spritzer

No, the opa is an IC, not the transistors Kevin referred to.

Yes, they have been closed down last I heard.

The links above are the official Stax store so they have them in stock.

So they managed to find a new box of these or something? The SR-80 pads were out of stock for years and years...

Fitting that's a cRaptor...

They do manage large savings across the board by basically using the same chassis design for almost 40 years with minimal changes but they also really lag behind in modernizing how this stuff is built. Now full SMD is tricky at these voltage levels but system integration and having less wiring will make a real difference to the assembly time for each unit. As for the circuits, they could build a variation of the Carbon but they have a real reluctance to use certain parts or for the amps to weigh too much. Both would apply to the Carbon as it needs large heatsinks to function properly. Now you could scale back the power but sort of defeats the point of all of this...

Yup, that is a real issue if we were to make adapters for the Shure to drive other designs but I still have to try the phones on some normal bias stuff.

I seem to remember there being a lip on these but I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I've taken apart SR-80's... No but it's not a gem either, it uses HV opamps and some really nasty parts as well. This compared to the Shure KSE1500 amp which is really, really nice.

Sure looks like it and let's just bask in the glory of the M-03...

It looks really flimsy to me and now that Massdrop is selling the ESP950, it is a much cheaper alternative. I also wonder if that thing is really an amp or just a passive adapter. Easy enough to build tiny transformers with high ratio so you can use it with normal headphone amps but without pretty much any pictures...hard to tell.

It is a very different animal to design something with whatever parts we want or making something in the hundreds or thousands with a reliable supply of parts. That being said, Stax does do a lot of stupid shit and they seem to be getting worse. Bad decisions galore and with the new stuff made in China, assembly has gone down the drain.

Fucking hell... I'll buy one. How bad can it be...famous last words.. Funny how they can do a proper 6 core flat ribbon cable at this price but Hifiman can't do it on a 50k$ product...

At its core, yes. They are running at much lower power with those tiny TO220 heatsinks and to be honest...pretty bad output transistors. KSC5502's with Cob of 20pf. Long gone are the days of 2.2pf... Stax also just fucks with the circuits for some reason. I once did a board for the 323S and just tweaked the circuit a little bit but with massive changes to the better.

The circuitry is similar (as with the D-50) but Stax always fucks with it in some way. The 717 was too warm for its own good and the 353X is a bit too bright for me. Easy to fix but outside the scope for most people.

For me the issue is paying so much for 009's. I might get one and offload some of my other sets or just have a 009 anodized black...

Nope, normal ones.

New Stax product for the 80th anniversary.... a black SR-009... https://stax.co.jp/products/sr-009bk/

That's a hardcore project. I'm helping a friend now removing all the tiles off the floor, redo most of the internal walls, going through all the electrical stuff and some more which intense enough...

Nothing is cheap in Iceland...nothing at all. It is one of those artificial materials, Dekton or something like that. Most of the cost is installation and cutting it all. I've been baking professionally since I was a child so not an interest, more what I was born into. I can't do it anymore though due to my bum knee so I've been focusing on other things more recently.

It's mostly me pushing for this as it is the second to last piece of the house renovation. It's silly expensive though... the stone countertops are in the 10k$ range...

All of the Stax speakers are insensitive (the F-81 was something like 73db) so you need a lot of voltage swing to drive them. I've never used those but I do have the kit here which uses the same drivers. Nope...I'm out. I haven't even gotten the Voce yet as I don't want to waste more money on something mediocre. Plus I'm spending wayyyyyyyyyy tooo much on having a new custom kitchen built.

Very interesting indeed. I wonder how this relates to other parts of the world who might use different methods.

With only a handful of exceptions (koss ESP, 6,7,9 and 10 mainly) the bias pins are tied together at the back of the amplifier socket so that wouldn't matter. I might have the ET1000 pinout somewhere but it's been years since I had one here. I'll have a look...

We should soooo sue them for using that name.

The issue with the ESP950 though is the damping. The design is very much still stuck in the 80's so all the damping has to be removed for them to sound the way they should.