All those little green apples, all those bright orange marmalades on the hoof
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wisenheimer  I saw ferrstein's Sigma's and thought I would comment on where headphones stand in relation to the rest of audio.
I bought my Sigma's in 1979 along with the SRA-12 amp that I could plug my turntable directly into because it had it's own phono stage. Not only were they vastly superior to my NAD amp/Clestion UL-6 speaker set-up but they blew away every amp/speaker combo I heard at every high-end dealer I visited in the Orange/LA County area at the time. Nothing even came close.
So a couple of years ago I got to thinking about those old cans and decided to try the modern version and bought the 3030 system from Audiocubes. I compared them to my current rig comprised of DIY sub with current Parts Express 8" speaker/250w amp, Maggie 1.6's from 40hz to 500hz, Altec-Lancing 902's on 500 horns from 500hz to 12,000hz and 6" Aurum Cantus Ribbons from 12,000hz up. Innersound Electrostatic amp on the Maggies. Yamamoto A-08S amp with EML solid plate 45's on the Altec's. DIY Paridise Gain Clone amp on ribbons. Marchand XM44 crossover. Tweaked Wright WPL-20 pre with Tungsram E80CC's , RCA 12SX7's and law-faked PEC carbon volume control.
While the 3030's cost a lot less than my current system the Sigma's cost a lot less than the rigs I was comparing them to 25 years ago.
Well, times change. Audio has advanced. Today's stereos sound amazing. I guess the jist is you can no longer buy a set of headphones off the shelf that sound better than any speaker system out there.
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I don't think earphones ever sounded *better* than the *best* fullsize speakers. In the 1960s I had Quad ESL and a Stax headphone that was kept in a locked wooden box for me at a recording studio my ad agency owned. I don't remember the model but we didn't buy anything except the best. Those phones, even under studio conditions, didn't sound as good as the Quads.
Even today, after another forty years of development, an O2 just comes close to a Quad ESL-63, and doesn't quite cut it in the company of the first series Quad ESL (aka ESL-57).
It is of course a matter of taste.
The point Wisenheimer makes about cost is worth reinforcing. A pair of first series Quad ESL cost the price of a car. I don't know what that Stax earphone in the studio cost, but it was nowhere near that much or I would have noticed when the invoice for it passed my desk.
Today an O2 still sells for only a part of the price of a pair of good Quad electrostats. We should factor that, as well as the differing purposes of the speakers, into any comparison we make.
In fact, I am amazed how close the cheapest of the modern fullsize Stax earspeakers, the 202, comes to ESL-63. Of course, as Nothing101 has pointed out, the Stax don't have the soundstaging, a by-effect of their purpose, but they do have almost everything else, including very clean bass, a good treble, and a stunning midrange, all the makings of a great speaker for voices and chamber groups, my preferred music. Non-audiophiles come into my study, try on the 202 and instantly comment that they sound "just like those big ones over there" (ESL-63); that the 202 aren't quite as composed or as refined takes familiarity to discern.
This is anyway a tricky comparison, not only of apples with oranges but across a stiff swathe of time.
What I would throw in is that, considering the rather small differences in sound between the various current Stax headphones -- nowhere near for instance the difference between floorstanding stats and common cone speakers --, that what really makes the difference for users of Stax earspeakers is the amplifier. I reckon Wisenheimer would have rated the 303 higher against his impressive setup if he used it with the 7t amp supplied with the Omega or, better still, a really good aftermarket dedicated tube amp -- or even via one of the old-fashioned transformer-based Stax energizer boxes out of one of his tube amps.
Andre Jute
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