spritzer

That's not something I'd agree with, the 009S is a definite upgrade over the older 009 but it does further expose the inherent limitations of the design. The bass in the 009 sucks, there is no doubt about that so while Stax fixed the off tonality, they didn't fix the bass issues. I have a feeling that it is due to the basic driver design so they'd have to do something drastic to fix it but further experimentation is needed. What I find really fascinating are the discussions with pro users of Stax and what sets they are using. About 1/3 of my amps go to studios and other professional environments, professional musicians and the like and none of them use the 009's, either version. It's always the same line, they don't sound real or some variation of that. Same goes for the new Lx00 series, those not using 007's or 4070's have a stockpile of 207's.

Well that is always an option and one that has been levied against the press for decades. The awards have always somehow correlated with how much they spend on advertising and other ways to grease the wheels...funny how that works. Another way to look at this though is that anybody who claims to be "a reviewer" is a clueless fucktard just looking for recognition. They don't actually have any true insight into this, let alone experience to make meaningful comparisons, they can just wax lyrically about some utter BS that nobody understands. I do wonder how many electrostats those "reviewers" had experience with before awarding this best of 2018. If you don't have any frame of reference, it is easy to be seduced and not scratch the surface of how these actually sound.

So over the last couple of months I've had the Voce connected to my main system and tried to pad roll to get them to sound...well decent. The AT pads I talked about above did last for a while until the drawbacks were just too much. Fun experiment though and well worth it if you want to play with the phones a bit. Next up were some random leather earpads off ebay but none of them worked quite as I wanted. Most are clones of the "Fostex" type of pads which are after all just clones of the 007 pads... So I thought, why not keep it in house and try the Mr. Speakers Ether pads. Angled Ether Flow pads to be precise and they are a massive step up from the stock ones. Now the sound has some imaging, the bass isn't weird and the top is much smoother. Not perfect though and sometimes it struck me how much the headphones were altering the sound. So I bought some more pads and I'm now using the ZMF Universal pads (I think, ZMF threw them all in a single box with no labels as to which was which). Similar sound as above but they lack some focus and excitement over the Ether Flow pads. Still I might prefer these as the bass is now pretty clean and the treble is not annoying 99% of the time.

Nice to know that they have zero control over what the hell Stax are doing.

Yes, it's been there from the start with the 009's. It's only more apparent with the 009S due to the change in tonality.

Yup, buy Stax shit from Justin!!

Nichicon ES is excellent but they are larger I think...

Yup that should be the negative rail. As for Nippon Chemicon caps, they are some of the best so go for it.

Yup, you set the desired current and then it goes out of that range. Odds are though that most of the time...people never will.

I have a Marantz PM-64 here which is Class A up to 25W I think but no switch. I need to check...

6200€ for the T8000?? Shit...

AFAIK it is very real. No idea why the prices are so low but they might just want to sell more units and get higher returns over all that way.

Well if you shill for Woo then that is possibility...

Well isn't this glorious... Couple of chip amps driving the two blue transformers, real high quality stuff. One thing I do wonder about, how did the bias drop down to 200V? Here is a pic of the bias supply: This is clearly a voltage doubler driven off the small transformer on the other side. One quick issue, the ballast resistor is 1M so not a good idea to use this with Stax stuff.... Back on point, if the bias is +580V then there is no easy way to get 200V here unless you fit a voltage divider which could be a real problem with a supply like this.

Hahahahaha!!! Yup the shitty chip amp with questionable transformers is better than the highly advanced Shure amp. Yup...yup...

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.