Lloyd297
100+ Head-Fier
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- Aug 20, 2005
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I thought a detailed comparison of the two Stax phones I own might be of interest to a few of you. I've commented briefly in the past on their relative abilities as I see them, but my penchant for verbosity, garrulousness, and completeness has finally made me take the plunge and do a voluminous comparison.
To keep it digestible, however, I'll do it in episodes, comparing the two in each on one or two musical pieces and trying to draw tentative conclusions identifying the particular set of strengths and weaknesses of the two.
My methodology is simple: I listen to the whole first and only then proceed to the parts in order to explain and clarify my immediate intuitive response. I swallow the "Eroica" whole and in the light of this gluttonous engorgement then recollect at leisure all the manifold aspects that make up this whole.
In this, I seem to differ from many audiophiles who seem to ingest the dish a tiny mouthful at a time, - through tightly-strained lips as it were; here the "highs", there the "bass", next the "upper-mids", "lower-mids", and "dynamics" with "imagery", "sound-stage", and the rest of the hydra-headed remainder following in dribs and drabs thereafter. Only after totting up the sum of individual attributes do they take the plunge and pronounce on the whole. But each to his own......
The 404 is the latest and highest in the long series beginning with the Lambda back in the days when Valiant Knights were Slaying Fearsome Dragons and Saving Fair Damsels and Plunging their Mighty C...s into Lusty Wenches and......well, if it hadn't been for the Omega the 404 would still be the Stax flagship as it's a direct descendant of the Lambda Pro Signature which was supposed to be the bee's knees when it was first introduced only shortly after the Days When Valiant Knights.......
The X-III hails from the days when Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled the earth and man huddled in caves and spent their days hoping a huge asteroid would come and wipe Mr Rex from the face of the earth. Like the Lambda Signature it used to be the Stax flagship but this was in the days when phones were phones and didn't try to be small speakers resting on the sides of the head.
As the 404 is new and the X-III is old and progress is progress then the comparison might seem to be a waste of time. But I don't think so. I use both phones regularly and I happen to prefer.....well, that would be letting the cat out of the bag, wouldn't it?
I generally listen to the X-III through the SRD-7 transformer hooked up to a massive power amp but to keep the comparison simple, I'll begin by comparing both phones through the Stax 006t headphone amp.
And so to the chase.......
J.S.Bach - St Mathew Passion (Schreier, Phillips)
Appropriate music for the moment and overall I preferred the 404 on this one. This music requires scale and the 404 delivered in a way the X-III couldn't equal. The X-III doesn't expand with the huge choral climaxes in the way the 404 does so effortlessly. With the newer phone you enter into and become part of the acoustic while with the X-III you just hear aspects of this acoustic without ever sensing it as a whole that you're experiencing viscerally. The 404 wraps you in its acoustic; the X-III allows you to hear the various echoes, decays, and reverberations but doesn't invite you in like the 404 does. Paradoxically, the X-III is much closer in its sonic presentation; instruments often seem ear-tweakingly close, whereas the 404 places the strings, choir, and voices back in the auditorium but with the listener inhabiting the same acoustic space. The X-III is more like sitting in a studio control-room listening to the feed from the various microphones picking up the music, the 404 more like sitting in the church attending the original performance.
However, there is more to the story. While the 404 gave a greater sense of the whole on this oratorio, the X-III had quite an edge on some of the parts. It had more timbre, a lot more, and the individual instruments sounded more realistic and with much more of their real-world sonic signature preserved. They also sounded sweeter, prettier, and more fluid, the 404 displaying a few impurities as well as a relatively constricted, homogenized tonal palette. It could occasionally sound more incisive with the upper-registers poking through the mix but the contrast of colour lacked the effortless multifariousness of the X-III.
The X-III also seemed to capture the multi-miking used in the recording far more readily than the 404. The choir sounded much more on a section-by-section basis with antiphonal effects while on the 404 it was a relatively homogenized whole.
So I guess it boils down to perspective: do you want to hear what the engineers hear or would you prefer to hear a simulation of what the original performance sounded like?
Next we'll move to Radiohead's "OK Computer". But at another time........
To keep it digestible, however, I'll do it in episodes, comparing the two in each on one or two musical pieces and trying to draw tentative conclusions identifying the particular set of strengths and weaknesses of the two.
My methodology is simple: I listen to the whole first and only then proceed to the parts in order to explain and clarify my immediate intuitive response. I swallow the "Eroica" whole and in the light of this gluttonous engorgement then recollect at leisure all the manifold aspects that make up this whole.
In this, I seem to differ from many audiophiles who seem to ingest the dish a tiny mouthful at a time, - through tightly-strained lips as it were; here the "highs", there the "bass", next the "upper-mids", "lower-mids", and "dynamics" with "imagery", "sound-stage", and the rest of the hydra-headed remainder following in dribs and drabs thereafter. Only after totting up the sum of individual attributes do they take the plunge and pronounce on the whole. But each to his own......
The 404 is the latest and highest in the long series beginning with the Lambda back in the days when Valiant Knights were Slaying Fearsome Dragons and Saving Fair Damsels and Plunging their Mighty C...s into Lusty Wenches and......well, if it hadn't been for the Omega the 404 would still be the Stax flagship as it's a direct descendant of the Lambda Pro Signature which was supposed to be the bee's knees when it was first introduced only shortly after the Days When Valiant Knights.......
The X-III hails from the days when Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled the earth and man huddled in caves and spent their days hoping a huge asteroid would come and wipe Mr Rex from the face of the earth. Like the Lambda Signature it used to be the Stax flagship but this was in the days when phones were phones and didn't try to be small speakers resting on the sides of the head.
As the 404 is new and the X-III is old and progress is progress then the comparison might seem to be a waste of time. But I don't think so. I use both phones regularly and I happen to prefer.....well, that would be letting the cat out of the bag, wouldn't it?
I generally listen to the X-III through the SRD-7 transformer hooked up to a massive power amp but to keep the comparison simple, I'll begin by comparing both phones through the Stax 006t headphone amp.
And so to the chase.......
J.S.Bach - St Mathew Passion (Schreier, Phillips)
Appropriate music for the moment and overall I preferred the 404 on this one. This music requires scale and the 404 delivered in a way the X-III couldn't equal. The X-III doesn't expand with the huge choral climaxes in the way the 404 does so effortlessly. With the newer phone you enter into and become part of the acoustic while with the X-III you just hear aspects of this acoustic without ever sensing it as a whole that you're experiencing viscerally. The 404 wraps you in its acoustic; the X-III allows you to hear the various echoes, decays, and reverberations but doesn't invite you in like the 404 does. Paradoxically, the X-III is much closer in its sonic presentation; instruments often seem ear-tweakingly close, whereas the 404 places the strings, choir, and voices back in the auditorium but with the listener inhabiting the same acoustic space. The X-III is more like sitting in a studio control-room listening to the feed from the various microphones picking up the music, the 404 more like sitting in the church attending the original performance.
However, there is more to the story. While the 404 gave a greater sense of the whole on this oratorio, the X-III had quite an edge on some of the parts. It had more timbre, a lot more, and the individual instruments sounded more realistic and with much more of their real-world sonic signature preserved. They also sounded sweeter, prettier, and more fluid, the 404 displaying a few impurities as well as a relatively constricted, homogenized tonal palette. It could occasionally sound more incisive with the upper-registers poking through the mix but the contrast of colour lacked the effortless multifariousness of the X-III.
The X-III also seemed to capture the multi-miking used in the recording far more readily than the 404. The choir sounded much more on a section-by-section basis with antiphonal effects while on the 404 it was a relatively homogenized whole.
So I guess it boils down to perspective: do you want to hear what the engineers hear or would you prefer to hear a simulation of what the original performance sounded like?
Next we'll move to Radiohead's "OK Computer". But at another time........
