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The Headcase Stax thread


thrice

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The pads are fine.

I left them running over night and had a minute to listen to them this morning.

They are really quite good, I would say on par with the dynamic headphones I have heard until now.

I will spend some more time with them on the weekend and will try to post a more detailed review / comparison then.

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Well, when I buy an item in the $100-$500 price range I usually say something like: "If you wouldn't mind marking down the value of the item a bit, it would help me avoid some taxes, but I understand if you choose not to."

Is that being a wanker? I've never forced someone to do it, and with certain items or very high dollar items I actually ask that they declare the full amount and insure it to help avoid any problems with me receiving the package. I would also never back out of a sale because someone decides not to under declare. That is their choice, and I respect it.

I've actually had a couple people under declare packages they've sent to me without me asking for it. Luckily enough this has worked in my favour, but it is the reason that I now ask that they declare full value when it is an important item. :)

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Well, when I buy an item in the $100-$500 price range I usually say something like: "If you wouldn't mind marking down the value of the item a bit, it would help me avoid some taxes, but I understand if you choose not to."

Is that being a wanker? I've never forced someone to do it, and with certain items or very high dollar items I actually ask that they declare the full amount and insure it to help avoid any problems with me receiving the package. I would also never back out of a sale because someone decides not to under declare. That is their choice, and I respect it.

I've actually had a couple people under declare packages they've sent to me without me asking for it. Luckily enough this has worked in my favour, but it is the reason that I now ask that they declare full value when it is an important item. :)

Nope, not at all wankery.

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The SR-Omega + KGSS sounds so good I'm wondering why I have other headphones, or need other amps. This is definitely the best-quality sound I've heard from a headphone, along with the HE90. I would rank the SR-007 a small step below the Omega and HE90 due to its darker sound.

As good as the HE60, 4070, R10, L3000, PS-1 and K1000+Cary 300SEI are, those are the Big 3 for me.

Well, the SR-Omega is discontinued and there's always the possibility that it stops working. Maybe I shouldn't listen to it often.

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The SR-Omega is gorgeous. In my top 5 best looking headphones :)

They are simply stunning in person. Its quite sad that something this beautiful and well built is this fragile... :(

The SR-Omega + KGSS sounds so good I'm wondering why I have other headphones, or need other amps. This is definitely the best-quality sound I've heard from a headphone, along with the HE90. I would rank the SR-007 a small step below the Omega and HE90 due to its darker sound.

As good as the HE60, 4070, R10, L3000, PS-1 and K1000+Cary 300SEI are, those are the Big 3 for me.

Well, the SR-Omega is discontinued and there's always the possibility that it stops working. Maybe I shouldn't listen to it often.

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...

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I haven't tried many Stax amps, only the SRM-T1W and 006tII. The O2 is much better with the KGSS.

Based on the difference, I have high hopes for the O2 and a better amp.

I learned a tube-buying lesson recently. I bought two quads of Telefunken-labelled EL34 that turned out to be East German or Russian production, not genuine Telefunken. They have four crimps on the sides of the plates instead of five and a dimple on top of the tube.

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The SR-007 should be right up your alley since nothing can do bass like they can and I gather you like the temporary bass heavy stuff. They can track even the most complex bass line long after the He90 and SR-Omega have turned into a bloated mess of reverberations.

Damn, you bought the RFT tubes from East Germany. Crimped plates and the dimple are true signs of their origins. They aren't bad tubes by any means and much better then all of the current production stuff but don't pay more then 100$ for a quad.

I'm just playing with my newest toy, the Jecklin Floats PS2's, and thinking up ways of making them better. Looks like a SR-007 headband with custom made forks and wooden housing for the drivers. Then I have to have some leather earpads hand made...

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I've done some reading today about output tube impedance loads and I'm wondering now, if we directly wired a tube amp's outputs to a stax transformer box's transformers, wouldn't the output tubes "see" a much higher load impedance than what they were intended for and do all kinds of nasty things like arcing and killing output transformers?

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I wouldn't connect them to a Stax transformers except maybe the other way around for a cheap/small/crappy output transformer for a push-pull amp. If you were to connect it before the output transformer of a SET amp you'll end up with a 1:25 step up of the output voltage of the tube. The output transformer steps down the voltage, impedance and steps up the current for dynamic speaker use. You can connect Stax phones directly to the tubes through a capacitor, no transformer needed. You will need some load on the tubes to make the amp more stable but thats given.

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Ahhh no,no we are talking about two totally different things. I thought you wanted to connect a Stax trafo to the tubes but I now see it was a result of me being barely awake. ::)

All the amps see with a Stax trafo is a benign 8ohm load but the transformer turns that into the 5kohm that electrostatics like (transformer ratio 2*input impedance) as well as stepping up the voltage and reducing the current.

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So whats the latest word on the MK2? I did some perfunctory browsing in the HF Stax thread, and it seems like there are some extremely positive reviews in contrast to the original bad reviews. Anyone had any pertinent back channel conversations that shed anymore light on the issue?

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Aren't electrostats something like a 10 mega ohm load, which translates into a ?k ohm "reflected" load on the primaries? I thought the PCB magically does something that reduces that to an 8 ohm load on the speaker amp >_>

Ehhh it looks like I missed this one. The impedance is in the kOhms but the output impedance should be much lower. The board just contains current limiting resistors while the transformers step up the voltage and impedance. Since the voltage step up ratio is 25 then the impedance stepup is 252 or 625 so a 8 ohm input is 5kohm at the output.

So whats the latest word on the MK2? I did some perfunctory browsing in the HF Stax thread, and it seems like there are some extremely positive reviews in contrast to the original bad reviews. Anyone had any pertinent back channel conversations that shed anymore light on the issue?

I'm waiting for the A version to reach the much more experienced Stax nuts in Japan but first impressions are that the new phones are an upgrade but a small one. I wasn't expecting much else though as they were just fixing the few problems that had arisen over the 9 year life of the Mk1.

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I'm waiting for the A version to reach the much more experienced Stax nuts in Japan but first impressions are that the new phones are an upgrade but a small one. I wasn't expecting much else though as they were just fixing the few problems that had arisen over the 9 year life of the Mk1.

I wonder at times whether the engineers at Stax really do any work at all. So according to those Japanese "Stax nuts", the A/mk2 is only a facelift after nine years of waiting?! You'd expect them to have come up with at least one brand new flagship already!

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I wonder at times whether the engineers at Stax really do any work at all. So according to those Japanese "Stax nuts", the A/mk2 is only a facelift after nine years of waiting?! You'd expect them to have come up with at least one brand new flagship already!

Well I've never heard the 007, but if it ain't broke... ;)

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