*Sniff* Well done. One of the best Stax SR-009 reviews around here.

I heard an ancient STAX system a long time ago, from the 1980's and it blew me away. Very unique sound signature that electrostatic inherently has in general imo, this review I have no doubt is true. I imagine it is heavily amp dependent too, so the new Carbon amp probably is making it sing compared to other reviewers who used older amps.

Tl;dr: Stax > everything else

You can not call anything legendary until it has been discontinue! Or else people will call everything legendary like LCD4 or Susvara or HD800 etch... And no LCD-4 is not legendary. My god no. My profile picture dictates what is legendary if you are wondering what is consider legendary...

Overall good explanation in telling everyone to need expensive gear to have the best sound .

How about a living legend, protoss? I agree we should use the term sparingly, but I think the SR-009 deserves it. Its impact among our niche speaks for itself I think.

Also lol! That's another way to put it.

It is a very difficult question and answer to give... Is the 009 the best headphone out on market? Yes, but there are other major competition out there.

My current list is like this:
Abyss Phi
SR-009
SR-007
Susvara

I consider these 4 the best you can have at the moment. But I just cant rapp my head around and call them legends. And sadly i like the Abyss Phi alot more than the 009. No plastic to be found on the phi!!

Abyss Phi and Susvara are basically brand spanking new, definitely too early to call them legends. Not to mention both of those brands like to recycle headphones so quickly, basically preventing them from becoming legends since they end up so short lived - e.g. Abyss AB-1266, Abyss Phi, Abyss Phi CC, HE1000, HE1000 v2, Susvara, when is the Susvara v2 coming I wonder?

But aside from Stax, some of my favorite headphones will probably never go down as legends so I'm not too concerned.

Excellent view on Stax SR-009. People has been mistaken the Stax for too long, and spend money in a forever rabbit holes trying to chase the performances from dynamic and Planar systems. Little did they know Stax is the pinnacle of headphones performances, and all they need is a good energizer....not some wall of fame stuff, or funky Measurement graphs O_O

Excellent review of an endgame setup. I could dream of s.th. like this to delineate my own route to heaven. BTW, glad to hear that Hugo 2 can be part of a magical setup.

What cabling do you use? Into Hugo 2, and out of its SE out? Hugo 2 in line-out fixed voltage mode?

Thanks again.

I use a fairly standard optical TOSLINK cable, fed by a Breeze DU-U8 which connects to my computer with a standard USB cable, so no fancy digital cables. And when the DU-U8 suddenly died, I used a standard USB to mini USB cable from my phone.

Hugo 2 was connected to the amp via Kimber Kable Hero RCA interconnects (0.5m) with Neutrik XLR adapters.

now to hook up an M-scaler to your Hugo 2... ack tears already just thinking about how it'd sound on that rig!

don't forget the $1900 interconnects he plans to use with the M-Scaler