The Stax thread (New) - Page 65

Dood, seriously:



Those Jensen capacitors are insanely expensive. Is that an isolation transformer? I've never been a fan of power filtration, but that looks like a novel effort!

How does one open the driver housing?

I see a Stax SRA12S Preamp/Headphone amp here too.

My main point is that a noob should be informed that transformers are an old technique, no longer made by Stax itself.

See Carl's post (#954) for details on how to get at the diaphragms, assuming you've already removed the earpads (and the aluminium casings to which they're stuck!). (Er, also assuming you're asking about SR-Xs!)

They are held together by small pins, 4 I think, on the side of the driver. I use a knives edge to lift them out. Then the inner part of the plastic housing should be loose and it should slide out taking the membrane with it. Be aware that there are small springs inside to provide some extra tension so make sure you don't loose them.

You should also remove the screw for the front stator (the wire goes around the edge to the front of the driver) and lift it up and away. If the wire breaks its not easy to put in another one so don't break it.

Sure it's old but thats not why Stax stopped making them. Back in the day it was the simple way to add a transformer to an existing stereo system but today everything is line level so stand alone amp is a much simpler way. I'm not saying that the transformers are better, because they aren't but they are better then the cheaper Stax amps. The SRM-313 is so shockingly bad and annoying that I gave it to my brother and use the SRD-7 Mk2 instead for testing phones under repair and new untested arrivals. The transformers sins are those of omission so they don't add the hard edge the budget amps do.

Stax went bankrupt in 1995 so it wasn't making money on its entire line. It dropped pre and power amps, DAC's, tone arms, cartridges, cd players and a few other things but stayed with headphones and the means to drive them.

I would suggest that if the Stax people felt that transformers were good they would have kept building them Transformers were much cheaper than amps and if you are trying to expand your sales of headphones it makes no sense to require purchasers to buy the more expensive amps, especially if they are actually worse performers.

Whether transformers are better or worse than amps, a noob should be told they were dropped by Stax in preference to amps.

Maybe one day we can tempt some senior Stax people to give their version.

HEY NOOBS, STAX DON'T MAKE NO TRANSFORMERS NO MORE!!!

even though many of us likes them more than their cheaper amps

The bottom line for me is simple. Take any vintage amp and hook up a 50$ transformer and you have a much more musical setup then with any of the cheaper Stax amps. Transformers aren't always the devil and when done right can be much more musically satisfying. There are no absolutes in this and while I prefer dedicated amps by a mile but the transformers are an easy and cheap way to get into Stax with very few drawbacks.

Would you say that you've personally heard some transformer setups that are
more satisfying than your Blue Hawaii?

And yes, as a Stax noob, I will be taking the transformers road as well. Until
something crazy thing happens. Like winning the lottery.

Yes, and you can use a generic amplifier for purposes other than driving Stax headphones as well. I'd rather have one great amp than two so-so ones. I don't think for a moment that anyone using transformers is saying that there's something wrong with the sound out of the ES-1, Blue Hawaii, etc and that a transformer is necessarily better.

You've totally missed my point. The transformers are crap compared to the Blue Hawaii, pure utter crap. They lack all of the macro and micro dynamics and detail retrieval that makes the BH so great. The effortless power and the way instruments and voices just appear out of the immense blackness in the background. You can not beat an OTL amp even though some might prefer transformers.

Hehe point taken.

Yeah, I haven't heard any good stat amps so my prefs of transformers over amps is based solely on the low end. Just to be clear.