HeAudio Jade and HE1.2/1.3: how many are using them and are you happy with them so far?

I use my Jades more than any of my other headphones. One of the best sounding headphones made, it's a pity that their hand made Chinese teething problems put people off of them. The Woo Audio GES drives them nicely.

I owned the 1.2B for 2 years and for a while it was my favorite electrostatic headphone. I preferred it to my Stax SR-007 MK I on the amps I was using at the time (a original Blue Hawaii and a Stax SRM-1 MK II). While I liked the SR-007 I thought the 1.2B was more detailed and less dark. Once I received my BHSE the darkness that I perceived on my Stax 007 was lifted and I could hear why so many really like these headphones. The 1.2B's were nice but I really didn't listen to them after I got the BHSE so I sold them. 

I still love my Jades! I don't really take very good care of em and I know I should since I may not be able to replace them if any serious damage ever happened to the drivers.

One of these days, I do plan to beef up some of the iffy mechanical parts (hopefully before I have to).

I still prefer them to the O2's but that's personal taste. I've listened to the Omegas on lots of different amps (BH, KGSS,, BHSE, ES-1, ES-2, Woo GES, WES, RS Thunderbolt, Kevin's T-2 at CanJam, ExStata, 717, 007) so I really think I've given them a fair chance.

The SR Omega and the HE90 are both better than the Jades in different ways and similar in others. I'm just not sure if I'll ever have a pair of those.

To me, the area that the Jades as well as a lot of 'stats fall down a little is inner detail retrieval. Because of that, I don't enjoy large scale orchestral music as much as smaller ensembles.

 

I know that lots of folks don't share my particular tastes and that's more than OK with me. If everybody was the same, the record companies would only have to release "Greatest Hit's" collections and be done with it.

 

BTW, I think that the first run of Jades was at least ten and I'm sure there was at least a second run.

I still love and enjoy my Jades regularly.  I ordered them Dec 2008 and they arrived Jan 2009.  I find them easier to drive than the O2 mk1 or HE60, so I keep those two paired with my WES in the basement rig, and I use the Jade in my bedroom with either HEV70 amp or Qinpu A-3/SRD-7 Pro.  I need to make some final adjustments to the eXStatA PSU for both LED to come on before I can use it.

 

The Jade have a smaller soundstage than the other two - but they have good bass performance like O2, and clean mids/crisp sparkly highs like HE60.  In contrast the O2 Mk1 are a bit darker, and the HE60 have a bit less bass.  So, I think the Jade are a well balanced headphone.  I know of 1 or 2 people that have taken a dislike to them and have nothing good to say about them, which surprises me greatly.  In a Colorado meet last year Naamanf and I compared his 1.2B, my Jade and his O2 Mk1 (now my O2) and we liked both HE Audio better from the amps that we had at the time.  They just had better sparkle and air.  The mids actually remind me a bit of a modded O2 Mk2.

 

The only problem I've had with them was a few months ago when I wore out the Stax to Jade plug adapter and Fang replaced it right away.

 

[edit to fix typo]

Edited by HeadphoneAddict - 10/1/10 at 1:06am

I had mine at CamJam and jp# and I shared a table.

He had his exStata hybrid and I ran my Jades off of that. The pairing was shockingly good IMHO.

If I didn't have a ton of money wrapped up with a couple of diy stat amps already, I'd be ordering parts for one. I'm sure somewhere along the way I'll build an exStata hybrid.

 

It's really a bummer that the Jades aren't available anymore since you could put together a great amp/phone combo for under $2k.

 

I agree they sound great with an eXStatA, but my first one was damaged in transport.

 

Also, I though the Jade were still available as a "build to order" item.
 

They are readily available at Head Direct.  After hearing them for the first time at CanJam in chicago on a  Woo GES I immediately ordered a pair as they simply sounded fantastic and I already own a GES.  They arrived from China in just a few weeks.  They are astoundingly good and far more transparent than the O2s I own on the Stax tube or GES amps.   Not to mention wildly more sensitive and dynamic than the O2s.

 

In fact, I find the whole concept of the O2s fundamentally flawed in comparison.  It simply makes no sense that a 3" diameter transducer requires amps running EL34s (a pentode capable of dissipating 70 watts a pair pretty easily) to drive them.  Hell, I drove CLS IIs for years with 120 watt VTLs and Soundlab M1s with 225 watt Wolcotts to room filling levels for years.  And it takes a pair of EL34s per channel to drive an O2?  Frankly, that's ridiculous.  I've chosen to avoid the whole BHSE/WES path entirely (in spite of owning dozens of vintage Mullards and metal base Holland EL34s) since the whole design approach seems to render the whole concept of headphones mindlessly moot. One of the appeals to me of headphones is the ease with which they can / should be able to be driven enables the use of tubes / circuit topologies that are nearly unworkable with speakers due to the complex reactive loads that speakers typically represent.  Want to drive 'stats with triodes?  Run your dynamics with OTLs?  Use a single ended Class A DHT output section and achieve lifelike volume and dynamics?  In headphone land you can with ease.  In speaker land? Not so much.  So why would I want to drive headphones with a not particularly transparent tube like the EL34?  Don't get me wrong, the Mullard xf2,  Holland metal base and various other EL34s are very pretty sounding tubes.  But gods gift to transparency and ultimate resolution they aren't.   Ultimately, it's sort of like putting the engine from a semi into a Smart car.

 

I'm amazed at the Jade naysayers.  These phones had the same effect on me as the first time I heard Martin Logan CLSs when they were introduced years ago.  Simply astounding transparency, clarity and effortless resolution of low level detail.  They simply sing on the GES.   What's surprising is that vocals have body, texture and warmth to match the transparency.  These were easily the surprise of the show for me.  The various Orthos were a mixed bag. The HE5s were painfully bright (but they were driven by an indifferent little amp) and the HE6 sounded fairly palpable and organic driven off the speaker taps of an old solid state amp - but they still didn't approach the resolution and palpability of the Woo/Jade combo.  I heard the LCD2s in two rigs.  Driven by the monument to 9 pin miniatures and mosfets at the Audeze table where they sounded quite competent if still completely unexceptional, and in the Woo room where they sounded downright soft and dull driven by an SET combined with a clamping force sufficient to crush walnuts ( I'm assuming / hoping that pair was brand new and not yet burned in).  

 

I went to the show ready to buy anything I hadn't already heard that impressed me.  I bought the Jades.

 

Joe 

Wow, you really haven't got a clue what makes amps like the BHSE or the T2 tick and your preconceptions about the EL34 are far off base. Some crappy Williamson clone can't be compared to how the EL34 is used in the headphone amps nor be any basis for how transparent the tube is. 

It's great to hear that their demise was just a nasty rumor. I'd noticed that the page was never taken down on the Head Direct site but I'd heard that Fang was going to drop them. Not the first time I've fallen for a rumor (and probably not the last!).

 

It kinda sounds like you're enjoying your Jades Joe? It seems silly that there's a need to defend these headphones since I think they speak for themselves. But there it is.

 

I had the same impressions of the orthos at CanJam although I have heard them demoed in a much better light (particularly on the Eddie Current ZDT with an analog front end). Just thinking about them makes my temples ache though! Still a work in progress as far as I'm concerned.

 

"Wow, you really haven't got a clue what makes amps like the BHSE or the T2 tick and your preconceptions about the EL34 are far off base. Some crappy Williamson clone can't be compared to how the EL34 is used in the headphone amps nor be any basis for how transparent the tube is."

 

 

Whatever.

 

I would suggest that the ludicrous insensitivity and lack of dynamics of the O2s is far easier to hear than the transparency you fathom in the EL34.  That you have to build a 2 chassis $6k amp to push them strikes me as ridiculous at best.

 

As I've owned amps using 807s, 2A3s, KT90s, 6550s, EL34s, 45s, 307s, 71As and 300Bs over the past 25+ years I'm more than a little confident in my assessment of that particular pentodes character.   It can sound very pretty, smooth, colorful and nice - but highly transparent?  Not so much.  And yes, I've heard them run in triode mode biased heavily into class A.  The point really is, why on earth is a headphone acceptable that requires this kind of output tube to drive them?

 

I say this as someone who got my start in audio running the original Stax Lambdas with a Marantz amp running a Rega Planar 3 with Fidelity Research cartridge and step up tranny back in the early 80s.  I loved that little rig back in the day, so I had high hopes when I tried the more recent Stax offerings the past few years.  Instead I'm struck by how much they now basically suck to varying degrees.  Anyone who can say the Jade is flawed as though the O2 is not is clueless.

 

Joe

Edited by Sanderman - 7/11/10 at 9:09pm

Joe, I basically agree with you, although properly driven the O 2's are very nice. It is ridiculous that Stax's own amps (current) can't properly drive them. Your comments will bring out the Stax Mafia. I do prefer the Jades to any of the Stax headphones, even when driven by a WES or KGBH SE.

Why is the price so high $1500? That and they are Chinese build quality. Glad to hear they sound great hopefully they can come down in price well under $1k. Do you think it will

be long before Stax releases new products?