The Headcase Stax thread

[kevin gilmore]

i'm sure ray would be happy to sell you one of his new amps, only $10k.

[DaveLTX]

On 4/16/2023 at 1:50 PM, qqiao said:

For eha5, you may refer to this thread on erji.net,

http://bbs.erji.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2300120&extra=page%3D1

Its hilarious how deaf the guy must be in order to think that its anything close to decent... (going off the review)

Some say I'm not "audiophilic" enough but I had the misfortune of seeing one of these on the shelves and grabbed a L300 just to make it easier for it.

Nope, I rather listen to a 252S and I don't even remotely like a 252

[spritzer]

On 5/31/2023 at 4:49 PM, udurbalanced said:

Is there any hope for hybrid estat/dynamic amps? Seems like it's better to just do one very well than try to stuff both in a box.

Nope, they are just very different technology so even if you had two separate amps in the same box, there would be issues. 

Edited June 4, 2023 by spritzer

[kevin gilmore]

actually a krell master reference pair of monoblocks will drive any headphone electrostatic or dynamic. just need to add a bias supply. 800 volts peak to peak.

[udurbalanced]

On 5/31/2023 at 12:27 PM, kevin gilmore said:

i'm sure ray would be happy to sell you one of his new amps, only $10k.

I was thinking stack a Liquid Lightning on my AGD amp/dac 

Wire 4/5 of the Stax plug pins to the Cavalli

Wire the 5th to an RCA on the back of the AGD
 

I'm a mechanical , not electrical engineer, but I think this will do 

[spritzer]

What is that supposed to achieve? 

[udurbalanced]

9 hours ago, spritzer said:

What is that supposed to achieve? 

A fire, I'm guessing. How many Liquid Lightnings are even out there still?

[HemiSam]

Oh boy...

HS

[spritzer]

Shit happens? 

[Oneguy]

Just looking at that hurts 

[kevin gilmore]

2 part epoy glue should fix that.

[skullguise]

"Design Feature" 😃

[dsavitsk]

5 hours ago, kevin gilmore said:

2 part epoy glue should fix that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

[justin]

On 4/14/2023 at 11:46 PM, Kung said:

Ray samuels the old friend of stax mafia just released a new amplifier B-21, the electrostatic part claimed 1800Vpp voltage swing with 200mA continuous current output performance just shocked me. . . Reminds me of the horribly weak output performance of the A10 he designed before, this new amp is also questionable...

 

I tried the amp @ CanJam and thought, hmm wait a minute, the knob is only at 11 and I'm listening THIS LOUD to STAX?

That's when I realized..

the gain is ~2400x, which is the highest I have heard of for an electrostatic amp (STAX amps typically 500x to 1000x) but makes perfect sense for demonstrations in a loud room. I changed the gain tube in the Grand Cayman (720x gain) from 12SN7 to 12SL7, which did the trick

But that was the end of the show, so...next time

Edited July 1, 2023 by justin

[Kung]

damn, 2400x the gain, that must be loud enough to explode... 

there are audiophiles who judge the power of the amplifier by the position of the potentiometer knob, i guess ray samuels should have a good knowledge of this.

[dsavitsk]

11 minutes ago, Kung said:

there are audiophiles who judge the power of the amplifier by the position of the potentiometer knob, i guess ray samuels should have a good knowledge of this.

If you use a shunting pot (configuration B below) built with a regular audio taper pot instead of a quad pot in a balanced design, besides being both cheaper and inherently symmetrical, nearly all of the taper is in the first half which makes amps appear to these sorts of people as being more powerful than they actually are.

 

[justin]

1 hour ago, Kung said:

damn, 2400x the gain, that must be loud enough to explode... 

there are audiophiles who judge the power of the amplifier by the position of the potentiometer knob, i guess ray samuels should have a good knowledge of this.

the flip side is you lose usable range on the volume control and add noise floor, which could still be below the threshold of audibility with e-stats. 

adding pre-amps in front of e-stat amps, especially with gain switches, may become more of a thing

could even have multiple inputs on the back -- ones that go through the vol ctrl/pre-amp and ones that are a bypass direct to the e-stat amp @ full volume

Edited July 3, 2023 by justin

[kevin gilmore]

actually by increasing the gain on the apex part you seriously compromise the high frequency response and increase distortion.  which may be intentional.

[wink]

[spritzer]

Preamps driving Stax amps is very much becoming a thing and I don't understand it. 

[Pars]

If I bother looking at the CFA3 thread on HF, there is a lot of talk of using tube preamps in front of a CFA3. I agree, don't understand it.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Pars

[spritzer]

Might be to get more volume out of the amp as for a lot of people... moar loud... moar powah!!! 

[Timb5881]

Or it could be that they are using sources such as DAPs or USB stick amp/ DACs, they can use a bit of a boost.

[justin]

SR-X9000 just passed 1,000 units manufactured. Took just under 2 years

[spritzer]

That's impressive... shame they sound like shit.   

Something new for me, I came across my first ever arc'ed over SR-007 driver yesterday.  Utter carnage in there, a hole in the diaphragm roughly 30mm across and burn marks on both stators.  Other driver was just fine but yeah, there is a reason we fit protection circuits.