catscratch

From the man who brought us the world's fastest trashcan.

Well those are technically mating calls, so I'm going to have to go with yes.

Goats are hilarious though NGL

FWIW mine's been working just fine with daily use. But the question is, are the issues limited to the initial batch or are they still happening with new ones. I haven't heard too many new reports of it lately but all I've got to go on is stuff from the internet, I'm not in touch with vendors or anything. I hope they got this shit sorted out as I'd quite like to recommend these.

$6000? Please. All the cool kids are asking $8-9k for their new flagships. What, are they trying to tell us their headphones aren't as good as the new Hifimans or Raals? Also, they should make the cables a subscription-based service and sell the bass separately as pre-order DLC.

Mine's been working fine since I discharged it. Fingers crossed. They definitely screwed up the launch and I hope they're aware of the issues and can fix them. This would be a great headphone at a good price and a real disruptor in the market... if only I could safely recommend it.

Mine actually developed a channel imbalance too. The right channel started getting weak. I discharged it and let it sit for two weeks, and now listening to it for the first time since then the imbalance seems to have gone away. But I've been reading quite a few reports of channel balance issues in these things. Seems like Stax did botch the launch and I hope mine holds out, cause I actually like the sound of this thing a lot. It does need a bit of eq to tame 1-2khz and the bass is definitely seal dependent but otherwise this little thing punches way above its pricepoint in sound quality... when it works.

Ok yeah the X1 doesn't suck. Some very early impressions: Small, lightweight, comfy. The fit is somewhere between supra-aural and circum-aural. The build is minimalistic but seems fine. The only thing I'm concerned with is dust and stuff accumulating on the back of the driver. When you live with a german shepherd dog hair gets in absolutely everywhere. I was wondering why my 650s crackled until I pulled a wad of dog hair out of the driver. How it got in there past all the foam, who even knows. I'm using them with a stock 007t atm. It's a bit light on power but not too bad. Still you can hear that it could use some more. The sound is pretty monitor-like. A bit light on the bottom end but not too thin. The mids are surprisingly realistic. The treble is also pretty smooth. I think the 1-2khz region is a bit pushed and 3-5 is a bit recessed, but not so badly that stuff sounds weird. You get used to the sound signature quickly and then it just sounds normal. Resolution is fine for what it is, but staging is a bit small. These are a far cry from the alien weirdness that is the L700 pre-EQ and even with my treble allergic ears I can listen to these with no EQ just fine. But they could use a bit of tuning up. I'd want them a bit fuller and 1-2khz slightly toned down. Seems pretty solid so far, NGL. I was beginning to think Stax forgot how to make something that sounds relatively normal, but here we are.

As the Dude said, that's a bummer, man, but I hope it's not the end and they update it with something. All it really needs is a proper swivel/articulation mechanism for the earcups and a better earpad mounting mechanism, the rest can stay what it is. A bit more linearity in tuning would be good too - the current one sounds a bit honky and nasal in the mids to me with resonances at 950hz and 1.5khz, and is a bit bright past 10k too, but the driver performs and the resolution is there. I'm sure with a light touch and a few smart tweaks they could turn it into something contemporary and even better, but on the other hand, this is Stax.

I dunno, I enjoyed reading it. His enthusiasm is evident, and as much as I'd love to be a cranky fun-hating git it's nice to see someone having fun with the hobby for once. Still, pontificating at length about minute perceptual nuances is thoroughly pointless given how completely subjective and unreliable all that stuff is, and I've learned to not do it.

Looking forward to your teardown. Also is it just me or do the drivers look awfully exposed behind that rather open grille?

Interdasting. But this will have quite a lot to do. By which I mean the tuning needs to not suck, the headband needs to not crack, and the drivers need to not be 10db apart after 3 weeks. You know, the usual. I sincerely hope that Stax can get themselves out of the rut and put out some bangers, for obvious reasons. Regarding modern Lambdas being not good... well yes and no. Their flaws are fixable and with some EQ and mods they're very good sounding IMO. The question is, why do we need to do the work to extract good sound from them rather than Stax doing it right the first time.

You mean to tell me nobody is buying plastic fantastic Lambdas with no deep bass, 5db of midrange shout, and the build quality of a ksc-75 at $1700? Wow, I never would have guessed. But according to HF somebody contacted Stax and they had this to say: So I guess it's not entirely DC'd? It would definitely be a dumb move, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't do it.

Finally AI is put to proper use Edit: never mind, this got taken down. It was a series of videos about Warhammer 40k lore narrated by an AI of David Attenborough, and it was amazing. Sadly, the BBC hates humor, happiness, and kittens.

Being a Very Stable Genius I went ahead and spilled mead on my 007t. It was off at the time and hasn't been powered on for a few months. I removed the top and bottom panels and cleaned off the PCB with some isopropyl alcohol. Most of the stuff didn't get through but there were a few stains. Now I'm letting it dry... is it safe to power up once it dries out or is there anything else I need to watch out for?

I'm betting the logic was "well covid is a thing, people are wearing masks, and they're wearing headphones, if masks are here to stay why not combine them" and they did. Except rona panic has weaned and now it looks ridiculous. But maybe in some hyper-polluted cities this might find a buyer or two. Though maybe not at full price.

Yeah, the YH5000, a headphone that measures like this: It's ok, for that much money, they can keep it.

Yeah any headphone giant you plug in is gonna get killed.

Given what I've heard of Topping's reliability, throwing high voltage into the mix doesn't sound like a great idea TBH.

Oh hey, this thread. This is your bi-yearly reminder that this game exists and you should play it.

There's nothing wrong with being a dissenting voice, just don't be a jerk about it. Also, it's important to realize that people can look at the same exact set of inputs as you do and come to a completely different conclusion. And there's nothing wrong with it either. Though they may not necessarily be right. I kinda have a love/hate relationship with the new 007, though it's more love and less hate. There are some things it does wrong, but mostly it does things right, and it's just a matter of how much the wrongs bother me and how well you can deal with them. The FR is a bit of a mess, too much upper treble and a pair of strong resonances in the midrange screw up midrange tone and treble tembre, and of course you have the usual 007 shenanigans, insanely hard to drive, wonky fit, too small headband, etc etc. So in my case I have to mod it to fit, EQ it, and do all sorts of stuff to it to make it sound like I want it to. At the end of the day though, it sounds pretty special, it's more natural sounding than anything else that has this level of detail, and it's way more resolving than anything that also sounds this natural. Is there stuff that's more natural or more detailed? Sure, but nothing has this combination of both. But I also haven't heard everything. The old 007 didn't require you to jump through as many hoops, and did all of this out of the box with no need for tweaking. It's a massive shame that it's out of production but what can you do. The question arises then: is it ok for a $2k headphone that needs many thousands in energizer fuel to require all of this? Well yes and no. Some of us are gonna do it anyway, and for us this will reach a higher peak level of sound quality than we can get elsewhere. So there clearly is a niche for it. But for others there may be better options. Anyway it's fine to like what you like, and it's fine to disagree, just don't be a dick to longstanding members cause we have itchy shovel fingers.

Here's a long but VERY eye-opening twitter thread of what's going on that details one Russian paratrooper's account of his experiences. TL;DR the levels of corruption and incompetence in the Russian armed forces is simply staggering and defies any comprehension to people who are used to relative competence in western countries. And if you're wondering "how can Russia be losing with so much modern equipment, or have all of these capabilities that they don't use" etc etc... read this. Now take a look at the 600 foot yachts Russian oligarchs sail around on and ask yourself where that money came from, and then thank your lucky fucking stars that you live here and not there. I asked a Russian/Ukrainian friend what his take on all of this was, and he simply said "you know how some countries have a mafia? Now imagine if the mafia had a country." P.S. If you don't have a twitter account, just replace "twitter.com" with "nitter.net" in the url. Nitter is a free open source front end for twitter and while it's buggy, at least it won't require you to sign up or collect your data without asking.

Missed the thread. Happy birthday, and here's to many more decades of waking and baking and high voltage experimentation!

Dog hearing range is 40hz to 60khz, which means that electrostatic headphones are obviously the way to go. Doing it wrong imo.

I firmly believe that if Putin authorizes the use of nukes, two things will happen: 1) He'll be dead within 15 minutes. 2) The order won't be carried out. The order to use nukes has been given in the USSR several times, by mistake. It was never carried out each time. There are - relatively - unknown Soviet military men to which we owe our lives. I don't see how this will be any different. They're not suicidal. The bigger worry is that, now that the Russians seem to be getting their shit together slightly, Ukraine will keep taking heavy casualties and eventually will be ground down into submission. Russia doesn't have forever to do this - they're also running out of manpower, taking heavy casualties and equipment losses, and the sanctions are about to paralyze many key industries. However Ukraine's early good fortunes seem to be turning for the worse. For now.