Interesting. These measure pretty well and shouldn't be too hard to EQ into shape. I wonder if Focal has fixed the fatigue issue with their drivers though. I could never listen to them for more than 30 minutes at a time even though I enjoyed the sound, so I kinda moved on from the brand. I know...

Yeah, with Stax price was never indicative of performance, and even a lot of their lower-end stuff could give you world-class sound in the right rig. That made them unique, but I also feel like it hasn't stopped being the case up to now. I hope they continue that trend, and I'm not gonna say the...

I've read that the x9000 and 007 are the models that sell. So dumping the 007 makes no sense unless there's something new in the works. 007 is an anachronistic design, the lack of fully articulating earcups and the asinine pad mounting mechanism are two obvious points that need to be fixed. The...

I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on price. Price is not always correlated to performance, and this is doubly true for Stax. What I'm wondering about are the conflicting reports we've heard on these, with the first few impressions being of a dark headphone but the last few sets of...

What do you not like about the HD650? If it doesn't sound as clear as it used to, replace the pads. The pads will only last about 1-2 years and when they get worn, you will lose about 5db worth of top end. New pads will sort you out, at least for a while. Stock HD650 cables are a known weak...

$1k is too much for a peerless driver these days, especially considering this has been done before both by Aurorus Audio and Nectar Sound, the latter at less than half the price. These probably will sound quite good, however, considering what they're similar to.

I'd rather Stax take the time to fix their veritable litany of issues instead of releasing a $10-15k headphone that maybe 20 people will actually buy. How hard is it to incorporate CCS outputs into your tube amps considering that you already use them on some of your solid state amps... or make...

As someone who's owned multiple BMWs I can safely say they're some of the least reliable vehicles I've ever had. So, not the best analogy. Of course, I still have them, because I am dumb and never learn.

Don't bite your nails waiting for headphones. Use scissors or nail clippers. Much healthier. I'm mostly waiting for the Stax SR-X1 to see if Stax can actually tune a headphone. I mean, we've had the answer over the last 20 years, but I refuse to learn.

I think the simplest answer is that you don't need it. Headphone drivers have no problem doing full range. Most speaker drivers don't. Neither do balanced armatures. That's why in speakers and IEMs you generally see multiple drivers, and in headphones you don't. Throw in issues with phase...

I would steer far away from JR audio. You can find some teardowns as well as past customer accounts about them elsewhere if you look. But a used 353x or something similar will work well enough for not much money. A used 717 will be great as long as it has been recapped and reconditioned.

OP is correct in that you never know what things in the studio sounded like. Which is why "natural" to me simply means "believable." You're not asking "is this how things sounded in the studio" but rather "could they have sounded like that" and does the music sound, for lack of a better word...

Isn't the 700s just an updated 717? In that case yeah, it should be pretty good with the 007. The 717 was a little bit underpowered for the 007 imo but it had a nice clean sound with a warm tuning and made for a pleasant, mellow system. It's quite nice with the L700 too though you have to EQ the...

Point the seam roughly at your temple. This way the fat part of the pad is somewhere between on the bottom and at the back. The headphones should fit flush and there shouldn't be any gaps. Also you can bend the headband as much as you want to get a better seal.

L700 just has that sibilant edge period. It has peaks in the highs, to my ears at 5.5k, 7.5k, and 11k, but of course everyone will hear these peaks in different places. Reducing them with EQ gets rid of the sibilant edge - mostly. The crystalline sound is also reduced and becomes a glossy sort...

They're quite close honestly. Either one will do fine. I think the 650 is slightly smoother sounding and a bit more resolving, while the HD600 is a bit livelier and easier to drive. I recall reading somewhere that the 650 has a slightly lighter driver, and it certainly used to have better driver...

There's a Superlight 2 that's exactly the same shape. Some reviews have mentioned early firmware issues so I'd make sure to update the firmware on it but it should be the same mouse more or less just with higher polling rate.

Yeah the whole EQ one headphone to sound like another thing never worked for me. They just don't, unless they were already very close to begin with. My approach to EQ is to fix FR problems and generally get the headphone to within the boundary of what I call neutral, but also do as little as...

I'm not gonna weigh in on the 009 vs 007 debate, but I do want to say that the mk2.9 or w/e 007 is in no way dark to my ears. Yes, it has a recessed upper mid and the midrange tonality skews dark, but after about 7khz treble is actually elevated, and above 10khz it is 6db north of what i find...

Electronic music is hit and miss on estats. It's not that they don't have bass, it's that a lot of electronic music is mixed for club systems and estats are very far away from that kind of sound. As a result many tracks just won't wound right. You can get used to how they sound on estats of...

Yeah, I hear noises from my wireless mouse too sometimes. There's a lot of EM interference on a desk that has both computer and audio equipment on it. Not a big deal, but it does make you wonder just how much invisible stuff you're being hit with as you sit there 8+ hours a day.

High end is a combination of different factors. From an engineering standpoint, high-end usually means little to no compromise. You build the best that you can and don't think much about the cost. Though sometimes it means expensive and complicated for the sake of expensive and complicated...

Yeah TOTL prices are rapidly spiraling out of control, and it's kinda ridiculous. Still it's what the market will bear I suppose. But it's not all bad - the KGSSHV from Iceland is still something like $2.7k and should be good enough for the 007, though for some of the more modern, brighter TOTL...

I think windows 11 clips the output slightly at 100%, so I would back off a few percent below that. Otherwise, you want to do volume control in analog rather than in windows. I would also echo turning off any and all post-processing to see if that's the issue. Foobar is definitely great and it's...

I pretty much EQ everything since all headphones need EQ to some extent. However I do try to use stuff that's already close to what I consider neutral, and stuff that responds to EQ well. Not everything does. But the general rules for headphones are 1) none of them are perfectly neutral without...