The Stax thread (New) - Page 526

I hope the allergies and the sound clear up for you. I have two SR-Lambda and they both sound the same as mine that you heard at the CO meet, which is pretty sweet. Even with my SRD-7 and SRD-X they are nice.

I'd be interested in knowing the source for pads too, but fortunately I don't need any just yet.

Don't the sr202 pads fit the Lambda/Lambda pro and are cheaper?

Yeah.







You know this is really all your fault, right?

Yes, of course!

Sources

What kind of minimum quality source should one use in order to substantially benefit from the any stax setup?

Ok I know a bit about the Stax history in the 80s ad 90s and their design philosophy too and I own them all but have you ever listened in depth to the Lamda Pro/ED1 Df EQ combination side by side with the Omega phones? In historical sequence? With the right recordings? Read the papers on binaural recording and diffuse field equalisation as it pertained to headphone playback frequency response in relation to state of the art stereo microphones like the Neuman KU100 and the AACHEN Head binaural recording system and listened to the recordings of the "STAX" label? Then you would know where I was coming from.

if your alternative to Stax is a dynamic headphone, I'm here to tell you that you will substantially benefit if the source is better than a fisher-price cassette deck.

Any substantially detailed headphone can make you decide that you need a better source. Doesn't mean you're not benefiting.

So are you now saying that the MkII is as good or better than the MkI?

I plug my ipod into my STAX Omega 717 combo and it sounds vey, very good. My ipod has my recordings in it that I burned to MP3 320 format. The Ipod has its limitations, bad enough to make it not worth to load lossless on it. This is made clear by the Omega, but it still sounds very, vey good. Stax is very revealing but I would not be afraid to plug a casette deck in it but it better be a Nak Dragon or at least a TOTL 3 head Onkyo or Technics..

Sources

Stax, can be a "slippery" road, sources can be as well. After getting a particular source, one may realise that, "this is the weak link" and the wheel to upgrade and upgrade goes on and on.

These are all good points, but binaural recordings are more or less a technological dead end these days and all hope for realistic soundstage on headphones lies with infinitely more flexible custom HRTF and associated processing. Not sure if this will ever become popular though until there is a way to do individual calibration without in-ear microphones etc.

1: Find an online store in Japan and have a deputy service buy them for you. They shouldn't be much more then 2000Yen per pair plus all the fees and shipping.

2: This should be easy to fix. The metal plate slides into place with the baffle out of the way and secures the cable. Lift up the four corners of the earpads and remove the screws. Pull the baffle out and align the metal plate and cable just like on the other earcup and push into place.

A good vintage dac is plenty. Most Stax phones aren't too picky and do the best with what they are fed.

The DF EQ has always sounded like crap to me and I was quick to sell my units again. The binaural recordings are fantastic for what they are but this is a very limited niche market that Stax abandoned. I've spent a lot of time over the last few months dissecting the Omega phones to help people make better DIY phones as well as fixing the damn Mk2. The Omegas have borrowed from nearly every Stax headphone ever made but Stax have simply gone down the same road a Fostex did with the T-50v1. Create a great driver and mount it to a secure platform.

Nope, the Mk1 is more neutral to my ears but the Mk2/A is a close second and I'm sure that many would prefer the more forward nature.

Saying that binaural is a dead end is like saying good stereo recordings are a dead end. Well, welcome, this is the high end headphone thread. After 1000s of recording I believe stereo (and binaural) is alive and well and computer HRTFs will never replace a real recording. The Stax experiements were not just about binaural but about proper equalisation of headphones. The DF eqs (ED1 monitor) do not sound like crap, I can prove that is I still have mine. Actually they are a must have in the collection of a serious Stax listener.

You know, HRTF is such a cool sounding acronym that hardly anybody remembers that it means "Head-Related Transfer Function".

The difference between making binaural recordings and using an additive HRTF (whether it's digital or analog) is that in the case of the binaural recording, the HRTF is attempted through physical means of an artificial head.

Neither method is intrinsically superior.

There's some research recently into how the shape of the outer ear affects some sounds. Are we going to get HRTF filters customized to our personal geometries or something? I doubt it.

Sure they will, at least to those people for whom standard dummy heads don't work or to those who want to listen to 99.9+% of recordings out there.