[morserotonin]

Quote:

Well, there seems little use posting impressions... seems most people have a pretty good idea of what the product is going to be like already!

I would love to read a quick impression!

 

[Miracles]

It was starting to feel like it!!  

To my surprise they shipped on the 1st as promised and a few of us have received them now.

That's great news! Hopefully reviews start coming in soon.

 

[DefQon]

 
Hopefully a review/impression soon covering all aspects of the headphone itself from the regular stat folks, nerdling, birgir, kevin glimore etc. 

 

[Radio_head]

n3rdling already wrote a couple paragraphs on it thither and yon.  Personally I wouldn't mind hearing from the "irregular" stat folks as well - a wealth of data points is always nice, the fewer the data points the more things can get skewed.

 

[DefQon]

True that. Pm me if needed as I can't find n3rdlings impressions. 

 

[complin]

Well assumptions are it will be a bit tacky, cheap, and plasticy with poor ergonomics.
The next version will probably be better 

  
Quote:

Well, there seems little use posting impressions... seems most people have a pretty good idea of what the product is going to be like already!

 

[Frank I]

I heard them again at the CAS as Drew had two production pairs at our show and they sounded fantastic. I liked both amps and the tube amp sounded better.  OI think these will be a big seller for King Sound.

 

[DairyProduce]

Frank, how do you think they compare to the koss stats and stax?

 

[Frank I]

I have not heard the Koss but the Stax 404 LE they sounded good next to them but I only heard the 4040LE for a limited time and they are discontinued. I think they sound fantastic and for the money will be hard to beat. 

 

[DairyProduce]

cool. thanks!

 

[shipsupt]

So I’ve had a little time to listen to the KS-H1.  I’m using the Kingsound M-20 tube amp with the stock tubes installed.  My initial listening impressions have not been quite as positive as some of those from the audio shows.
 

1. The build quality is pretty much what many expected from a mass produced product; lots of plastic that feels a bit cheap.  They are however quite functional.  They fit fine over my large head and are quite comfortable for long listening sessions.
2. The amps physical build quality is quite good.  We’ve peaked under the hood and there are some good parts in there, but the overall choice of a circuit is still being reviewed.
3. The early reports of “massive bass for an electrostatic” are just not true.  Bass impact is about what you’d expect from any other similar “stat”.
4. For a stat they sound a little slow and clumsy. 
5. As others have reported, they really do fall apart as you drop the volume.  At low volumes all the issues are magnified.
6. They hold up better with the gain up, in fact crank them up and things sound pretty good.  Maybe this is why some of the show impressions have been better, folks are likely listening a little louder than they would at home.
7. I need to do some more listening to figure out exactly where, but they are rolling off at both ends.
8. They seem to have some weird peaks and valleys in FR.  It makes certain areas sound sucked out, and others stand out unnaturally.
9. There is some sort of weird ringing going on. It sounds worse as the tracks get more complicated.  Something is up with either how things are mounted or the damping behind the drivers.
10. They are much more up front than a Lambda.  The presentation is very closed in.  There isn’t much in the way of air.
11. They are not doing anything special in the way of detail extraction.

 
I haven’t had the courage to plug them into a STAX pro-bias amp, but I’d really like to.   I wonder if they’d sound better with a little more “control”, the KS amp may be letting them down.  I also don’t have a normal bias amp to compare them with, but I've heard some slightly better impressions from someone who is running them from a NB amp.
 
If I stop swapping headphones and just listen to them for a while my brain starts to accept the issues and normal and I am able to enjoy listening to them.  Getting away from the details that let them down, the general sound signature is enjoyable, at higher volumes.  I could see these being fine for the office or something, except that you end up listening at such high volumes.
 
It’s great that there is another electrostatic headphone on the market.  Unfortunately they’re going to have to compete with the KOSS ESP-950 and STAX SRS-2170 systems, both of which I’d currently recommend over the new Kingsounds.
 
Give me some time with them, maybe my impressions will change, but I’m not all that impressed so far… and I wanted to be!

 

[DefQon]

Are the pads circumaural? 

 

[shipsupt]

Yes.  And in my case my ears don't rub against the inner lining.  I'm sure the pads are some sort of fake leather, but quite comfortable.

 

[spritzer]

Still waiting on mine but I've been studying pics and measurements of the M-20 amp for the last few days.  While the parts selection is not that bad I have a few reservations about the amp.  First the design, it is clearly based on a Stax design from 1968 which is just about the most simple Stax amp that is possible to build.  Even simpler than the "Egmont" diff amp as this one works off a single filament supply and can even run with just one B+ voltage.  Not a bad circuit at all and they have made some changes but all in, one does wonder whether this is worth 1.5K$. 
 
Now the less good bits.  The front end uses ECC83 which is a lovely tube but the outputs are EL84's which make no sense what so ever.  They are one of my favorite tubes but were never intended to see anything past 300VDC at any time.  Some guitar amps run them at ~420VDC but the goal is to get more distortion, here they are run at +600VDC which is just madness.  No tube curves exist for this range so we can't see just how bad the compression is but I suspect it is quite severe.  I can see their problem as tube choice is rather limited for amps such as this one but there are better alternatives. 
 
Related to the output tubes, their anode resistors are just a problem waiting to surface.  Now the entire amp is SMD so for the anode resistors there are 8 large SMD resistors setup in a series/parallel but they are on the bottom of the PCB so the heat generated has nowhere to go but into the PCB.  They have been measured at 100°C and I very much doubt the PCB material will hold up for long with such abuse.  They are only dissipating 2.2W so a simple swap for a good 5W MOX resistor would make the amp last longer. 

 

[Headphoner]

Quote:

So I’ve had a little time to listen to the KS-H1.  I’m using the Kingsound M-20 tube amp with the stock tubes installed.  My initial listening impressions have not been quite as positive as some of those from the audio shows.
 

1. The build quality is pretty much what many expected from a mass produced product; lots of plastic that feels a bit cheap.  They are however quite functional.  They fit fine over my large head and are quite comfortable for long listening sessions.
2. The amps physical build quality is quite good.  We’ve peaked under the hood and there are some good parts in there, but the overall choice of a circuit is still being reviewed.
3. The early reports of “massive bass for an electrostatic” are just not true.  Bass impact is about what you’d expect from any other similar “stat”.
4. For a stat they sound a little slow and clumsy. 
5. As others have reported, they really do fall apart as you drop the volume.  At low volumes all the issues are magnified.
6. They hold up better with the gain up, in fact crank them up and things sound pretty good.  Maybe this is why some of the show impressions have been better, folks are likely listening a little louder than they would at home.
7. I need to do some more listening to figure out exactly where, but they are rolling off at both ends.
8. They seem to have some weird peaks and valleys in FR.  It makes certain areas sound sucked out, and others stand out unnaturally.
9. There is some sort of weird ringing going on. It sounds worse as the tracks get more complicated.  Something is up with either how things are mounted or the damping behind the drivers.
10. They are much more up front than a Lambda.  The presentation is very closed in.  There isn’t much in the way of air.
11. They are not doing anything special in the way of detail extraction.

 
I haven’t had the courage to plug them into a STAX pro-bias amp, but I’d really like to.   I wonder if they’d sound better with a little more “control”, the KS amp may be letting them down.  I also don’t have a normal bias amp to compare them with, but I've heard some slightly better impressions from someone who is running them from a NB amp.
 
If I stop swapping headphones and just listen to them for a while my brain starts to accept the issues and normal and I am able to enjoy listening to them.  Getting away from the details that let them down, the general sound signature is enjoyable, at higher volumes.  I could see these being fine for the office or something, except that you end up listening at such high volumes.
 
It’s great that there is another electrostatic headphone on the market.  Unfortunately they’re going to have to compete with the KOSS ESP-950 and STAX SRS-2170 systems, both of which I’d currently recommend over the new Kingsounds.
 
Give me some time with them, maybe my impressions will change, but I’m not all that impressed so far… and I wanted to be!

You used the tube amp.  Does the tube amp have a bass boost switch as does the SS amp?  If so, did you use the bass boost for your tests?