DefQon

Lol Was going to ask Tyll something with the tizziness he heard but damn it slipped my mind. Ime the K812 ain't a bad headphone if you it only cost $700-850. The k1k for me has yet to be heard.

true this, anyway any accountable differences = old/new earpad's. The seal and comfort makes a huge difference with any headphone.

The differences are very little to none but I'm not sure on the batch issues now that you've brought it up but Sennheiser are one of the few with very linear consistency in the industry. I did own 3 HD800's all at once a long while ago (review is on the other site for the HD800 product page) and all 3 were pretty much identical sounding to each other, one early 4 digit S/N, another early 10xxx S/N that was purrins and a 13xxx one. Amp for testing at the time was a passive, active and balanced b22, modded M-Stage, a custom modded quad 6P14 tube amp in P-P mode I built with an active dummy load via speaker taps, cables were my own diy Crystal Piccolino balanced/se cables, source was various modded output stage and NOS modded spinners and sacd players and the 1st and 2nd gen Lampizator L2 and L3 DAC's. First test conducted was DBT twice with myself and 2 others. Then we removed the blinds and clothes and did the test actively trying to pick out differences with any psychoacoustic, placebo and cognitive bias in the equation.

Agreeing with the above, that thread on the new HD800's sounding different to the old serial based units is just plain bs, yes you are going get very slight variances in some parts of the measured graphs but regardless of how Sennheiser meticulously matches there drivers, 2 pairs of the same thing is never going to be 100% identical. Despite some of the QC issues Hifiman's had with there headphones they have been transparent with most of the updates and changes they've been pushing out but like Audeze they need to focus on getting there shit together with 1 solid revision with ironed out problems for each model, the whole multiple revision per model is not very healthy for resale value and model image. Final thing is Sony is another company for notoriously pushing out unstated changes to there headphones, the R10 is an golden example.

I get where eggil is coming from, before I was booted from the other site I remember a few then recent posts in the LCD2 Appreciation thread that the new batch LCD3's and LCD2's have the fazor tech inside. The way I view the whole revision LCD2/3 debacle is that Audeze have been been playing the experimenting game with new unstated and quietly slipped in changes here and there besides there official announcements on rev.2 and metal angled connectors for LCD2's and not a single word from them for the changes in veiled and non veiled LCD3's besides user feedback in forums. Now I've heard quite a handful of LCD2's up to one from early this year and the new ones do sound different in smallish amounts but noticeable and a couple of LCD3's. The differences are there from the same models regardless of what new shit they're pushing out. Then you get either plain clueless/misinformed or just delusional users who start non official crap like rev2.3, rev.3 or 3.5 it just makes the whole process more of a massive headache to follow or separate differences.

This ^ That's too cheap too pass up on.

I wonder if custom ESL drivers would suit being fitted into a gutted HE-300/400/500 housing.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/718576/stax-sr-007-mk1-very-rare-collectors-item-price-reduced-sold-pending-funds ? I thought the serial number was randomised.

Good thing I stick with my surplus of Russian and German NOS caps for high voltage applications. Or modern Epcos and CDE, Wimas and Siemen mkts are good enough for low voltage stuff. Pretty sure the Vishays are Taiwan or Malaysia. Anyway I'm doing a 2 box solution for my kgsshv with the trafos and psu board in a separate enclosure whats a good connector for the umbilical connection?

The problem with the Audeze is they are slightly lacking treble (or very much lacking treble in the older LCD2's).

Yeah I've followed that thread over on the other site, some crazy mods that Audiocats did with your SRM amp. The problem with the SRM-001 amp is that there is too much overpowering mid-bass. The laid back signature does remind me of the O2 mk1's but a far cry from actually sounding anywhere near it in terms of quality. I was going to order the 003 pro-bias cable for $90 here from a Stax distributor and try it out on one of my Stax amp's, not sure if it will sound that much better?

This would be very interesting. Tyll would need the desktop amp versions with the pro-bias plug rather than the SRM unit proprietary plug. Something I still want to try with my SR-002's. The original SRM-001 unit just doesn't really cut the cake.

Thanks eggil that's what my post was referring to when I first saw the pictures. Correct me if I'm wrong the onboard and offboard share the same parts and similar trace layout only difference is external mounting compared to the onboard heatsink mounting style.

Maybe a short or cold solder joint somewhere? I had something similar happen with another amp that was based on opamp outputs, powering it on was messed up sound and a hot LM317 which ended up being the problem (and a short opamp) because I soldered it the other way around.

So I assume this refers only to the 2 x 2SK170's/LS389 required on the board and the GR/BL variations with the other stuff doesn't matter? So if I'm correct the idss drain current values only matter with the jfets and this explains to the GR/BL variations (for different drain current rating?)

Thanks for that as I expected. I've started sourcing the fet parts i.e the old Japanese Toshiba parts and for some of the fets such as the 1486 and 2705 there are BL and GR versions, do the different part codes matter for the fets? I've learnt from my old SRM-1 amp that I repaired and asked for help here in the Stax thread that one of the 2SK160's were faulty and I replaced it with a GR versions which did not produce sound properly due to small idss range until I swapped out the 2sk part for a Y version with a higher idss rating and this fixed the problem so I'm making sure I make the right purchase on the fets on the first go. Also the BOM I think pororo is referring to is the one on Lil Knights' website.

Ok with some spare time on my hands I'm going to try best and complete my off board rev.04 (with rev.06 hv psu board). Going to be using 2sa1968 for the ccs (so 450v build) and from what I've gathered with the older rev 0.4 offboard is: The 2 50k resistors pads under the 2sa1486 is just one 50k crossed over to each side of the 50k pads, 2 of the silkscreened 50k's bridged across is a mistake? 2sa1968 will need the 2 175k resistors and the 2 500ohm resistors + led and 180ohms on top for 1968 whereas the IXYS fets will be using 250ohm instead, along 1k and 1.2k resistors instead of the 1968's 175k, 500ohm and led. Will most likely be using other possible EOL parts for the fets: 2sc4686a, 2sa1486, 2sc2705, sc2240, sa970 and c1815. I can choose to either use 1 metal case lsk389 or 2 2sk170's as seen on the silkscreen of the board? I can mix old value parts with modern day replacements with no problems (except the ccs). Rev 0.6 offboards have the local and global feedback pads, mine does not, what should I do? Any other things I should take note of? Also with the older "bigger" hv board 4x 680uf/450v psu caps I have some 800 and 1000uf 450v caps lying around, is ok to use the slightly higher rated psu caps with a bit more capacitance? Same for the 100uf caps, I've got 150uf with the same voltage rating. Haven't touched the PSU board for a very long time is there anything that I should take note of with the 0.6 version hv boards (possible mistakes etc)? Will have the PSU caps raised off the PCB about 2mm's as I read one owner had there traces shorted due to the close range.

Correct me if I'm wrong Dougs amps are limited runs only?

Impressive measurements indeed esp the bhse, haven't seen those figures before so something new.

Building amps is fun. Getting the case/enclosure work is not.

You know you want to, you have the bhse too.

Take the plunge and order one for the Aussie team man! We're both within the same state and would like to know how good this is before I take the plunge personally. Did the seller say he will swap the transformer out for a 230/240v one or just for the States 115v voltage? 245vac sounds about right with what I get at the mains in my house, fluctuation between 239-246vac, no problems with my SS amp's but I have a few tube amp's that run through an unregulated PS design so that means higher heater voltage and everything else in the amp. I do have some 240v-220v step down transformers but they take up space and limited to only 1 device. This deal is killing me.

Good question and this sort of thing has been happening for a very very long time, groups of shady individuals that steal IP from other genuine manufacturers and manufacture clones and imitations (poor and good) without consent. More controllable with a 100 million people or so but get's messy with 1 billion plus, hard to keep watch on everything.

Probably better so then the Cavalli stuff. If they ground that IEC outlet.