The Stax thread (New) - Page 603

Some tips about the O2 pads are in this thread, one page 3 and 4 I believe (depends on your forum settings).

As a benefit, they double as an elephant costume during Halloween - just need to find a snout

John actually looks pretty cool with his...very distinguished, in only a Stax fan kind of way.

Yeah I see a Sigma/404 ( can it be 303 as I have one of those ) in the future, but right now I enjoy them stock as a nice other flavor. But the jump in price to get them done is getting up there, it was marginal at $500...but when you count a good working Sigma minimally at $400, then add up to 700 when you count shipping costs...$1100, and a used 4040 begins to look good. Now that one looks very closet useful.And I hear heavy, man!

If I want neutral/nad detailed I go 007 and 717. Just love all these number lingo's.

I own a pair of Stax ELS-F-83s and they run beautifully on 60 watts of valve amplification. They require voltage, which valve amplifiers are ideally suited to supplying, as opposed to current, which solidstate amplifiers as suited to.

Seems like a nice pair of Stax speakers.


Welcome to Head-Fi!

Like I said not all amps are created equally. The wattage rating is pretty much useless as a meaningful benchmark (at least the stock manufacturer measurements) as slew rate, PSU design, output impedance, output transformer design and how the amp design is implemented are huge contributing factors. Electrostatics are especially tricky since they present a reactive load on the amp and the wild impedance "roller coaster ride" demands a lot of current from the amp. It's a common myth that electrostatics need only voltage but a quick look at how they behave and Ohm's law shows that to be incorrect. As the impedance drops on the panels (which the stepup transformers dutifully transform back to the amp) you need current to make up for the difference or the voltage will sag. Going back to power figures, you can often see amps that amps that are rated at 100w into 8ohm but double that figure into 4 ohms which doesn't mean that the amp will output double the voltage into a 4 ohm speaker, but double the current. This is naturally simplified but the reason why Stax came up with those arc-welders like the X2 which are stable into a 1ohm load.

One day I will take the time to make things like this make sense to me.

in news of the lower-end sort, I think i may have found a cheap tripath ta2024 amp board that can shoehorn into the SRD-X, hopefully to make it a little more lively sounding.

(Yeah, tripath amps are the low end of what should be driving stax transformers - but the existing guts of the SRD-X are lower)

Larry, have you used the Sigma Pro in both your SRD-7 Pro and GES setup?

Yes, you do.

This is how I understand it:

In DC (Direct Current), V = IR (Voltage equals current times resistance).
If resistance (R) drops in a circuit then you will need more current (I) to mantain the same Voltage (V) level between two points. If the resistance in a circuit drops to half it's previous value then twice the amount of current will have to flow through the circuit to keep the voltage the same. (1.125A * 8 Ohms = 9V) and (2.25A * 4 Ohms = 9V). If your amp can only supply 1.5A of current to the 4 Ohm load then you can only get 6V difference. (1.5A * 4 Ohm = 6V)

Does that sound right guys?

No, only with the GES driven by the Pico as DAC. You want I should try it on the SRD-7 Pro/Nuforce?

Yes, please do. I haven't tried the Sigma Pro with a transformer yet, I'd like to know if it's a good idea.

Okay, although I'm still being teased about only having a Nuforce Icon driving it (by those who don't know how good/value it is as a speaker amp).

STAX COUNTRY

An evening shot of Canyon Sin Nombre at Anza Borrego State Park, in Southern California, near the Mexican Border. I spent a couple of days camping off road there with my Stax SR001Mk2 and portable cd player. Also with wife, kids, wife's friend and her kids.

You can just make out a person behind the vehicle, probably daughter No 1.

We drove in along the wash in the foreground and camped in an open space behind the vehicle. It goes back about 100 yds and then becomes a trail, with very high walls, sometimes with barely room to squeeze through.

I could live in a tent as long as I had the mini Stax to keep me company.

Very nice. I've had a few trips like that and I love being out completely away from civilization. I may post some pics once I've post-processed them. I'm a lousy photographer but I still try...

Sounds like a plan as the stock stuff is just cheap. I must admit though that the whole SRD-X idea was a great one.

That's the core of the matter but we are of course dealing with AC so impedance rather then resistance which varies with frequency.