The Stax thread (New) - Page 37

[QUOTE=terance;2774338] Doesn't have to. The power consumption/supply issue is the SR-001's Achilles heel. Some people use a wall wart (or better AC) supply for home use (careful, cheap supplies hum!); I put together a Radio Shack special for road use that doesn't add much bulk. You need 4.5V to get full bias voltage, iirc. Here's a bit from a post on another thread:

"Love these little gems. FYI, I've been playing with powering them and found a good solution I can live with: they need pure DC to sound decent, and they need that 4.5V to fully charge the panels, apparently. After some experimentation, I've found four 1.2V EverReady 2500 maH rechargeable batteries are the ticket (the slight over-voltage is not a problem, and sounds much better than the under-voltage from using 3 - 1.2V cells). I've not been able to discharge them yet (going on four hours). The charger WalMart sells with these charges them in 15 minutes, too, unlike my old Ray-O-Vac 1300mah system from a few years back, which took hours. I use an enclosed four AA-cell battery holder (Radio Shack 270-409) that's extremely compact, yet has an on-off switch. This is just strapped back to back to the SR-001 amp, and fits very well. If you try this, be sure you do NOT put regular AA batteries in it, since that would be 6V or more, with fresh alkalines, and that would probably diminish amplifier component life, if not destroy it pretty quickly. 4.8-5.0V is fine, in my estimation, and actually enhances sound. (Solid-state devices usually operate safely over a voltage range that is wider than one might think; 12V systems run very well off of 12V batteries, or from a car accessory plug, which often is 13-14V DC.) For disclaimer, these are my experiences, and I'm not advocating running over-voltage on these, even though my experience is that 4.8-5V is fine.

Anyway, these are a blast for portability, and the only thing I haven't resolved to my satisfaction yet is how to neatly police up all the cords so this works as a compact, orderly system. I'm looking at replacing battery pack to amp and Ipod to amp cables with some short coiled cords to provide strain relief and keep it all compact. The size and weight is not bad (and you could remove the two internal AA batteries if you wanted). You could even strap all three together if you needed too, although I think that might be a little unwieldy.

The sound from the full DC-powered amplifier is very nice. I'm looking forward to obtaining a converter plug (someone said is available) so I can power them off my other amps. But for portable use, the SR-001 is about 85 per cent of the Lambda 2020 system (SR-202/SRM-212). It does some things a little better (no upper midrange peak, very smooth vocals), while lacking soundstage and some of the deepest bass. Very nice and economical system for road warriors!"

Good luck - great little 'phones!

Edit: hopefully not too off-topic, this could affect all of us who fly with battery-powered devices! Really hope not!
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/fligh...s-planes_N.htm

Once you hit a certain amount it hids the bidders name and just lists them as Bidder X. I'm sure if you searched eBay's help site you would get a good official answer.

Nope, it sure doesn't! This is the second time this has happened to me through ebay. In both cases, it was AFTER I had paid via Ebay's Paypal. In the first case, the product arrived just fine and as described. This time, who knows?

The real issue is that Ebay has cancelled all of this fellow's auctions and his account. Because of that, he may feel that there is no real reason to complete the transaction. Since I sent Paypal on Sunday, I'm hoping this item shipped before Ebay decided to kill this user. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed though! This may be the first in my many online transactions that I actually get burned! I'll keep you all posted. At any rate, life goes on, there are bigger problems in the world, etc.

Yes, the Tower of Power setup. I never really knew what the Melos was doing in that rig (fellow NY Head-Fier Jahn has a similar configuration). It seemed like a bit of overkill to me, but I never had a chance to listen to that setup under anything other than meet conditions.

The BH is a very neutral amp and it mates well with all of my stats. Cables and tubes make a huge difference and alter the sound a lot. The ES-1 and the Blue Hawaii can both be tailored to a specific sound with tube rolling though for me there is only Mullard. All other EL34's I've tried all impose their own sound and it gets tiring after awhile.

I am a little bit amazed how many people loved the BH at the NY meet since the tubes it used are horrible. They are NOS East-German Siemens but often rebranded and while they are better then the new stuff the Mullards are miles ahead.

A high quality source is always helpful and many people would say you can't get better than this. I have to determine if changing my source will add anything to my rig or if it will just change it. I'm pretty sure the Ack dAck provides a sound that I truly enjoy and also works well with a variety of phones.

Yes, I'll do a search on "electrostatic" and "bend to its will".

That would make sense because when I plugged in the Lambdas into the Blue Hawaii I got a very unpleasant high end. There's no bass that needs to be toned down with the Lambdas - probably just the opposite in fact. I suppose by going tubes I could start to tweak the sound even more but that's a whole other can of worms. Tubes also aren't practical as my main rig in my home office where space is somewhat limited. I can't keep a tube amp in too many places with a 2 year old running around.

Unfortunately, I one thing I have even less of than money is time. My first and only DIY attempt did result in something that actually produced decent sound but it was not pretty and took quite a long time. Not to mention that it was only $40 in parts so if I screwed it up, it was no big deal.

Definitely food for thought, which is half the fun of this hobby anyway. Good luck with your girlfriend!

Reading this makes me wonder: is it possible to run an SRM-212 off batteries, in the same way as terance has done?

Anybody got any ideas/views/experiences of this?

Some brief research would suggest that the SACDMods player I have (thanks Jimmy) should be a good transport. The power supply and clock both have been upgraded, which I would think would be the most important parts. I don't think I could improve much upon that without going ridiculously high in price for not much in return.

In my rig it's the lambdas that need to be toned down in the bass. All of the Lambdas I've heard have a very pronounced bass hump and a very woolly bass. This is the enclosures fault because it vibrates with the drivers. This bass hump leads many to believe the Lambdas have more or better bass then the O2's.

Absolutely! But it would take more batteries, and be kind of heavy, since it's 12 VDC nominal.

Since the SR-001 needs only 4.5V, it's just more practical.

Interesting in that what you've stated is completely contrary to my (non-owner) experience with the Lambdas vs. the O2's.

Doh! You're right, of course, I'd forgotten about the voltage being 12: I had in my mind the figure of 4, but that's the power consumption in Watts! Anybody got any idea how I could hold 10 NiMH 1.2V AA/LR6 batteries together?!

Btw, is there a definitive answer as to whether Pro-bias electrostatics can be safely driven by a non-Pro, electret transformer long-term?

Also, in such a setup can a Class-D amp be used both effectively & safely?

They can be driven by a low bias outlet but you will probably find them seriously lacking in volume and dynamics. You CANNOT drive them from an ELECTRET transformer like the srd-4.

It isn't a subtle difference but the O2's are hard to master and when you do they have much better bass and every thing else for that matter. It follows the recording much better then any other phone I've heard, imposing less of it self. The O2's only have this overpowering bass symptoms when the amp isn't up too snuff, the cables are too warm and the fit of the phones is wrong, not just the earpads but also and to a greater effect the headband.

They won't work out of an electret transformer since it doesn't have a bias supply. It's just the transformers in there but it's easy enough to built a PRO bias supply. You can drive a Pro phone from a normal socket indefinitely to no ill effect. You can even go the other way around in theory but don't drive them to hard because there is no room for error.

I've never tried a Class D amp with the transformers but the Tripath based amps have some trouble with the full range electrostatic speakers but I doubt it will translate to the adapters.