The Stax thread (New) - Page 530

Yeah I know I am a newbie. Thanks anyway

Most stax-o-philes tend to shy away from anything labeled as Xtreme but it's hard to say.

Obviously better sources are better because they sound better, but most of us don't know how your sound card compares to higher end gear.

If he's driving his Stax from his sound card, where else would he post? This is the Stax thread even if it is in the High End forum. Where is the cut off of what Stax related topics can and can't be discussed in this thread?

Is the PC's volume set at it's maximum? If so, the line out from your sound card is probably not very strong.

"What is an RCA connector?" "Why doesn't an amp make things go loud" and "What would a DAC do" have absolutely nothing to do with Stax, even if poster happens to have a Stax system.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I heard SRM-323 with SR-404 and SR-303 and I liked SR-303 better with SRM-1.

As I disliked SRM-323 (not sure what 523 is) and other new solid-state Stax amps in general, I figure we are looking for different things in amps. To me 323 sounds cold and lifeless. I found SRM-1Mk2 to be much better than new Stax amps, excluding 717, which was very nice.

SR-X sucks for rock, as far as I am concerned. SR-X are ruthless and analytical headphones, not for generally not so good recorded rock music. If you want to listen how badly your favorite rock album was recorded and you are a masochist than maybe it would be fine.

Have you tried turning up the volume in the "sound mixer" on your PC? If your source is too quiet the amp will be too.

Double click on the volume icon is the system tray or task tray (whatever it's called these day, I'm a mac guy), and check all the volume levels for various things like CD, WAV, Volume, etc.

Also, you may want to consider a half-way decent USB DAC. They come as cheap as $40 for a nice sounding Headphonia.com USB DAC Cable (but you'll need a female-female 3.5mm adpater), to $60-70 for a hotaudio USB DAC from eBay, to $115 for a SuperPro DAC707 at diykits, to a D2 Boa for $170 shipped at iBasso, or a Headroom Micro DAC for $399 at HeadRoom - Right Between Your Ears which would be my choice on a budget, or even better a Stello DA100 for $695 from :: Headphone/Preamp & USB-DAC :: HiFi500 :: info@hifi500.com ::

I have heard them all but the hotaudio one.

There's nothing wrong with running a stax amp off a sound card. It might even be a good sound card - I just have no idea. Maybe google to see if anyone has posted RMAA graphs for the thing.

My SR-X III plugs into an SRD-7 that's hooked up to a Rotel RA-820BX that's hooked up to a computer with a Chaintech AV-710, among other sources.

Agreed on the loudness thing - adjust the mixer on the computer. Be careful with it though, some sound cards will gladly let you increase the mixer volume well into clipping. My old thinkpad would clip if the "wave audio" mixer element was above about 75%. Stupid, but it happens.

So, increase the volume in the mixer until you either see flat tops on the wave form in a spectrum analyzer program, or until you start to hear degradation.

I would get the D2000 to go with the Stax - they are good for rock (and jazz, classical, acoustic, electronic, etc), and scale well with upgraded source and amp and cable. They take about 300-400 hours to fully burn-in and get faster, and are also very responsive to mods (search for markl mods).

I have the D2000 with APS V2 cable, and I think the Stax and the D2000 could cover most genre of music for you, and gives you the options of open and closed, for when you need to have headphones that leak less sound in the middle of the night while the wife is asleep.

The person recommending the SR-X was thinking of one phone to rule them all, on a budget - i.e. I think they are better for rock than the 3050A too, but they are still pretty detailed and refined as "monitor" headphones. The SR-5NB gold edition might be a better vintage Stax as an all rounder, but they are like a Grado RS-1 or RS-2 and more forward and less suitable for classical than rock.

Blue Hawaii... The T1's are a great match for the Lambda series and the ESP/950 is also very nice with a bit of tube magic. Get some Toshiba tubes for it though...

Not me, mate, I can't be doing with all those things that glow in the dark...

Sorry about the misnomer - I meant the 323 of course. I also prefer the 404, which i think is hard to distinguish from the 303, with a tube amp.

As for "cold and lifeless" - well I suppose thats a question of preference. I find it very characterless leaving it to the source to bring life into the performance.

cheers

Tom

I bought my SRS-4040II Signature rig last week[SR404 / SRM-006tII]. Should be with me this coming Saturday.

Can I come and play in your "high end" forum?

~Phewl

I agree! IMO the best stat phones for rock are the Koss ESP-950 and Stax O2.
The SR-003 aren’t bad either.

THe SRXIII magnifies the detail of almost everything except the extreme bass, where it is deficient. In that sense it is good monitor phone. I have a love-hate relationship with them, but listen with them on occasion to get a different audio perspective on a recording.