spritzer

I bought a bunch of the original Musical Fidelity units dirt cheap and the short answer is that they do a lot more harm then good or rather they only harm the signal. The build quality is the classic MF, cheap and nasty, so there is no way it can improve the quality of the signal. It's been many years since i got rid of the last one but I do remember is dulled the system down and made the midrange more prominent while rounding off the rest. Bass was boomy and I lost a lot of treble. I rank it with crap like Virtual Dynamics cables and other such tone controls for deaf people who should just have bought B&O in the first place. DC is right that is can provide impedance matching but that's really why you have a preamp...

Congrats!! It's tough to do better at that price.

If the set is in great condition then that is a very fair price.

Well you would need some pleather for the earpads but I get your point...

I waited 4 years for mine so I fully understand where you come from. The fact that I got mine at a really good price only made the waiting all that better...

800-1000$ is the norm but you can find higher and lower as usual.

Looks like 1/3 of my collection but truth be told I'm glad to be selling off parts of it. All you need is the Sr-Omega and SR-007 and the rest is just for show... I really should make some SR-X Pro for him.

The stand is finally here and it looks great. Thanks Michael!

After you've spent some time with a 4070 you see bass in a very different light. How deep, textured and tuneful it can be without excessive bloom is a revelation. They are IMO a bit sterile for regular music listening but as a monitoring tool there is nothing that can compete.

It must be a connection issue. Have you tried to increase the buffer?

Elephas has the open woodied Lambda Pro and I did own the closed back version of it but it got stuck in customs and returned to Larry. I'm really glad though since they must sound like drap all closed up like that...

I have one already... it the 4070... All kidding aside it is something I'd like to have done

I do have a new SR-404 that I never use but they will be sold soon and there is no sense to own both the 404 and SR-SC1.

Electrets FTW!!!!!

The 313 is a pretty bad amp and doesn't do any of the Lambdas justice. Try the 404 with a tube amp and are better but I do prefer the Signature to them. The 4070 is in no way better then the SR-007 but you simply have to hear it. They make the all other phones sound colored as Stax meant it when they put those monitor badges on the earcups.

The older Lambdas don't have drivers anywhere near as good as the new ones do so the housing is what is bad. Just listen to the 4070 as it is the exact same headphone in a different housing.

They are much more musical (effortless) and transparent (thus ruthlessly revealing) then dynamics though the bass is much drier and mot with much slam unless you use an amp from team boat anchor. Despite that they can (the good ones that is) show much more bass information then any dynamic while having plenty of bass bloom. What you really must get used to is the SR-007 ripping your system a new one and exposing every flaw and taunting you to fix them. They are also cheaper then dynamics to get into as a 2050 system costs about 500$ and that is about the same as a HD650 with some crappy cable and no amp. That being said not all 'stats fall under this "rule" so phones like the He90 sound like a dynamic with all the bass problems they have and the electrets were often so badly made that they sounded like a bad dynamic.

Yup they are recabled with the old Stax PC-OCC cable used on the Lambda Signature and Sigma Pro. There was some channel imbalance but it seems to have subsided but using the ESP950 with a Stax Pro bias supply is just nuts. They simply sound like crap compared to the E/90 bias supply while being driven by a Stax amp. No more bloated bass and a generally recessed sound signature. I also got some old electrets made by Phillips, Phillips N6325 and Aristona EK400, which have the transformers in a small hub on the cable so they use a normal headphone connector (TRS and DIN). This is the same headphone at the core but the Aristona has a channel imbalance while the Philips has the lovely 5-pin DIN plug and I have no adapter.

Time for a bump. I got a care package from Switzerland today and it contained two headphones I've been waiting for, Koss ESP950 (recabled by APS) and Aurex HR-1000, a vintage Toshiba with very unique electret drivers. I've left the Koss to charge overnight so the Aurex gets center stage. It was athe TOTL model in a very extensive range of headphones that are mostly forgotten now. It comes with a solid aluminum block that houses the transformers while the phones them selfs are very lightweight and quite comfortable despite being supra aurals. The sound is much like the Stax SR-X line, very midrange centric, but the bass is loose, flabby and rolled off while the treble is a bit rolled off as well. They can't reach the detail level of the little Stax. They are also a bit claustrophobic but the backwave is highly damped so I might need to open them up and change the stuffing. The midrange is stunning though and certainly on par with the Fostex T-50 and Stax SR-X. Here you can see some pics of them as I'll have to wait until tomorrow to snap some. You can also see the price so at 35kYen they were around the same price as a SR-Lambda so high-end indeed.

I didn't compare them directly but I did compare them against a known reference and I preferred the 717. I found the 727 to be too warm and slow for my liking.

Yeah the SR-001/3 cable is much too small in diameter. A nice 18AWG Jena Labs is a necessary upgrade, it's so cool looking and easy to manage.

He could make a cable for the SR-Omega though...

It should be a linear process but there are many other factors then burn in that can affect the sound. If the AC line drops by a few volts the sound completely changes and also if some other gear is contaminating the AC. It is a bit sad to think about it when I started this hobby burn in and cables were accepted but still debated but now we have this uber acceptance of them when they are even though to cure cancer and transform your crappy ipod into a high end source. Then we have some idiots that think burn in can make the components worse...

I dunno. I should just have said I paid 2$ for it and it would be here now. In their eyes everybody is a criminal and getting something without paying for it is something that doesn't happen... except on Christmas when I never have to pay anything.

I wouldn't dare to say that the new Single Power, tube powered cable, won't beat everything under the sun. I don't know how we could do without it. We also all know that the ES-2 is the best amp ever made and it is so pretty too...