KOSS ESP-950 Thread - Page 39

I remember reading an article awhile ago about this happening to textbooks, and one of them ending up at something like $2.1 million before anyone caught it.

The Stax

So I got some time with these Koss ESP-950, and I am loving it!

 

Granted, I do not have golden ears, and my experience with headphone is not as deep as many around here, but these cans are just so ridiculously addictive to listen to.

 

Compared to the modded Fostex T50-RP, woodied Magnum v3 and Magnum v4, these Koss are crystal clear, expansive, and very even-handed.  I can’t use the neutral word to describe them, because I do not really know what absolute neutrality means, but these headphones made me feel the music, and play them without any emphasis to any region of the songs.

 

They handle details very well.  Kid Rock’s Bawitdaba is a difficult track to handle when the heavy guitar riffs come in.  The T50-RPs sound congested with them, the Magnum v3 seemed to have a little trouble handling the sudden massive amounts of details, the Westone 3s and UE TF10 glance over details and skip over parts when the drivers couldn’t take the heavy, trashy guitars.  Yet the 950 handles them very well.  I am able to tell the guitars from the bass from the cymbals with some level of precision instead of listening to a ball of meshed up sounds in my other headphones.

 

The mids on these things are just wonderful.  Feist and India.Arie sounds like angels through these phones, and Jeff Buckley’s guitars and vocals perfectly portrayed his tortured soul through the rendering of his music.

 

The treble was never heavy handed, I don’t see much evidence of sibilance, although I don’t really hear that much sibilance with supposedly sibilance kings W3 (I find the Shure olive tips are great for the W3, btw).  It’s crystal clear with enough sparkle and detail.

 

The bass has fantastic quality, but not that much quantity.  I am perfectly happy with this, as I am not a great fan of a ridiculous amount of bass drowning out the songs.  I hear bass lines and kick drums perfectly, and that is good enough for me.

 

All in all, I am extremely happy with these.  Rumors have it that they sound even better with Stax and other 3^rd party amps, but I am not going there as I can’t justify spending another $2K on an amp when  I am already perfectly content with the stock E/90 that came with it.  I will just leave that to head-fi meets.

 

P.S.  My wife, who I think does have golden ears but doesn’t care much about audio, were struck by how beautiful these headphones sounded.  Even she complimented them multiple times and commented how natural and smooth they sound.

Glad to see (hear?) people getting to know these wonderful cans! On the bass, I've noted that if you have a track with deep, impactful, and not overly mushy or overly boosted bass, they tend to really show off - a lot of older house music would fit into this category, and if I remember when I get some headtime with my pair next, I'll find a rock or jazz track that fits into that well too. I know that modern "bass blaster" music doesn't really show off what they can do, and that a lot of older music tends to have the bass rolled down and ends up sounding a bit thin on headphones like the 950s (that are even-handed with the bass).

You guys would like the SR-003 mk1.  I've got a pair here and they remind me of the 950s.

I've had these for around a week now and I'm still very impressed with them. You certainly don't sacrifice much getting these instead of a pricier Stax setup.

 

And I just want to recommend the Neko Case, Live in Austin album. It sounds fantastic on these cans. So light and open. great space around the performers and Case's voice sounds incredible without any harshness at all. Her voice can sound strained or have some glare on other headphones that don't have majorly shelved upper mids and treble.

Those are the in-ears? Didn't STAX just (finally) release a portable amp for those too?

The new 002 stax portable amp is paired with a new in ear all together as a follow up to 001 system from the 90's. The 003 is the in ear model which has a full sized stax plug for use with home amps. As with lamda's, they all look mostly indistinguishable from each other so that doesn't help keeping track.

So basically the new amp won't pair with the existing 003, so buying them on sale is still pointless. Fantastic!

Thanks for the heads-up though.

Well Stax had an in-ear and a portable amp already (SR-001), which they discontinued.  I think the new version (SR-002) won't be backwards compatible (probably unless you can re-terminate the plug...gotta love proprietary plugs)

 

The original SR-003 mk1 on the other hand, the desktop version, used a standard Stax 5-pin "Pro" termination.  The new desktop version (mk2) is the same.

 

Not pointless.  The SR-003 is designed to be used with traditional Stax amplifiers, not the portable amplifier. There an a different version of the SR-003 called the S-002 that is identical, except that it terminated with the portable connector and is sold bundled with the portable amp.  You want portability, you purchase the S-002.  With either, you could build yourself a converter cable that goes from the portable connector to the 5 pin.  There is a description of doing this buried on this site somewhere, most likely in a thread about the previous version of this system.

 

--Mark

I might be going crazy but, didn't I just say the same exact thing?  Lol.  

Yeah, and I was aware of the older package, and the current one - I just assumed the new amp would have a 5-pin like normal folk.

Redundancy all over the place.  5-pin on a portable amp...hmmm.  That would give it a cool look, at least.

 

It's all about size.  One of the 5-pin that Justin uses is taller than the SRM-001 even before thinking about how it's mounted, and then there is the added depth and width compared to the compact connector.

 

--Mark