spritzer

The amp is far from worthy of the headphones. It does cover up some of the HE90's shortcomings but that's not a good thing in my book but it's clear the Sennheiser should stick with headphone design. The Aristaeus is a large step up but I'm going to find out just how good it can be loaded with caps that aren't French made crap and some tweaks here and there. I just can't bring my self to buy one of the 12 Aristaeus amps I can have and hack it up. It's far to pretty. There were about 340 HE90's made in total with who knows how many spare drive units stored away. Still the investment is insane when compared to the thousands of SR-007's sold.

They were Audiostatic long throw electrostatic speakers without the wings. Great speakers that look too cool at least much cooler the the Martin-Logan crap

They are simply stunning in person. Its quite sad that something this beautiful and well built is this fragile... You should hear it with the Blue Hawaii... there is mad synergy there. It's clear that the KGSS isn't doing the SR-007 justice since you find them darker then the SR-Ω. They do actually sound pretty similar with the SR-007 a million miles better at everything... I think not using them is the worst you can do to them. That will cause much more stress on the drivers when they are indeed used. If anybody knows about a broken set please let me know as there ways I'd like to try to fix them permanently...

I haven't tried that though I might try some O1 pads as I have some extra ones. The SR-007 pads were pretty bad on the SR-X though...

They really are quite good, especially the Gold versions or N (NB for the black one) as Stax called them. They are more euphonic then the other phones but still manage to convey the essence of each performance. Only if the comfort was up to the Lambda level...

I only open mine if there is a lot of dust on the back grill. You can get new earpads from Audiocubes if yours are a bit worn.

Stax went the same way as Quad because they lost money on some of the production lines while others produced most of the revenue. That is a very stupid way to run a business. There is nothing original about the Orpheus setup except the highly diffused earpieces. Every He90 owner needs to swap the L & R inputs from time to time to see how odd these things really are...

Those that haven't payed 70-100% in import taxes shouldn't really be commenting on this. Am I going to pay 70% on my new 8k$ CDP? Not a chance in hell but it looks like things are going to change here soon. The sad part is he can price his amps this high because of the crazy Stax prices in Europe but there is no reason why they should be so expensive. The parts quality and build quality in the Rudistor amps is much worse then the penny pinched Stax amps and their only saving grace is a slightly better tube compliment... To open up the SR-5 you remove the pads by pulling them off (they could be held in place by two pieces of adhesive) but should come off easily. There are 3 screws underneath and once they are gone the housing splits in two. I see no reason to open them up as unless you want to clean them properly and then stay far away from the drivers...

Did you try all of the compatibility modes?

The Egmont is pretty simple with a floating output stage with no ground reference so it should sound better then a Stax amp but the sound will change a great deal with the tubes as they age and change. Also paying 1400euro for something like that is just nuts. I watched the thread about your Egmont adventures with excitement but like so many before, it disappeared. That's what I would do as well.... .... .... it's also wise to have a record of payment for the declared amount as so two Paypal transactions would be wise... You need a push pull amp and you tap into the signal at the primary of the output transformer so you need to bypass it (or turn it off) and then put a capacitor on each phase and even a resistor bridge to create a 0v point between the + and - outputs. It would also be wise to put a resistor in series with each cap to limit ultimate current.

Deus EX was one of the best games ever made IMO. I really need to play it again while I wait for no.3...

Thanks for clarifying that. I say they are badly designed as the electrostatic amps clipped and behaved in bad manner, something even the HEV70 isn't guilty off...

Even though you had good results from dealing with McAlister you are the minority. Badly designed and built amps that are really still in the prototype form and not ready for a public release. He could get better though while the other two are just getting worse...

It's a bit harder doe to their dipole nature but if non accurate measurements are find just measure between the drivers. If you want to be hardcore buy a Head acoustic headphone measurement dummy head...

The 10mOhm is simply the size of the bleeder resistor for Sennheiser headphones. Not recommended for Stax usage as they work best with 4-5mohms

Hmmmm let me think... .... insane prices for what you get, really bad build quality, horrible circuits that Rudi barely understands himself but are so simple a child could build them. For 10k? I'd expect something more then a 12ax7 tied to EL34's. Heck I'd just buy a Dynaco 70 and put in a new input stage and have a similar amp... for 500$... Talk to me again when you reach 30 phones and have to find a way to store them all...

You can even find RK50's on ebay of all places....

You'll buy them some day, thats all that matters. It's so nice to know what speaker you are going to buy and keep for the next 30 years, not like those dynamic idiots that drift from one coffin to the next.

Rudistor is crap because he is a crap designer and the build quality is beyond horrible. There are many broken Rudistors out there but you can of course not talk about that on HF. Add that to the pretty bad parts quality and high costs and they have nothing going for them. File with McAlister and Ray under "buy if you have no sense or don't know any better".

You should be fine with a 400v voltage swing. That has nothing to do with the bias.

It is mostly SS so no wonder it needs to warm up. The Blue Hawaii is pretty crummy for the first 3 hours but then begins to shine. It's all about the voltage so it's really the gain that is important. The transformers are so horribly undersized that they don't need all that much current.

The Stax amps aren't really taxing so it could be well past 10000 hours. I think I'm close to that on one of my sets and they still sound great.

The tubes are so cheap that I can't be bothered to shut it off. I guess I'll be burning through a lot of tubes once I get my tubed CDP...

I would stick with the 006t and upgrade further to something like a KGSS, KGST or WOO GES. I do prefer the T1 and it's really good when it's been powered on for about 3 days and more. The SRD-7 need so little current that they will be fine with less than a watt but the amp should have more headroom so 3-5w is sufficient. I'll be getting a Dynahi soon and I'll outfit it with Stax transformers just for kicks...

THe RK50 is in a league of its own. It's the standard pot in the Kondo preamps and the upgrade is a huge Shalco switch with hand made silver resistors. Costs something like 3k$...