hi, anyone have experience with crossfeed in a stax system? i am considering getting one of pinkfloyds crossfeeds. i am one of the people that DO notice the blob type effect when i listen to headphones. i can hear the sound either coming from the left, right, or straight in the middle. i do notice that with the 404/313 system, that there is some incredible depth in the headphones, i can almost hear layers of distance from my ear from various instruments.

however, i'd still like to get the sound out of my head.

anyone had any experience? i hear such differing opinions on crossfeed that i'm worried i'll either hate it myself, or not even notice it.


toodles!

I used to have a crossfeed preamp which I tried with several electrostatics and found I did not use itc.

The nature of crossfeed is generally to monauralize sound, i.e. blend two channels to reduce channel separation. This will tend to make intsruments recorded off to the left or right sound more centered rather than off to the side. I don't see the point other than with a very few recordings, generally early stereo, which have a wholely unnatural left-right spread, eg. some Beatles where the vocalist is off to one side. I personally don't find that type of stereo bothers me much, whereas I definitely don't like monaural sound through headphones.

Nevertheless, to each his own. I suspect that some listeners find it easier to mentally project the sound field forward, if it is not spread so far left and right. Also some crossfeed systems alter the frequency response, so the right system may help correct frequency response problems with phones or material. The whole process seem pretty hokey to me, rather like the various pseudo suurround set-ups sold with many boom-boxes.

On the other hand I do use a Sennheiser 360 virtualiser with my little Stax SR003 phones, for use with DVD's. I find it works very well with Dolby 5.1 encoded movies to give a better sense of depth. and that it generally reduces channel separation so I guess that it probably provides some degree of crossfeed as well as a proprietary, synthetic Dolby-type of sound simulation. However, I don't care for these tricks with regular stereo recordings. I am also a fan of Dobly Headphone, at least what I have heard in the Pearl Harbor movie. It is even better than the Sennheiser.

So I think you need more than just crossfeed to get any real depth added to stereo sound. If you hear enough depth with regular stereo than maybe you don't need anything else.

You may also be interested in the older Stax Sigmas, which are a pre-lambda design which mount the drivers well ahead of the ears and fire sound back over the ears. They give a better sense of depth than the various lambdas and have a somewhat attenuated treble which tends to avoid the "treble etch" which some people complain about with the lambdas although because they are less efficient and they tend to lack the punch of the lambdas.

Well, I'm reviving my old thread.

I've finally got the Pink Floyd X-Feed in my system and I'm not sure I like it with the Stax headphones.

With my AT-W100s, it's great. But something about the Stax makes crossfeed less fun. It narrows the soundstage a tad too much I think.

For some reason, I find that stereo seperation on the 404s isn't as annoying as it is with the W100s. Anyone want to chime in why this might be?

I think that because they have such a large soundstage to begin with, and they're so big and open, that there might be just a bit of natural crossfeed. Is this possible?

Blarg, I don't know what to do. Very old recordings are sooo annoying with headphones, but on the majority of albums the crossfeed tends to narrow the soundstage a bit too much

come on you buggers, don't tell me that i'm the only stax user to ever try crossfeed!

anyone else???

I guess so. I've thought about trying crossfeed but never have yet. Maybe ( ) it is possible that your system displays more stereo seperation than other Stax system setups. To tell you the truth, I am listening to my 404's as I write this and I have, and always have had including with the L-P's, imaging between my side channels and the center image pattern. It's always been there for me. I asked if crossfeed would bring the image more "out of my head" rather and the "at the tip of my nose" pattern that the Stax Lambda series as always presented to me, and the answer was "No, it will just change in in-head imaging". So I (think) I'm in no rush to try crossfeed, for my in-head imaging is almost perfect. True, the midleft / midright imaging is a bit weaker than the true left / true right / true center imaging, but it is indeed there, quite easily identifiable, and very strong (just not as purely strong as the "3 blips").

Maybe a system change, something I don't know, will help better than crossfeed in your quest? Have you tried a different source?

A friend just came by with this HD580 setup, and we noticed the X-Feed was very subtle in that setup, but with the Stax, it was night and day.

We both agreed that it doesn't help the music. These 404s have a tremendous clear soundstage that extends out beyond each earspeaker by several inches. I hear more depth in the soundstage with these.

Once the X-Feed is in, while it does get rid of the annoying feel of old beatles type recordings, it moves all the music between the headphones and the sound feels squished together.

This is not true for the Senns, the effect is nowhere near as detrimental to the soundstage.

Bizzare!

back me up on this one aerius, i think nobody ever takes my opinions seriously here...

I'm the one that came by with a set of Senn 580s and Grado 225s. Tomek just had me plug in the x-feed without even telling what was on or off, or anything about it, just had me listen to it. With his Stax's it just killed the soundstage and collapsed everything into the front as well as sucking out the lows and mids. Flicking the switch to the other position made things a lot better, but it still didn't sound right compared to running the outputs directly to the amp. I was later informed that the x-feed had a hi & lo position, and couldn't be shut off.

With the Senns I barely noticed anything, and picked out the x-feed by the shift in the frequency balance more than anything else. With the Grados is the only headphone where I felt x-feed provided benefits that outweighed the drawbacks. It gave a slightly more Senn-like presentation to the sound while keeping the frequency balance almost intact. It kinda filled in the soundstage and put it just a bit further out so the sound didn't feel like it was coming from the headphones as much. It's really subtle and I only noticed it with the switch set to the "hi" position. With Senns and especially the Stax, x-feed just doesn't work for me.

The X-Feed does not work well with electrostatic headphones Tomek. The STAX are ear speakers and not headphones. In my PM's to you I have told you this and also told you I wish you had told me you had STAX headphones beforehand, it would have saved a lot of bother.

Send your X-Feed back for a full refund. Interesting to learn that the X-Feed makes grado phones sound like Sennheisers, first time I've heard that one and very interesting to hear. Maybe should be renamed X-Grado-now-Senn ??

All the best.

Mike.

I hope this thread is useful for anyone conducting a search on Stax headphones and crossfeed.

I know I sure could have used it.

This is not to knock the PinkFloyd X-Feed at all. It was exactly what I wanted with the Senn, Grado and Audio Technica phones. Very neutral compared to some other crossfeeds that I've heard, and very subtle, as it should be!

It's amazing how intense the effect is with the Stax headphones compared to the other dynamic phones I've heard it with.

Wow!

I wouldn't say that the Stax phones don't need crossfeed though. Despite their branding as 'earspeakers' by Stax, they are still headphones, just headphones with a very, very large and deep headstage. I hope that one day a crossfeed with Stax headphones in mind is developed, giving them a very, very subtle change which wouldn't affect the headstage so adversely.