Ear Max/ Ear Max Pro - Page 2

KShaft could you comment a little more on the HA2 please? UPS is still jerking off with my Earmax who knows where and I'm probably going to order another soon unless someone can convince me otherwise.

i used to own a earmax. it was a decent piece of equipment but i heard little difference between it and the ear out.
to my mind it colored the sound without giving it an omph.
so i sent it back.
so i heard about the wheatfield and i looked at it and thought it looked solid.
well i bought it and i had msp's at the time. and it was somewhat harsh. this was not the amps fault. msp's as we all know are somewhat silibant.
now i like my senn 600s with clou cable. its good but unfortunately i am definately a speaker guy. so even this good combo falls a little short in my mind. to get it to sound real good (which it can) you need good recordings(such as the one im listening to now, Natalie Merchant: Orphelia) but of course its very revealing of bad recordings, which there is a number of which i like, but even with the good recordings it doesnt sound as good as speakers so....well ya know.
right now ive got the stock power tube, a cryovac microphonic($100 some dollars) and a ge nos(no not nitros oxide systems!)rectifier.
so it sounds good but i cant compare it to the earmax off hand or the earmax pro. ill need to do the swap thing which i dont have access to.
it is very tubey. i can even make it more so and ill probably try it because its only like 12 bucks for the fatter sounding tube.
im also looking into trying some rs-1s.
id love to try some. im not sure how my amp will make them sound. but i always thought the msp's sounded rough because of the amp but now i know that the rs-1s are smoother and fatter sounding(thanks vka).
so id like to try those out sometime.
anyway sorry i cant be much more help.
k.s.

I know that this thread is about the Earmax... but... I'm curious, regarding markl's comment...

With my X-Cans, When I had the Sony MDR-CD1700s, they clipped quite badly, and sounded overly warm, hence I passed them on... The Grados that I got as a result of my trade (125s) don't clip... and, surprisingly sound very neutral... both 'phones run at 32 ohms... Why would one clip, but not the other??

In speaker reviews, there are often graphs illustrating the impedance behaviour of a speaker versus frequency. Impedance is frequency-specific. You can have a speaker that is a 4 Ohm load at 1kHz and that is at 1.6 Ohms below 20 Hz. Makes them a real bitch to drive. I know, because I own a pair of 20 year old Infinity RS 4.5s. Publishing specs that state a single impedance figure for a headphone just doesn't tell the whole story. It is very much the same thing with sensitivity by the way.