[edstrelow]

Got it fixed rather quickly. I will be bringing a meter, soldering iron and some tools to Canjam, along with some sorbothane.

 

[Tachikoma]

How did you repair your 007's cable? Also, does the thickness of the sorbothane matter?

 

[edstrelow]

  How did you repair your 007's cable? Also, does the thickness of the sorbothane matter?

This set apparently got yanked some time back and I have had to repair both sides using 2 different procedures.
 
Firstly you need to identify which of the three cables is broken.  If it's not obvious when you open the cup, then  a meter may be used to   test from the plug to where the cables join the junction, before  the driver.  
 
Even though this is an 007 A it seems to have a weakness just outside the earcups  at the strain relief just like the Mk1. One way I have repaired these  was to  cut off the bottom part of the strain relief and peel the cover from the broken wire to expose the break.  Then I soldered a bit of extra Stax wire  someone once gave me using silver solder. You could use other wire I think.  Then I sealed the wire with black silastic  silicone and when this was dry,heavily wrapped everything in black electrical tape. 
 
 

 
 
For the other side, I unsoldered the wires at the junction in the earcups just before you get to the drivers.  You would have to be damn careful soldering the drivers because you could easily melt the mylar so  this is why I think Stax uses this junction ploy. It is also necessary to identify which wire goes where so you can put it all back together. Then pull the whole cable out of the strain relief ( I still had to cut off the bottom section of the strain relief  to get the cable to move easily.  Then cut off the whole cable below where the break is, reinsert  the cable through the strain relief, strip some cover off the wires and solder the three wires back on the junction.  Obviously this shortens the cable an inch or two.
 
I am not sure exactly what these cables cost to replace,  but I am guessing $100-$200.
 
Some day, after I have finished messing around with modding these phones I will probably buy one along with a new set of earpads.    These breaks were not originally caused by my modding but apparently by the cleaning ladies who sometimes get a bit rambunctious,  (Yeah sure blame the staff!)
 
Let me know if this is not clear
 
As regards the thickness of the sorbothane: yes different thickness give different results.  At the moment I don't have a clear idea what is best and have mostly been using 1/8 inch 40 or 50 duro self-stick.  In some applications I have used  1/4 inch 40 duro, and 1 and 2 mm thick.  Following a suggestion from an advert I saw, I think it may be better to use multiple  smaller pieces (irrespective of what thickness you choose) rather than large pieces. But that is not gospel. This is still very much  a trial and error operation. 
I think the 1/8 sorb is a good starting place.

 

[edstrelow]

Sorbothane damping may be a game changer in headphone design either by forcing manufacturers to start using the stuff or come up with other solutions to cup resonance problems. I am hoping to listen to enough other designs at Canjam to see if any maker have been handling problem better than Stax.  But so far I doubt it  because if they did they would be touting it as  a sales booster.  (Edit: arnaud pointed out recently that Sennheiser may have come to this party at least with their FD800.  In their advertising for the HD 800 they discuss the damping of this phone's metal headband with visco-elastic treatment, which could  be Sorbothane or something similar.  This is of course what I have been saying about the Stax SR007 metal headband for 2 years now.  I have given some links in  a later post below)
 
Cup design seems to be  a black art, by and large we purchasers are happy if they look good and suspect that if they are heavy they will sound good too. Certainly weight will reduce resonance problems, but has obvious restrictions for headphones.  I have noted for years that my heavy, 2 lb Koss ESP6's have less harshness than any Stax phone. http://www.head-fi.org/t/234504/koss-esp6-refurbished-vintage-electrostatics  Unfortunately they also have less dynamics and imaging..
 
Those of us who are electrostatic fans  look to driver design as the key factor.  I can see what Stax was trying to do with the SR009, make a super transparent, but very rigid stator grill, along with a large driver.  And they did get rid of the faulty headband arc design of the SR007, although they continue to sell this model without change.  (Hint  a sorbothane clamp will make it sound better) http://www.head-fi.org/t/671314/stax-sr007-resonance-problems
 
I also understand the emergence of magnetic planar drivers, these are very much like electrostatic drivers and those that I have heard have a similar sound quality.
 
HOW ABOUT NOISE CANCELLING TO CUT RESONANCE?
But the principles of cup design seem to be largely ignored or at least unadvertised in the business. Sorbothane damping as best I understand it,  gets rid of cup vibrations by turning mechanical energy into heat. There may be other materials or other technologies which could also work.  One that occurs to me would be  similar to the technology used in noise-cancelling headphones. Split off an out-of-phase electrical signal from the drivers and feed this into the earcups to cancel the earcup vibrations.
 
Nevertheless, sorbothane damping  is an easy and cheap way to improve the sound of your phones. And by cheap I mean a dollar more or less!  But it does take some trial and error.  One simple way to start is with small pieces, gradually adding more in different locations and listening to see if the sound gets better or worse.  With many phones you can simply stick it to the outside of the earcups although I think you will get more optimal results putting it close to the drivers.
 
PROBLEMS I HAVE HAD WITH SORB
 Not all of my attempts have worked well. Some large pieces of sorb have not sounded good, poorly fastened sorb may make the sound worse, and excessive clamping (when I have used clamps) has not been effective.  Sometimes these misses cause the treble to go bad, sometimes the bass.  However it is no big deal to fix these problems and highly satisfying when you get a better result.
 
CHANGES IN SOUND SIGNATURE?
Also interesting is that sometimes you can change the apparent sonic signature of the phones with sorb.  I recently pulled up the mid frequencies of both the SR007 and the Sigma/404 simply by cutting larger pieces of sorb into smaller pieces and re-gluing them in place.  Sorb gives you some freedom to tailor the sound of headphones to your own taste.  You may find that a cheaper damped phone rises in the ranking of quality.  I really like my damped Lambda LNS and 404 and found it hard for a long time to get the SR007 to the point where I really thought it was better than the much cheaper Lambdas.  soren_brix on the other hand seemed more impressed by his damped Sigma/404 than the damped Lambdas.  I suspect either that we just like different things or that we are using slightly different amounts, thicknesses and duro of our sorb and this may be affecting our impressions.
 
Right now I am packing up   2 CD transports and dacs, three Stax amps and 5 or 6 headphones to take to Canjam.

 

[wink]

Bon voyage and happy meeting, greeting and listening.
 
p.s. don't go sticking any sorb on the Hifiman HE-1000 without Fang's permission....  

 

[edstrelow]

  Bon voyage and happy meeting, greeting and listening.
 
p.s. don't go sticking any sorb on the Hifiman HE-1000 without Fang's permission....  

Thanks. It should be fun. The last one I went to was in LA and that was cool.
 
Are you sure that other makers are not already using sorb?  Arnaud just today steered me to the Sennheiser HD 800.
 
Evidently Sennheiser had a problem with the metal headband used with the HD800similar to what I noted with the Stax SR007.
 
This is from their webpage: "Metal headband with inner-damping element"  http://en-us.sennheiser.com/dynamic-headphones-high-end-around-ear-hd-800. It even says "minimal resonance."
 
This you tube video shows the headband in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlA84jbTkxk
 
This one talks about "the worlds most advanced sound dampening frame:"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttLgOWgk7PU
 
This is from the HD 800 ad on Amazon:
 
*The headband consists of a sandwich design in which a metal layer is covered with several layers of plastic. The high-tech plastic possesses incredible attenuation characteristics and ensures that oscillations are not transmitted to the headphone mountings."
 

Sounds like things I have been saying.
 
There appears to be damping under the band. Could it be sorbothane? If you have one to hand possibly you could have a look.

 

[wink]

Quote:edstrelow

 There appears to be damping under the band. Could it be sorbothane? If you have one to hand possibly you could have a look.

I think it's the cheese from a MacDonalds junior cheeseburger......   

 

[edstrelow]

  I think it's the cheese from a MacDonalds junior cheeseburger......   

The Aussie version of sorbothane?

 

[Tachikoma]

 
 
For the other side, I unsoldered the wires at the junction in the earcups just before you get to the drivers.  You would have to be damn careful soldering the drivers because you could easily melt the mylar so  this is why I think Stax uses this junction ploy. It is also necessary to identify which wire goes where so you can put it all back together. Then pull the whole cable out of the strain relief ( I still had to cut off the bottom section of the strain relief  to get the cable to move easily.  Then cut off the whole cable below where the break is, reinsert  the cable through the strain relief, strip some cover off the wires and solder the three wires back on the junction.  Obviously this shortens the cable an inch or two.

With the 007 mk1, I learnt that the wires can't be pulled up from the strain relief, because Stax uses really thin and tiny wires to connect the drivers to the rest of the cable. I had the molded part cut in half with a scapel, and found a semi-translucent plastic piece inside where the cable has to thread through. In the end I tossed that part, pulled the wires through the strain relief and glued the strain relief back together with araldite. I'm willing to put money on this repaired cable lasting a lot longer than the original design - why in the world did Stax overcomplicate things so much on this cable?

 

[edstrelow]

Sounds like a little different design than the Mk2 where are long as I removed the bottom half of the strain relief I could pull the complete cable through.

 

[Earspeakers]

Hi Guys,
   I've got some time now and so would like to experiment with this. I've read the thread but am not clear on an approach. Caveats:
 

1. I don't want to disassemble or extensively modify the headphones, just add it externally to where it will have the greatest potential effect
2. I'd also like to do blind A-B tests. Which is two headphones in the same line (Lambda-Lambda or Omega-Omega) one with, and one without. I'll have my wife place the speakers on my head with my eye closed so I don't know which is which.

 
Ideally they'd be the same model, but I have a 404 and 404LE that practically sound the same. So, given a Lambda frame, what should I do given that I'm not going to disassemble? 
 
I haven't worked with Sorb previously, so please recommend a source from Amazon (Prime shipping ideally) that would be a good choice for this test if you have any thoughts on this. 
 
Thanks!

 

[edstrelow]

Lambdas are a problem  because they are virtually all plastic grill and you need a solid flat spot to put the sorb. That's why soren_brix and I opened them up and put it on the metal baffle. That also means you are damping a spot close to the origin of vibrations and the sorb should be more effective there.
 
The only spot  I can see where you can put anything on the outside of the Lambda  case are the thin strips of plastic at the edge next to the earpads. Thin strips of sorb there might just do something.
.
With the 007A and SRX3, I placed much larger strips around the outer edges of the ear cups and of course, I maintain that the metal arcs  of the 007 need damping.
 
I never understood why people here talk about blind testing of tweaks, cables and the like  but not when it comes to picking new equipment. Can you really say those new $1500 cans were objectively better than the $500 pair. We also chronically misue the term double-blind. That refers to a type of testing in which neither the testor nor testee know what is coming next.
 
I have spent 9 hrs today  at Canjam. I was able to do some A/B demos with my two high bias Sigmas, one damped and the other not. Most people said the differences were clear. Maybe 2 people in the whole said they couldn't tell the difference.
 
My basic test is to listen to familiar music and determine if anything sounds different or better.

 

[edstrelow]

Set-up at Canjam. 2 cd systems, 3 Stax amps and 5 Stax phones, 4 of them damped.
 

 

[Earspeakers]

I never understood why people here talk about blind testing of tweaks, cables and the like  but not when it comes to picking new equipment. Can you really say those new $1500 cans were objectively better than the $500 pair. 

 
Yes, because there's 'better' and 'different'. I only listen to classical music (am a musician), and can absolutely hear when a component screws up the sound of a cello, piano or orchestra. Everything does, except Stax which is the only component which gets it to the point where I can't distinguish from reality. Then there's different, which are changes in tonality and presentation usually. For example, the 4070 sounds "flatter" and "thinner" than the 009 - but it's just as real. It's no different than listening in a different concert hall. 
 
Finally there are imaginary differences. I notice they seem to happen most often when I first hear something, and after listening for a while. The first bit is probably a hormone rush from trying something new. The later bit is my brain rewiring itself to the sound. The latter effect happens so frequently is the reason we need blind tests. 
 
Calibration is also needed. I calibrate myself against my concert grand in the living room, to the sound of a recorded grand. 
 
Finally though isn't it odd you complain about how people say one component is better than an other, when you are promoting sorbothane as a big improvement?

We also chronically misue the term double-blind. That refers to a type of testing in which neither the testor nor testee know what is coming next.

 
Which is why I called it a blind test. 
 
I have spent 9 hrs today  at Canjam. I was able to do some A/B demos with my two high bias Sigmas, one damped and the other not. Most people said the differences were clear. Maybe 2 people in the whole said they couldn't tell the difference.
 
My basic test is to listen to familiar music and determine if anything sounds different or better.

 

[edstrelow]

   
Yes, because there's 'better' and 'different'. I only listen to classical music (am a musician), and can absolutely hear when a component screws up the sound of a cello, piano or orchestra. Everything does, except Stax which is the only component which gets it to the point where I can't distinguish from reality. Then there's different, which are changes in tonality and presentation usually. For example, the 4070 sounds "flatter" and "thinner" than the 009 - but it's just as real. It's no different than listening in a different concert hall. 
 
Finally there are imaginary differences. I notice they seem to happen most often when I first hear something, and after listening for a while. The first bit is probably a hormone rush from trying something new. The later bit is my brain rewiring itself to the sound. The latter effect happens so frequently is the reason we need blind tests. 
 
Calibration is also needed. I calibrate myself against my concert grand in the living room, to the sound of a recorded grand. 
 
Finally though isn't it odd you complain about how people say one component is better than an other, when you are promoting sorbothane as a big improvement?
 
Which is why I called it a blind test. 
 
I have spent 9 hrs today  at Canjam. I was able to do some A/B demos with my two high bias Sigmas, one damped and the other not. Most people said the differences were clear. Maybe 2 people in the whole said they couldn't tell the difference.
 
My basic test is to listen to familiar music and determine if anything sounds different or better.

I have been a stat fan most of my life,  first with Koss, then Stax and even Jaecklin. I appreciate the sense of reality they provide and their tonal accuracy.  I take it you hear a lot of acoustic music that gives a reference to decide if a sound is accurate. People who only know amplified sound lack this reference and mainly seem to judge on the basis of bass slam, as in a rock concert. And if that's what you like and will be listening to and don't mind damaging your hearing, that's fine.
 
The main criticism of stats is edginess of treble and lack of dynamics because they are so hard to drive. That's why the $5,000 amplifiers. The sorb helps in both respects, even though you have to turn the volume up a bit more.  Having just spent time at Canjam, so do the $5,000 amplifiers.