ChiUnuion-Fi

[MaloS]

I certainly hope so. I'm not expecting miracles but it should be clear step in the right direction with the updated output stage. I will also save a bundle as there is no need for volume pots on any of my new amps.

We could just take a bunch of thin wires and run them around separate parts of the room to the headphone...

[neilvg]

Not sure if this is due to us or the board or whatever, but Fang just emailed me informing me:

"Just want to let you know that since we dont want to be recognized as making fake stuff, we will change the looking of the headphone. The sound signature will be the same. As soon as we have some pics we will email you."

So not sure if this will be a big delay or not - but its fuel for more thought... and I obviously wonder if this will have an effect over the sound. Signature is one thing...

Neil

[postjack]

I REALLY WANT THESE STATIC PONIES

[Nanoha]

I REALLY WANT THESE STATIC PONIES

[spritzer]

Not sure if this is due to us or the board or whatever, but Fang just emailed me informing me:

"Just want to let you know that since we dont want to be recognized as making fake stuff, we will change the looking of the headphone. The sound signature will be the same. As soon as we have some pics we will email you."

So not sure if this will be a big delay or not - but its fuel for more thought... and I obviously wonder if this will have an effect over the sound. Signature is one thing...

Neil

I'm fairly certain their are reading the tread but all progress is good. They do look a lot like the HE90, more then any other headphone I've ever seen, but it's fine to learn from what others have done. There are no patents on the HE90 as Sennheiser did nothing new though patents are awarded for all kinds of silly things now that aren't even original.

I would hope that they do something about the large rear grill making it either slightly concave like on the HE90 or damping it like Stax did on the SR-Ω. Loud levels with lots of bass information could make it store energy and that is a big no,no in driver design.

[philodox]

There's nothing illegal about reverse-engineering, so I'm not clear on why somebody would want to cover his ass if that is true. If there is a valid patent, which I doubt, that might be a different story, but normal copying of products available to the public is not a violation of law.

I wasn't really meaning 'cover your ass' in a legal sense [though I think Sennheiser would try to respond if someone made a HE90 clone] but in how their headphone is perceived.

[catscratch]

Wow, interesting info on the Orpheus clone, though we really should stop calling it that

Well, I have been tempted into pre-production headphones before, and that didn't turn out so great. So, I will wait until this is well and settled before picking up a pair. However, I will probably end up picking up a pair anyway. $1500 for a good-sounding electrostatic with a tube amp (especially if it's not a bad tube amp) is pretty damn good, especially if it's like the HE90 in signature (which is still my favorite sounding headphone by a mile).

[darkless]

If the final model sounds decent with a 400v bias, I might be tempted to pick one up... eventually... next year... after my wedding.

[spritzer]

If the final model sounds decent with a 400v bias, I might be tempted to pick one up... eventually... next year... after my wedding.

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

[bhd812]

I wasn't really meaning 'cover your ass' in a legal sense [though I think Sennheiser would try to respond if someone made a HE90 clone] but in how their headphone is perceived.

If they cared so much about the HE90 or one of their electros being cloned then they should produce what the market demands and sell them (at least something of a Electro). Though i would not want to Fuck with the legal Team working for Sennheiser in anyway neither, not that they would or could but they are pretty big to have a fierce lawyer squad..

i think its good to be called the he90 clone, it gets peoples attention and that's some good advertising for free.

[darkless]

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

Yay, brainfart. I was thinking about the 10 MOhm bias and somehow the word bias slipped in instead of voltage swing. Thanks for spotting it.

[spritzer]

Yay, brainfart. I was thinking about the 10 MOhm bias and somehow the word bias slipped in instead of voltage swing. Thanks for spotting it.

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

[immtbiker]

If they cared so much about the HE90 or one of their electros being cloned then they should produce what the market demands and sell them...

They admittedly lost a bundle making those amps and headphones, like Sony did with their Qualia line. They can sell a thousands of 580-650's and make money. A $5 earbud that they sell for $79.00 is a better business practice.

When everyone was calling Justin's electrostat amp an Orpheus clone (insides not looks-wise) did Sennheiser contact him about legal ramifications?

[kevin gilmore]

stax already went out of business once due to stupidity.

Sennheiser is a very large company and has been swallowing up

other companies in a bid to own much of the professional world.

Neumann and B&K. Even so, with the current management, they are

not likely to produce anything again when they know they can't make

a profit at it.

The he90 amp design comes from the late 1950's and was never patented

and was not sennheiser's to begin with.

[spritzer]

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...

[immtbiker]

The he90 amp design comes from the late 1950's and was never patented

and was not sennheiser's to begin with.

Interesting. So the took a proven design and put it into a pretty box with lots of shiny stuff, and made it worthy of the HE-90's.

What I don't understand is, if the design did not use $$$ from Senn's R&D department and the headphones are pretty good in the detail department, but there isn't really anything too expensive in the build materials, then why would it be a losing venture at $15K in '95 for the set? \

[kevin gilmore]

They did not loose money on the amplifier. Although the R&D to do that stupid

multi output switcher in a box that size was not trivial either. Fact is the electronic

parts inside the he90 including the circuit boards were of very low quality.

The onboard bitstream dac was even worse.

Justin's amp sounds better, is quieter and better built than the original.

I own one, i should know.

They ate it bigtime on the headphones. Special machinery to make the ultra thin

glass stators. More special machinery to etch the holes in the glass. Even more

machinery including very large vacuum chambers to put the conductive film on the

stators. For a world wide total of less than 100 units. 20 to 30 of which never left

the factory.

These days for a company like Sharp or Samsung who is making the same kind of stuff

for lcd panels this would be a slam dunk. On the otherhand Sharp just spent 5 billion

on a new plant in mexico to make and coat the glass so the setup costs are not cheap.

[immtbiker]

I got to spend some time with Justin's stat amp at the Florida meet. It was Guss2's setup and it included a Sony SCD-1 (which can be outdone by a lot of CDP's) some Nordost Valkyrie IC's and his HE-90, and it was one of the best sounding setups I've ever heard. Babylon Sisters never sounded so good!

I told Justin I want one, but the $$$ is a little out of my league unless I sell something, right now.

[bhjazz]

Looks like it was a fantastic meet. Fundraising! Impressive. I gotta get something going here in Seattle so we can get outta the libraries!

Congrats, y'all!

[purk]

They did not loose money on the amplifier. Although the R&D to do that stupid

multi output switcher in a box that size was not trivial either. Fact is the electronic

parts inside the he90 including the circuit boards were of very low quality.

The onboard bitstream dac was even worse.

KG,

I think the outboard DAC isn't that bad if you feed the digital signal from a very good transport. I was getting a bad result when I used the digital signal from my computer, however, once I used my modified Sony SCD-777ES as a transport feeding the signal into the HEV90's DAC, the sound quality was almost as good as the sound from RCA outputs form my Sony. My Sony SCD-777ES had about 3K modifications from R. Kern and another 3.5K from modwright. I recently upgraded the outboard SS PSU with the tube recified one. I consider the sound quality of my mod 777ES to be much better than the G08.

[spritzer]

Interesting. So the took a proven design and put it into a pretty box with lots of shiny stuff, and made it worthy of the HE-90's.

What I don't understand is, if the design did not use $$$ from Senn's R&D department and the headphones are pretty good in the detail department, but there isn't really anything too expensive in the build materials, then why would it be a losing venture at $15K in '95 for the set? \

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.

They did not loose money on the amplifier. Although the R&D to do that stupid

multi output switcher in a box that size was not trivial either. Fact is the electronic

parts inside the he90 including the circuit boards were of very low quality.

The onboard bitstream dac was even worse.

Justin's amp sounds better, is quieter and better built than the original.

I own one, i should know.

They ate it bigtime on the headphones. Special machinery to make the ultra thin

glass stators. More special machinery to etch the holes in the glass. Even more

machinery including very large vacuum chambers to put the conductive film on the

stators. For a world wide total of less than 100 units. 20 to 30 of which never left

the factory.

These days for a company like Sharp or Samsung who is making the same kind of stuff

for lcd panels this would be a slam dunk. On the otherhand Sharp just spent 5 billion

on a new plant in mexico to make and coat the glass so the setup costs are not cheap.

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.

[Jon L]

..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 assume you're talking about SCR/Solen caps, but which caps do you prefer? I'm looking for some coupling caps myself, but heck are they expensive (V Cap TFT, Sonicap Platinum, Relcap TFT, SCR TFT, Mundorf silver/oil, Audio Note PIO, etc)!

[spritzer]

I assume you're talking about SCR/Solen caps, but which caps do you prefer? I'm looking for some coupling caps myself, but heck are they expensive (V Cap TFT, Sonicap Platinum, Relcap TFT, SCR TFT, Mundorf silver/oil, Audio Note PIO, etc)!

Well some hand made Kondo silvers would be nice but they'll have to wait until I get a M7 or M77 for my speaker rig. On the budget end the Vishay MKP's are tough to to beat and a much better then most more expensive film caps. You can also try out some of the vintage Soviet PIO caps on ebay but they vary in quality. Going up the ranks the Mundorf Silver/Oils would be my next step. They are expensive but I really like how these caps sound and their 1200v DC rating is a huge plus for us in the electrostatic world. The V-caps are incredibly good but the price is starting to become silly as it would cost nearly 1k$ to outfit a Aristaeus. I still think that they are worth it but better used in the more crucial parts of the circuit.

There are other caps that I've spent some time with such as the AN Copper and Silver models, Jensen copper foil and some of the teflon caps and all are great but I can't compare them directly like those other 3. I'd really like to try some AN silvers for an extended period of time but they cost to damn much and I don't like to support AN UK...

[Pars]

I'm also looking for some coupling caps for my Counterpoint pre. They need to be at least 1uf and ideally would be less than 20mm diameter. Mundorfs, Vcap, etc. would get crazy expensive and large at this size. The ClarityCap SA has been recommended, both by a guy on AA that does alot of mods, as well as http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html. What do you guys think of the recommendations on the humble site? I realize he is testing these in a speaker crossover, but I would think impressions there should translate.

DIYcable is carrying another brand which I had never heard of, Erse PulseX. They look interesting. Of course, I could just default to the Dynamicaps that Mikey Elliot at altavistaaudio uses in his CP rebuilds, but beyond him I haven't seen glowing reviews of these.

Which Vishay MKPs were you referring to spritzer? I have also read that a Rifa Evox PHE430 or 830 or something like that was well liked (IIRC, Bruno Putseys recommended these, of course, also discontinued ).

[Jon L]

They need to be at least 1uf and ideally

Man, I feel sorry for you. I'm only looking for 0.047uF and 0.1uF caps, and even these are too expensive, but 1 uF? Foggitaboutit.