The Headcase Stax thread

[Elephas]

Hey, I'm quoted about the He Audio Jade at a site called Wikiphonia!

HE Audio Jade - Wikiphonia

It's always better to be Opinion 1, who wants to be yucky Opinion 4, but that's it?! I said a lot more things about the Jade, didn't I? I think that quote makes me sound dumb. OK, OK, I made me sound dumb, not the quote.

And that was with the "Unmentionable" ES1 amp, too, so obviously anything I said was suspect and invalid.

[swt61]

I was the first to say "Colt-45, It works every time", but they gave the fucking credit to Lando Calrissian!

[mypasswordis]

Wow the Jade is expensive, especially given the reports of build quality, the pictures of Elephas's Jade, some of the sonic impressions, and some of the other headphones you can get for that amount or less. I can't really judge their worth until I hear one for myself, of course.

[mypasswordis]

Inspired by Birgir's cool Jade modding/disassembling pics, here are some of mine:

[Deadneddz]

Nice! Hows it sound?

[spritzer]

Ahh the ET1000, certainly one of my favorites.

As for the Jade, one has to hold it to truly appreciate just how badly made they are. The wood is thin which would be fine if it was something like the wood used on the Orpheus (very dense stuff,milled to perfection and much thicker then on the Jade) but making the forks out of wood is utter madness.

Now I normally don't care what something costs (as can be seen by my stubbornness to praise the Mk1 even when facing much more expensive transducers ) but value is always a factor for me. The Jade would make sense in a way if it cost 300$ but at 1800$ (hmm back to 1500$ now) it is just the same crap as Ray pricing the A-10 up there with the BHSE and WES so that is appears to be of the same quality.

[Voltron]

Ahh the ET1000, certainly one of my favorites.

As for the Jade, one has to hold it to truly appreciate just how badly made they are. The wood is thin which would be fine if it was something like the wood used on the Orpheus (very dense stuff,milled to perfection and much thicker then on the Jade) but making the forks out of wood is utter madness.

Now I normally don't care what something costs (as can be seen by my stubbornness to praise the Mk1 even when facing much more expensive transducers ) but value is always a factor for me. The Jade would make sense in a way if it cost 300$ but at 1800$ (hmm back to 1500$ now) it is just the same crap as Ray pricing the A-10 up there with the BHSE and WES so that is appears to be of the same quality.

Agree 100%. The Jades also don't sound that good, so you've got to factor that in as well. Fail upon fail. Still not as bad as the crazy bamboo version with the lattice cups.

[cetoole]

Justin, what pads are those? Also, what is the current damping scheme?

[HeadphoneAddict]

I'm starting to wonder if Naamanf and I have the only really nice sounding Jade out there or something. I own Naamanf's O2 Mk1 because he liked the Jade more (although his K1000 on his B22 were even better). Our Jades are both very similar to the O2 Mk2 with ear pad spring mod - more mids and treble than Mk1, with same midbass hump, although with a wider but less deep soundstage than the O2 Mk2. I prefer the deeper soundstage of the O2 Mk1 myself. Nevertheless, I really want to get a Stax cable installed on them, and maybe someday I'd re-house the drivers if the headband or forks fail.

[mypasswordis]

Sounds slightly underdamped and slightly darker than the K1000 now, but otherwise very good. It clamps tight since I changed the stock supraaural pads out for some circumaural ones since the stock pads killed my ears, so I'm stretching it out a bit to get a final view on the sound. I'm thinking once the post office finally opens in a week after all this goddamn snow I can make an adapter for normal bias Stax it will push the sound over the edge and make the ET1000 sound really great. Personally I think the N1000 is holding it back even from what it can achieve with the SRD-7 and upping the bias 50V should certainly change the sound a bit. I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't have a clear opinion on the sound yet since it's going to change.

The pads are ripped off my Philips electret headphone with the driver imbalance. I gave up on fixing it so now I'm just using it for parts. Amazingly the pads are a near perfect fit for the ET1000, as you can see. The damping scheme is very simple, I haven't touched it since the first go-around. I just ripped out the stock thick cotton fabric damping and the thin fabric over the front of the drivers, and then put in one layer of the thin grey felt as you see in pic 3 to replace the cotton and a big circle of it under the metal screens which you can kind of tell in the background of pic 3 (top left). The felt is around 1/3 the thickness of the stock cotton.

[spritzer]

Naaman's set was the one that went of the tour of HC, right? Did anybody like that headphone, the Texas crowd sure didn't. To me they sound nothing like the Omegas, just bad copies of the HE90.

Agree 100%. The Jades also don't sound that good, so you've got to factor that in as well. Fail upon fail. Still not as bad as the crazy bamboo version with the lattice cups.

I remember seeing the 1.3 for the first time and thinking they were nuts for releasing something which was clearly fucking with the backwave. Surprise, surprise that they apparently sounded like crap. Perhaps there wasn't enough of that magic pixie dust in the drivers to make them sound MOAR better...?

[Voltron]

I'm starting to wonder if Naamanf and I have the only really nice sounding Jade out there or something. I own Naamanf's O2 Mk1 because he liked the Jade more (although his K1000 on his B22 were even better). Our Jades are both very similar to the O2 Mk2 with ear pad spring mod - more mids and treble than Mk1, with same midbass hump, although with a wider but less deep soundstage than the O2 Mk2. I prefer the deeper soundstage of the O2 Mk1 myself. Nevertheless, I really want to get a Stax cable installed on them, and maybe someday I'd re-house the drivers if the headband or forks fail.

Naaman, you and Tyrion can all like the sound of the Jades, that is totally fine. Certainly they might sound better to some people over the O2s, which in my oft-stated opinion sound pretty weak from most amps. That doesn't mean that you have a special pair. And I love the fact that HE[90] Audio has tried to distance itself wildly from its original intent of creating a cheaper copy of the HE90.

Edited February 10, 2010 by Voltron

[deepak]

I'm starting to wonder if Naamanf and I have the only really nice sounding Jade out there or something. I own Naamanf's O2 Mk1 because he liked the Jade more (although his K1000 on his B22 were even better). Our Jades are both very similar to the O2 Mk2 with ear pad spring mod - more mids and treble than Mk1, with same midbass hump, although with a wider but less deep soundstage than the O2 Mk2. I prefer the deeper soundstage of the O2 Mk1 myself. Nevertheless, I really want to get a Stax cable installed on them, and maybe someday I'd re-house the drivers if the headband or forks fail.

I heard Naaman's HE 1.2 and it sounded like the Jade I heard at meets.

Naaman's set was the one that went of the tour of HC, right? Did anybody like that headphone, the Texas crowd sure didn't. To me they sound nothing like the Omegas, just bad copies of the HE90.

Yes it was. I agreed with Marc's impressions. They're posted somewhere in the Head-case Jade thread.

[mypasswordis]

I wonder what sounds better, a Jade or a TitAnus...

Would the magic pixie dust be graphite powder?

[HeadphoneAddict]

Well, for me I prefer my HE60 on the WES over the Jade, as the WES finally gives the HE60 some balls. When I want something fuller and more lush with even stronger bass I go for the O2 Mk1. In the bedroom rig, I tend to grab the Jade before the Lambdas or Smegma Pro.

[GPH]

I wonder what sounds better, a Jade or a TitAnus...

Would the magic pixie dust be graphite powder?

Is there really a headphone called Titanus? What an unfortunate name.

[GPH]

Apparently, it doesn't matter if you wear them backwards.

[mypasswordis]

at least you know the headphones won't be loose with use.

Doesn't that mean it can't burn in? But yeah, a name of Lucanus would be quite unfortunate.

Biganus is big:

Actually it looks eerily like my ET1000, but a lot bigger...

[mypasswordis]

Rudi of Rudistor's new 'stat. Haven't heard much at all about it since a couple months ago, though.

This gives you a better sense of size:

[jinp6301]

Hmm, looks like a beyer headband + duct tape over the plastic part that says beyerdynamic

[bralk]

Rudi of Rudistor's new 'stat. Haven't heard much at all about it since a couple months ago, though.

Rudistor ! Thanks for the warning

[Elephas]

If Rudistor only had the drivers, that could be a prototype "borrowing" a Beyer headband assembly and housings temporarily.

I agree about the Jade's flimsy build and bad materials quality. The headband assembly is fragile, borrowing a Beyer headband assembly would be preferable. It's something that could be done, if one was so inclined, the driver housings can be removed, most easily by just breaking off the wood forks. I imagine ol' Birgir "You can call me Thor" struggling to not crush the fragile Jade with those huge clumsy hands of his and a tiny philips head screwdriver and I smile.

I don't think the Jade sounds really great, but I don't think it sounds that bad either. I would put it a little ahead of the Airbow SR-SC1.

Justin spent some time with my Jade too, after Spritzer kindly replaced its horrible stock cable with a Stax cable. When I asked Justin what he thought about it, he seemed to like it well enough.

Now the Jade is even more comfortable with HE90 earpads replacing the horrible stock earpads. A lot of the stock earpads smell seemed to have rubbed off on Spritzer and Justin (thanks!) and the smell wasn't as heavy when I got it back, but it was still there. So I had to sacrifice a set of HE90 earpads. I'll never complain about the cost of O2 earpads.

Edited February 11, 2010 by Elephas

[spritzer]

Now if Rudi released a 1k$ headphone that wasn't utter crap then he could get somewhere but odds are that it will be 6k$ and badly made.

Would the magic pixie dust be graphite powder?

I sure hope not since graphite is a very bad choice for diaphragm coating (it absorbs moisture and is far from stable) but I just chalked this up to Fang trying to peddle his overpriced crap. One can just imagine how little the Jades cost to produce given the very cheap labor...

I imagine ol' Birgir "You can call me Thor" struggling to not crush the fragile Jade with those huge clumsy hands of his and a tiny philips head screwdriver and I smile.

You aren't too far off... My hands are certainly larger then average but removing the earcups from the forks was made even harder due to the crappy screws used. I had to drill out two of them...

[Duggeh]

Rudi needs to man up. The Thunderdome is bigger than those tiny things.

[mrmarbach]

Small practical question: I have a SRM-T1 and SR404LE. At first the plug was very tight, now after only a few times plugging in and out it feels looser. Is this normal or does this mean the T1's socket is going?