'90s Stax Headphones

[charliebrown24]

My dad had a pair of Stax Electret headphones from the '90s and he gave them to me, since he doesn't use them. I was wondering how I could hook them up with a Sony MHC-ECL99BT or if my laptop would be able to power them and how I could hook them up to my laptop? They look something like these.

 

[Nemoona]

Unless you mean plugging the Stax amp into your laptop, it shouldn't work.
Stax headphones are electrostatic so while they sound really nice, they need an electrostatic amplifier.
It might work if you plug the Stax amp into your laptop, at most you would need an adapter.

 

[charliebrown24]

Yeah, plug the amp into the laptop. Do you know where I can find an adapter for it?

 

[Nemoona]

It depends on what the amp accepts as an input, do you have any photos of the back?

 

[charliebrown24]

It looks like this.  http://cdn.head-fi.org/3/31/31c2ad3a_StaxSR-34back.jpg

 

[Nemoona]

Hmm, that's definitely a little harder than just RCA input or TRS... the cables on your amp are still used today but I've only ever seen them in speakers.  If you had an audio receiver, that would be the easiest option because you could just attach banana plugs to the end of the Stax amp cables.
 
If the model of Sony system you have is the one with the 2 RCA outputs on the front, you should be able to stick banana plugs on the end of the cables and then get a banana plug to RCA adapter to connect to your System.
 
If that doesn't work you could also try to again attach the banana plugs but instead get an banana plug to 3.5mm adapter so you could try and connect it to your laptop (or Sony depending on the input).
 
I know these options are unusual and it would likely take a trip to Radio Shack but the headphones you have are old and the cables are only often seen in speaker systems.  If it makes you feel better about going these lengths, Stax headphones are among the highest in audio quality and some electrostatic headphones from the 90's  are still regarded among the best in the world (namely the Sennheiser HE-90).
 
Hope this could help, if it didn't just explain why and maybe I can try and find another way around it.

 

[chinsettawong]

The unit shows in the picture isn't an amplifier. It contains a couple of step up transformers for left and right channel. You'll need to hook up this unit's input to a loudspeakers power amp.

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