The Headcase Stax thread

[Kattefjaes]

The last image that I saw didn't even have cables...

(..or any attempt at white balance.)

Edited February 10, 2018 by Kattefjaes

[DefQon]

I like the design, driver housing and gimble slider with cup rods similar to the old angled Audeze LCD-2/3 headphones. I bet they are heavy. I know Spritzer is the only here who owns a pair.

[spritzer]

I sold mine as I need to cut down on all these headphones...  I did just buy two L300limited though for some unknown reason... 

[bwck2000]

12 minutes ago, spritzer said:

I sold mine as I need to cut down on all these headphones...  I did just buy two L300limited though for some unknown reason... 

I bought one before I heard someone who have gone to the 300ltd audition in Japan. He said there are noticeable differences between 700 and the ltd. Maybe its just electrode changes, not the diaphragm. I somehow regreted but anyway its just a collector's item, sound quality doesn't matter that much.

 

What a silly idea to have electrostatics portable.

 

Edited February 11, 2018 by bwck2000

[Kattefjaes]

55 minutes ago, spritzer said:

I sold mine as I need to cut down on all these headphones...  I did just buy two L300limited though for some unknown reason... 

I have been failing to get hold of a pair of these- would be interested to know how they stack up to the L500 soundwise (maybe from an Octave 2 ).

Edited February 11, 2018 by Kattefjaes

[padam]

2 hours ago, bwck2000 said:

What a silly idea to have electrostatics portable.

I guess it is better than the SRD-X Pro (at least it should be), certainly a lot smaller and with a DAC as well.

Time to bring out those Sigma Pros to the streets.

[spritzer]

5 hours ago, Kattefjaes said:

I have been failing to get hold of a pair of these- would be interested to know how they stack up to the L500 soundwise (maybe from an Octave 2 ).

When I get one I'll be doing a full comparison. 

[Kattefjaes]

Excellent, I look forward to it

[rico]

I got today the Perun headphone and now i let it "run in" some hours. The looks is great,this is truly the electrostatic Grado very lightweight and comfortable.So far it's sounding very promising ,quite neutral with old Stax Omega 1 "touch" on it with similar soundstaging and imaging maybe with cleaner midrange.It's quite neutral and "naturally" detailed where i consider 009 to be neutral but unnaturally detailed.Perun has a very quite background and somebody may think it's dark sounding but it's not .I think Spritzer would like this phone:)  a bit of old school Stax sound.

First hour of listening says that we are dealing here with a world class sounding headphone for 1K :).The transaction from Russia to EU was smooth with great communication and zero problems .

Update today:the midrange is likely the best i have heard from any stat before,it's huge,very musical,voices like female vocals are stunning,the sound is BIG / transparent

but it isn't euphonic it remains still neutral and balanced.It has warmish tonality quite different overall than any Stax maybe towards HE-90 but it has it's own sound wich is very compelling.Was fiddling with the drivers and headband i don't know which way i should have to use them but tested vice versa and ended to find out that it has significant impact in sound quality how to use them.The sensitivity is close to Lambda models with means these are easy to drive.The structure is very comfortable / soft and very lightweight so you can spend many hours with them.Bass is on the level of better Lambdas and highs are smooth and detailed.Best sound level to drive these headphones are lower volume to average, i would not drive these phones on high levels ,these are best with classical/vocals ambient ECM jazz recordings.

 

[jose]

They have arrived;

[rfan8312]

Holy mother.

Sent from my LG-LS998 using Tapatalk

[Torpedo]

3 hours ago, jose said:

They have arrived;

That's probably the best improvement in your system

[SeaWolf]

This was posted at the other place but I figured it should be put here too, credit JimL11 for the pic/original post. 300b s seem to be trending..

[justin]

i'm glad that this new round of flagship Stax amps are coming out this year

also, going last is going to be fun

[SeaWolf]

New stats flagship amp pricing looks not so fun. 

[mypasswordis]

@justinI wouldn't worry too much about it if the ones at Canjam were any indication. I'll just leave it at that. What's funny is the Shangri La amp broke down again, which also happened last year, so I didn't get to see if they fixed the QC on the headphones. I was pleasantly surprised by the T8000, actually. It's not amazing but it also isn't the steaming pile of junk some people make it out to be, and it's a great match for the SR-009 which I think was the intention in the first place. 

[justin]

2 minutes ago, SeaWolf said:

New stats flagship amp pricing looks not so fun. 

Sennheiser and MSB already smashed all records on that

[JimL]

So, a little more on the new Woo amp. One 6SN7 per side, two 300B outputs, "proprietary output technology." The Woo person refused to say any more about that, except he said the GES was output plate resistor and the WES was output chokes  -  common knowledge, and implied that this wasn't either of those. My BS sensors were on at that point. I asked about how they got enough gain and he was not forthcoming about that either. Forgot to ask if they are still using passive power supplies. Also, didn't notice at the time, but although it looks like the amp is the upper chassis, the headphone jack looks like it is coming out of the lower chassis, where the power button is. Don't know what that is about.

[justin]

1 minute ago, mypasswordis said:

@justinI wouldn't worry too much about it if the ones at Canjam were any indication. I'll just leave it at that. What's funny is the Shangri La amp broke down again, which also happened last year, so I didn't get to see if they fixed the QC on the headphones. I was pleasantly surprised by the T8000, actually. It's not amazing but it also isn't the steaming pile of junk some people make it out to be, and it's a great match for the SR-009 which I think was the intention in the first place. 

the T8000 should look pretty sharp in the anniversary edition in black, and its a small footprint. have that on order

Just now, JimL said:

So, a little more on the new Woo amp. One 6SN7 per side, two 300B outputs, "proprietary output technology." The Woo person refused to say any more about that, except he said the GES was output plate resistor and the WES was output chokes  -  common knowledge, and implied that this wasn't either of those. My BS sensors were on at that point. I asked about how they got enough gain and he was not forthcoming about that either. Forgot to ask if they are still using passive power supplies. Also, didn't notice at the time, but although it looks like the amp is the upper chassis, the headphone jack looks like it is coming out of the lower chassis, where the power button is. Don't know what that is about.

it shares a chassis with the WA33. i think the enclosures are fixed together and wires run between the enclosure through the footers

[JimL]

7 minutes ago, mypasswordis said:

@justinI wouldn't worry too much about it if the ones at Canjam were any indication. I'll just leave it at that. What's funny is the Shangri La amp broke down again, which also happened last year, so I didn't get to see if they fixed the QC on the headphones. I was pleasantly surprised by the T8000, actually. It's not amazing but it also isn't the steaming pile of junk some people make it out to be, and it's a great match for the SR-009 which I think was the intention in the first place. 

I can confirm that the Shangri-La was not working. Someone at the HFM table said it's been shipped around a lot and I just said, "uh-huh," in my best John Wick imitation. the Shangri-La Jr. was working, but the person at the table didn't even know what output tubes it was using, and the HFM literature was just pictures with no text.

 

Also, they had a second HFM stat headphone sitting on the table unplugged and when I started to plug it in to the Jr. amp a person at the table stopped me and said, only one headphone at a time, even though the Jr. amp had two output jacks. OK, whatever.

Edited February 19, 2018 by JimL

[SeaWolf]

19 minutes ago, justin said:

Sennheiser and MSB already smashed all records on that

Yea, it has take some time but 2 channel pricing insanity is fully into the headphone market. But your BHSE and Spritzers Carbon remain arguably the best performing options out there and both are priced rationally. I hope that the two of you can continue to provide that balance.

[kevin gilmore]

so the options for the new woo amp

1) plate resistors, they already said its not this

2) inductors, they already said its not this

3) center tapped inductor, you get about 6db of gain with this.

3a) push pull output transformer.  all sorts of issues with gain and power with this

4) solid state current source

maximum voltage gain of 6sn7 is about 20, maximum voltage gain of 300b is less than 4

somewhere there are likely to be input/interstage transformers and then you are still going to have trouble getting to a voltage gain of 500 or more if you want some feedback to reduce the distortion.

the viva evidently is also low on gain, and uses and output transformer.

why people produce shit like this I do not know

[spritzer]

We clearly need to come up with some crazy expensive amps to compensate for all of this.  The insane Carbon is already planned and so is my version of the T2 but I'm going to be the very last with that one... 

31 minutes ago, JimL said:

So, a little more on the new Woo amp. One 6SN7 per side, two 300B outputs, "proprietary output technology." The Woo person refused to say any more about that, except he said the GES was output plate resistor and the WES was output chokes  -  common knowledge, and implied that this wasn't either of those. My BS sensors were on at that point. I asked about how they got enough gain and he was not forthcoming about that either. Forgot to ask if they are still using passive power supplies. Also, didn't notice at the time, but although it looks like the amp is the upper chassis, the headphone jack looks like it is coming out of the lower chassis, where the power button is. Don't know what that is about.

This has transformer coupled written all over it for me.  Even if they were to drive the 6SN7 and 300B's within an inch of their lives... simply no way to get the gain needed.  Also Woo have never done anything even remotely novel, it's all cookie cutter crap done to the lowest possible standard.  Case in point, feeding the output through to the PSU for some reason... 

Edit:  Kevin reading my mind yet again.    I'd say go the full hog, input transformer with stepup and splitting the phase into the 6SN7.  Again stepping it up with transformers into the 300B's and then transformers yet again on the outputs.  Might just get enough volume out of it that way... 

Edited February 19, 2018 by spritzer

[mypasswordis]

38 minutes ago, JimL said:

Also, they had a second HFM stat headphone sitting on the table unplugged and when I started to plug it in to the Jr. amp a person at the table stopped me and said, only one headphone at a time, even though the Jr. amp had two output jacks. OK, whatever.

Hehe, maybe what I wrote last year got around and they didn't want people comparing. I couldn't make an accurate assessment of the Jr setup as I'm pretty sure I hate the sound of the Chord DAVE, other than the design engineer of the amp is at least as bad at digital as s/he is analog. The noise at each click of the steps was infuriating, and the encoder code is still wrong. 

[JimL]

19 minutes ago, spritzer said:

We clearly need to come up with some crazy expensive amps to compensate for all of this.  The insane Carbon is already planned and so is my version of the T2 but I'm going to be the very last with that one... 

This has transformer coupled written all over it for me.  Even if they were to drive the 6SN7 and 300B's within an inch of their lives... simply no way to get the gain needed.  Also Woo have never done anything even remotely novel, it's all cookie cutter crap done to the lowest possible standard.  Case in point, feeding the output through to the PSU for some reason... 

Edit:  Kevin reading my mind yet again.    I'd say go the full hog, input transformer with stepup and splitting the phase into the 6SN7.  Again stepping it up with transformers into the 300B's and then transformers yet again on the outputs.  Might just get enough volume out of it that way... 

I asked about transformers and the Woo guy said no, but he may have thought I was only asking about output transformers.