Hi,
I have some questions about these if I may. I need to go to a very lightweight headphone based system because I suffer from worsening long term chronic pain that does not at all appreciate the weight of any full sized headphone on my head (well, not for the duration of a typical symphony at any rate).
I would like to know how good are these particular Stax models for clasical music please? I find that many headphones really struggle with classical and particuarly fail to get massed violin and brass sounds correct (textures are wrong, too steely and grainy sounding and either too thin or too thick). Oddly enough, of all the headphones I have heard thus far, the little unpretentious Sennheiser PXC300 do a really good job with this and are very neck friendly because of the very light weight. But I can't help wondering if these Stax systems would be a step upwards, even though I have compared my PXC300 to a very large number of other headphones over the last 5 years (including many models up to $1,000) and still prefer the PXC300.
What I particularly like about my PXC300 is the incredible clear sound, clarity and "speed" of response and I was thinking that these should also be electrostatic strengths.
The second question is how does the battery version of this Stax set compare to the "desktop" version soundwise? I was wondering if the fact that the desktop version is powered by a wall wart would nullify the possible sonic advantages of the desktop system over the battery powered version? I had been hoping to power my entire loungeroom headphone system from batteries and thus far the laptop and DAC are battery powered. But my current XCan obviously is not battery powered.
But then again, I have read reports of the older battery Stax version that suggested it does not achieve the same sound quality. In the end, I suppose I would eventually build a regulated battery supply to power the desktop version anyway, but that would neccessite a much higher overall cost as compared to the battery version to begin with (I do not build cheap power supplies, as I am all too aware of how important they are).
So I am at a crossroads at the moment. With my limited choices I have narrowed things down to:
1. Get a more suitable, solid state amplifier to match the existing PXC300 better (i.e, they match beautifully with my Xonar ST soundcard but I can't / won't use the main PC in the loungeroom or bedroom).
or
2. Get the Westone UM3 which I have heard and really like too (good with classical), but that needs very careful amp matching in order to minimise hiss levels at "idle".
or
3. Get one of these Stax systems.