[greenhorn]

How come that there are no aftermarket cables for electrostats?

Is there a sort of general consensus that cables don't make a difference in the world of electrostats?

 

[QQQ]

Quote:

Is there a sort of general consensus that cables don't make a difference in the world of electrostats?

Then cables do not make difference at all. So it's kinda impossible to have such a consensus.

I've got another theory for you: given the fact that e-stat market are much smaller than dynamics' the cable manufacturers don't bother to produce aftermarket cables for 'stats cause there will be not much profit anyway.

 

[webbie64]

I seem to recall in recent times someone posting in The New Stax Thread that they had intentions to make an all silver cable to replace the Stax one - I think on a set of O2s. So maybe the aftermarket cable replacement for electrostats is still in its infancy, but may yet grow?

 

[2deadeyes]

Are you referring to recabling the Stax cable on the headphones themselves? If so, I think Stax has it down already IIRC from several Stax related threads.

 

[krmathis]

Cables certainly makes a difference on electrostatics, as well as dynamics.
As others above I think its just a matter of market share, and hence no vendor have so far found it worth to put together an aftermarket cable.

 

[spritzer]

Stax was an early adopter of cable research in the mid 80's with PC-OCC wiring but creating the ribbon wires is out of the scope of most "cable makers". These are very different parameters we are talking about with the need for dielectric strength well above 2kV in a flexible, flat arrangement. Fixing the cables is also an issue as all of the ESP's have molded cable entries as if the cable is pulled hard, the driver go to the scrap heap. The signal enters almost always via some metal bridges and if the are pulled out then the drivers are destroyed.

Weaving the cables is something which was abandoned in the 70's to lower the capacitance of the system but I'm sure somebody will come up with some great new woven recable and butcher the phones like Jena did. The electrostatic phones are almost always held back by the amps and source so I'd rather spend money there then something as useless as a recable.

 

[DavidNY]

As a former HE90 owner I investigated recabling options. The answer is it's a custom job, and becasue of the delicate connections to the headphones most people are not interested in recabling. To much risk of damage.

In my experience, cables do make a difference. But there are plenty of enhancements one can make in the sound reproduction chain other than a the headphone cable that will have a significant impact on the overall result.