but onto the headphones. The build quality from the outside is pretty mediocre, flimsy plastic everywhere and the creek and rattle like a 50$ set of headphones. The earpads are actually leather on the important parts so that is nice. The cable is rather nice though, a bit stiff and microphonic but a far cry better than what Hifiman and Mr. Speakers include with their sets. I was first a bit puzzled as to how the phones were put together as nothing came loose with minimal force. I stated by removing the back of the drivers which just popped off: That revealed this very minimal damping foam: Now that got me to the back of the drivers but nothing budged. Then I go medieval on it and the earpads do pull off... there is just a lot of adhesive holding them on. I did take the pics afterwards which is why the pads are there in the previous pics. The adhesive is nice though as the pads are securely fastened and can be put back as the adhesive doesn't fall apart. Now we are onto the baffle and this is after I removed the first dust cover stuck to the front there. I'm rather impressed with the build quality and the attention to detail. The drivers are on the small side but that does mean there is room to raise the baffle and get away with flat earpads, Audio-Techica style. Now the money shot, the back of the drivers. Now, when I opened it first up it didn't look like that as there is custom cut, black tape covering all the connections and around the perimeter of the drivers as well. Really impressed by the attention to detail here. Now I did open up the drivers but the angle was really awkward so I couldn't take any good pics. The stators are PCB though and this was a well thought out design. I first though King Sound might have a hand in this design but this is leagues ahead of their crappy drivers. Now some notes, there are only woven dust covers here, two on the front and one on the back (plus the foam) so dust will be an issue. Both drivers on this set have started to squeal though that is at Pro bias levels. More on that later... On the whole though I just don't get this package, the cable on the headphones is too short so are they supposed to be portable? Sure but no normal DAP can drive them properly so it kinda doesn't work... The sound with the stock amp is pretty bad too, no bass to speak of and it is all compressed to hell. I fed it with a preamp to help with the silly low input impedance but it doesn't really help. Now the specs for the headphones are close enough to Stax (well...they use a Stax amp after all) so it is adapter time. The headphones use a bog standard 5-pin DIN plug (nowhere near to be rated fort the voltages involved though) so a quick trip to the local parts store and 2$ later I had a socket in hand. 10 minutes later I had an adapter and off the Carbon CC...well these are quite good. The 50mm drivers will not produce any meaningful bass output compared to larger units but over all, yeah their sins are of omission rather than adding something that shouldn't be there. To me these remind me of Stax SR-X Mk3 Pro's in some ways and what I've been doing with those drivers converted to Pro bias in different shells. The imaging is nice and tight with a solid sound stage, nice midrange presence and a nice neutral sound signature. The bass doesn't go deep but it's tuneful and fun and the treble is nice and extended without ever being bright. The lack of bass depth and bloom does make them a tad thin sounding at times but that is rare. Feed them well and these are very fun headphones to listen to. Bottom line is that the amp is crap and there are issues but there is also a lot to like here. The Massdrop Koss ESP950 setup is probably a better deal at 500$ but these are fun to play with.

It's a bargain!!!!