New listening impressions of Stax C32 prototype and Shipping SR-009 - Page 64

Sadly I own both flawed phones at the same time lol. But happy with them so far. ED10 is hard to like to most with it's color but still with male vocal and classical music it sounds very good to me. And my SR009 has been running non stop on both music and the Kharma burn in disc non stop since day one it arrived, 24X7 since Arnaud couriered to me nearly a month ago now, without any problems (touch wood!). I sure hope it stays that way so I don't have to trouble arnaud. Strange enough, the most sought after headphone on Headfi these days, the LCD2, gets least head time by me.
Edited by googleli - 6/13/11 at 9:43am

I'm glad you're enjoying your SR-009, regardless of what others have been saying about it. Unfortunately though, many other SR-009 owners are not, because of the mechanical problems. My own remote plans about returning to electrostatics via the SR-009 have been put to rest as well with the increasing number of defective units, although that's not a big deal since I'm quite happy with my current headphone(s). Ultimately, the important thing is to make up your own mind about what sounds good instead of relying on "preaching" by others.

 

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Edited by Arnaldo - 6/13/11 at 11:40am

Do not despair.  I don't think we shall ever see/hear a "flawless" pair of headphones in our lifetimes regardless of price, brand or design.

 

I was hoping the Sleek Audio CT20 would defy that and would be the perfect IEMs, but...

Agreed,

 

unless everyone's hearing is more-or-less the same, a headphone can never be flawless. 
 

 

 

I would have siad the opposite, warm sound is bright, i.e. has a lot of upper mid, lower high frequencies..
This comment shows the dangers of using description from one sense modality to describe another. Warmth is specifically energy detected by the skin sensors. Sonic warmth is ........? Evidently we are not calling things the same way. 
 

What Staxes were these?  My experience is that I have never had to send even old models in for basic repair other than some forks on a lambda unless they were physically abused.  I generally say that once they get past various glitches such as with the current 009, Stax makes some of the most reliable phones and amps out there which will run for decades.
 

"Back to the drawing board" is intended as a humorous take on the current problems with the 009.  Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the 009 an attempt to redo the transducer design of the original Omegas which finally had to be scrapped?  If so it sounds like Stax still hasn't quite solved all the issues.

 

If Stax has to redesign these, yours should be quite valuable just like those Omega's which are still working well.
 

 

Edited by edstrelow - 6/13/11 at 2:04pm

It was a Stax SR-Lambda Pro Classic back in the 90s and it was truly a comedy of errors. Strange noises and lower output levels first appeared on one side, the unit was sent for repair, came back OK but then similar problems soon developed on the other side, and so forth. Worse, I had recommended it to a friend who experienced the same issues, but could not send it for repairs because he lived in a country with no service.
 

 

Edited by Arnaldo - 6/13/11 at 2:26pm

I always considered warmth to have to do with the harmonic content of the distortion a system produces.  Low all around as to be inaudible is neutral, dominated by audible even order distortion is warm, and enough odd order or sometimes other types of distortion to be audible is cold.

 

Something can be warm independent of it being bright (most Grados) or dark (the HD650 by most people's accounts).  They K701s are a 'phone I'd label cold and bright.  I'm having a hard time thinking of something that's dark and cold.  The XB700s come close but I can't remember anything higher end off hand.

I have heard this odd(cold)  and even (warm) harmonic distortion theory as well.  If so, the issue is not really anything to do with frequency response. I wonder if anyone has produced any measurements of distortion to back this up?
 

 

You could look at the graphs on headroom.  If you put them all together on the same graph it tries to space them out a bit at the expense of making the x-axis useless but here's the HD650 with some tiny peaks at the 2nd and 3rd harmonics, here's the K701 with large 2nd and 3rd order peaks plus all kind of high order peaks at about the same level as the HD650's 2nd and 3rd, and the DT880/600 is just a mess.  Its not a perfect correlation but its somewhat close.  From the sound, I'd easily rank the DT880 the coldest followed by the K701 and then the HD650s seem somewhere between warm and neutral depending on what mood I'm in.

 

All this is just at one frequency though.  You'd really need a 3D graph to see the spectral content of the distortion products over a wider range of frequencies but I've never seen anyone make one.  Tyll did something similar with his latest burn in experiments though.

To me it was a bloated mess and that is indeed the general "mafia" consensus.  When you compare it to something like Rudistor crap then it is a fine amp but put in context of something similar and it is a letdown.  I for one am hesitant to compare the WES against the BHSE since the latter is just so vastly superior in every way.  We are talking about some good 40 years of technological advantage plus better components, layout, operating points etc. etc.  A much more honest comparison would be the ESX vs. WES.  Same tubes used in both amps (well no phase splitter needed in the ESX so no 12AT7's) but technically they are very different.  Massively AC coupled vs. mostly DC coupled (the ESX only AC couples the second and third stage) and much more voltage swing from the ESX plus the ability to run the outputs at 0VDC for maximum voltage swing.  Put these side by side and then get back to me. 

 

I do have the full schematic of your amp plus enough pics of another one to know they are close enough to care.  As for tube rolling, it will never change the basic character of a circuit.  You can put the most expensive 6SN7's in an Egmont and it will still sound like sh1t but the T2 sounds awesome even with crappy Chinese tubes... 

 

I've owned at least 20 of those (both the Pro Classic and the Japanese Spirit version) and all of them have been perfect. 

 

 

You must have been incredibly unlucky as I've been using various Stax headphones continuously since the 1960's and have never had a failure or a need for any repair.  The energiser has sometimes failed but this has been due to age and and use.  IMHO Stax must be among the most reliable headphones ever made.

 

You have no proof of any such design flaw and its reckless and unhelpful of you to make such statements without the facts.  

Many new products suffer such faults either in the first few months or after several months use, you only have to look at the number of product recalls for electricals and cars or the issues with Apple iPhones.  Its one of the risks of being any early adopter which is why I always quite a while before buying new models

 

Edited by complin - 6/17/11 at 2:08pm

I think he's just trying to make himself feel better and justifying his Ed. 10s by trashing a new flagship that is actually worth it's high retail price 

I don't know if I'm reading this right, but statements like "You have no proof of any such design flaw" and "Many new products suffer such faults either in the first few months or after several months use" sound a tiny bit contradictory to me. Regardless, the important thing really is that I hope you're enjoying your own headphones as much as I have been enjoying mine. All else is utterly irrelevant...

 

 

Edited by Arnaldo - 6/17/11 at 3:57pm