spritzer

That's one of the reasons why I take those measurements with a grain of salt, you need to trip the drivers up before they show their true colors. I remember when Tyll did his first electrostatic amp comparison and asked me for advise as there just wasn't a lot of difference to him. I simply told him to turn up the volume with more demanding material and that sorts the out right quick. It's not that the differences wouldn't be there lower down but they are harder to discern.

Seriously though I'd be interested if this wasn't a complete dead end. Nothing I can use with it, no other amps or headphones so it is just this. Ditto for the Senn HE-1 though I did ask for an empty shell with just the drivers but I got a solid no!!!

I'll see if I can do that but I'm pretty busy these days.

Indeed, they are just silly in every way. I also love how this was touted as some cheap solution but is a mediocre 5k$ package which nobody buys. Back in the day the market was flooded with cheap electrets and doing something like that now with a simple amp would be far cheaper.

I need to try those but single ended electrostatics will never sound good...

Time for some more musings on the 009S... After a week in NYC I got back to new EP-007's earpads and they are on the phones now. Not the improvement I was looking for to be honest and now the bass issues bother me even more. It's one of those things, when you notice the lack of impact it starts to eat at you. You hear it in every offending track and it really detracts from the listening experience. This is not a seal issue as they are clearly airtight. Over all though, the 009S is an improvement over the 009 but this one part just bothers me a lot.... Interesting to compare the earpads of the 009 to the 009S. The former are about 8mm less tall in the front and much softer. The back is the same height but again, the actual volume of the earpads is clearly different due to how much they compress. Last mod I'm going to try are the 009 earpads on the 009S before they are put away into the collection.

Thanks for that guys and I hope to visit Thailand soon. My GF's uncle lives there half of the year so it is on the todo list.

It was awesome meeting you all.

Thanks for all the well wishes. The heat/humidity in NYC was just too much for me but it was great over the weekend. I'm glad to be back though, very Icelandic welcome with no sun, windy and 9°C... yay summer!!

Hard to compare them directly as we have not yet built the adapter to drive them off normal bias outputs but the KSE1500 is just a tad bright for me. I fixed it with the EQ with a slight dip at 6khz... As for the sound, the KSE1500 is pretty good, much more in line with the neutral tonality of the 007's over the 009's.

Same build quality at 10 times the price...."it sounds better!!!!" ?

Indeed... ?

Ok... To think this was 5 years ago is nuts.

...more like replacement...

The new earpads are much stiffer.

Liquid sound is desirable...

Makes sense with those earpads...

So they have a vented version on top of this? This is beyond all the stupid shit we see with dynamics.

I like that a lot. Interesting heat sink for the output devices.

That is quite shocking level of technical ignorance...

What the actual fuck is up with that??

Indeed, a used set of 007's can be had for 1300$ or so.

JH is out...all hail the KSE1500.

Nahh, I just mostly have poor impulse control. One is still sitting in Japan so it will either be sold at some point or just kept in the box. Yup I did that but it is still annoying.

Ok for the record...changing pads on the 009's is a epic fucking pain. Even the SR-Omega is easier and that says a lot... So not wanting to mess with the 009S just yet I took my vengeance out on the 009's instead. Now I've always disliked the stock 009 earpads, they are too soft and thus too shallow. I propped mine up with some foam inside the pads which helps but not by much. So off the pads went and in their place some EP-007's. They have to be customized which makes them unusable for 007 use so beware of that. I also improved the seal with blu-tack as Stax did a piss poor job of that. The end result is interesting, some of 009's issues are alleviated. They are still bright but not as forward sounding as they used to be. The seal is also much improved and so is the bass. They also sound more focused and "real". I need to plug them into a Carbon as I doing the testing on a KGSS Klassik which is a bit warmer but I don't hate my 009's now... I should have done this years ago.