[Azrael3000]

So after nearly one year after first finding this thread my friend and I have finally completed our alpha version. It was a lot of fun to work through this thread and then make everything a reality. Thank you Wachara for the inspiration and the help throughout the seven years in which this thread exists.

Here are some pics of our headphones and the step up transformer:
https://imgur.com/gallery/YsZCJ

Our goal was not only to build the headphones but to also compile a guide that avoids the necessity of reading 190 pages of forum threads. Of course during the process of building the headphones we did not really do a lot of writing so our document is in a rather bad state. But over the course of the next few weeks we will work on this document and we hope to publish it here before the new year.

Oh and as I said, this is version alpha, so a lot of lessons learned for version beta next year

 

[Muamp]

Nice work!
Some build photos would be great.

David.

 

[chinsettawong]

So after nearly one year after first finding this thread my friend and I have finally completed our alpha version. It was a lot of fun to work through this thread and then make everything a reality. Thank you Wachara for the inspiration and the help throughout the seven years in which this thread exists.

Here are some pics of our headphones and the step up transformer:
https://imgur.com/gallery/YsZCJ

Our goal was not only to build the headphones but to also compile a guide that avoids the necessity of reading 190 pages of forum threads. Of course during the process of building the headphones we did not really do a lot of writing so our document is in a rather bad state. But over the course of the next few weeks we will work on this document and we hope to publish it here before the new year.

Oh and as I said, this is version alpha, so a lot of lessons learned for version beta next year

Congratulations! I really like the pictures of the two of you smiling. Keep up the good work. And please show us more pictures and details of your build.

Wachara C.

 

[wppk]

Hello there
I don't really now if this will have completely its place here, but as it comes from a stax DIM ( do it myself) maybe it has, and it will probably interest some people. I receiced this morning a combho, stax sr 5 gold, out of wich I took the drivers to make a pro SRX as I often do now. The energizer, <with it , is a sdr7 mkII, with what I think to be an original pro output on it, added to the usual normal bias output. I didn't intend to use this energiser, but wanted to control it. I did it with an srx, then, I was curious to see what would be the result of this old energiser with my stax 007, which I don(t use anymore because compared to the srx, on the original amp sold with it as on my retubed and recaped trm t1, it sounds a bit dark. plugged it in the srd7 mkII. WOW! astonishing ! the 007 sounded balanced, compared to before, and really very very good ! Well, they cannot be of the same use as the srx which I use for monitoring, but now, there real music and life out of it !
Has anybody tried that ? I guess so. But the result is great !

 

[wppk]

yap ! nice picture of nice fellows ! Great !

 

[wppk]

and that idea of making a "how to" book is really good ! thanks !

 

[chinsettawong]

Over at the other thread, people are discussing about the new electrostatic headphones that don't have any dust cover. I would say that it's not a very good idea. I learned that since the very first day I made my headphones. Without the dust cover, you run the risk of not only having the dust in the drivers, but also the risk of having the sweat in there. I would recommend that you insulate the stators well and at least put a dust cover on the side facing your ear. If you have good insulated stators, the dust cover on the other side is not really necessary.

 

[zzhetanay]

great work I like

 

[jgazal]

Over at the other thread, people are discussing about the new electrostatic headphones that don't have any dust cover. I would say that it's not a very good idea. I learned that since the very first day I made my headphones. Without the dust cover, you run the risk of not only having the dust in the drivers, but also the risk of having the sweat in there. I would recommend that you insulate the stators well and at least put a dust cover on the side facing your ear. If you have good insulated stators, the dust cover on the other side is not really necessary.

In your opinion, what are the disadvantages of insulating the stators?

 

[chinsettawong]

Wel, I really can't think of any disadvantages. The only thing that would bother might be the extra thickness of the insulation. Since the gap between the stator and the diaphragm is already so small, the added thickness makes the gap even smaller.

 

[maxim87]

Hi. I'm new on the forum.

A search on this thread found no answers. Can someone tried it? Sorry if it was already.

I know that it is impossible to use a conductive diaphragm. But if we make an inverted electrostatic driver? where the stators is supplied +-300 volts, and the diaphragm recieves an acoustic signal. Advantages: simplifies amplifier, potentially dangerous voltage become farther away from the head. Disadvantages: it is not known how to behave nanometer conductive layer will not collapse when exposed to vibrations. I built a small test driver with active area of 5*5 cm, using a 6 micron aluminized Mylar and PCB for the stators. (in plans to make the stators are poorly conductive). Sounds good, after a month of work. What could be more disadvantages except the loss of electric contact over time?

p.s. in future ,when will be available large-area graphene films for headphones, other designs will be irrelevant, except inverted ES, am I right?

 

[jgazal]

Impossible is not appropriate. Once I asked that question in other forum and the answer I received is that although possible, the diaphragm mass increase and it is driven single ended which in consequence increase distortion levels. I would not know by which factor.

 

[bruma]

Hi. I'm new on the forum.

A search on this thread found no answers. Can someone tried it? Sorry if it was already.

I know that it is impossible to use a conductive diaphragm. But if we make an inverted electrostatic driver? where the stators is supplied +-300 volts, and the diaphragm recieves an acoustic signal. Advantages: simplifies amplifier, potentially dangerous voltage become farther away from the head. Disadvantages: it is not known how to behave nanometer conductive layer will not collapse when exposed to vibrations. I built a small test driver with active area of 5*5 cm, using a 6 micron aluminized Mylar and PCB for the stators. (in plans to make the stators are poorly conductive). Sounds good, after a month of work. What could be more disadvantages except the loss of electric contact over time?

p.s. in future ,when will be available large-area graphene films for headphones, other designs will be irrelevant, except inverted ES, am I right?

Hi, there is at least one other option with the bias on the stator (one stator and 2 diaphragm's) shown in this page: http://www.resmayerling.be/electronica/headphone.html it allows the use of aluminized mylar and seems pretty easy to construct. I would be curious how it works.

 

[chinsettawong]

Hi. I'm new on the forum.

A search on this thread found no answers. Can someone tried it? Sorry if it was already.

I know that it is impossible to use a conductive diaphragm. But if we make an inverted electrostatic driver? where the stators is supplied +-300 volts, and the diaphragm recieves an acoustic signal. Advantages: simplifies amplifier, potentially dangerous voltage become farther away from the head. Disadvantages: it is not known how to behave nanometer conductive layer will not collapse when exposed to vibrations. I built a small test driver with active area of 5*5 cm, using a 6 micron aluminized Mylar and PCB for the stators. (in plans to make the stators are poorly conductive). Sounds good, after a month of work. What could be more disadvantages except the loss of electric contact over time?

p.s. in future ,when will be available large-area graphene films for headphones, other designs will be irrelevant, except inverted ES, am I right?

That's interesting idea. Can you show us what you have done so far?

 

[Torac]

Hi, I'm also quite new to head-fi.

Firstly I want to congratulate wachara on his efforts, as his headphones are hugely impressive, and I appreciate the fact he is still active on this thread.

I have been reading this forum for quite a while now, just finished reading all 190 pages, which means I shouldn't repeat things said previously, hopefully. Everything done here is really impressive and I hope to make my own electrostatic headphones too sometime soon, probably in or just after December as I will have time off of college. I have access to a 3D printer and laser cutter at my college so I plan on using those to construct the headphones however I am trying to learn to 3D model a casing similar to the orpheus one made by wachara but am finding it difficult to replicate, especially as I am unsure of the limits of a 3D printer.

I also have one idea that I haven't seen posted in this thread yet. Inside the modern stax earspeakers I have read about their use of a free field eq that makes them sound like speakers in a huge room, I was wondering if anyone knows how to make one of these eq's as I have heard its effect in the l300, l500 and l700 and it sounds amazing.

Here is the model I have made, so far: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EZt9uiKQctj7wiTE0e03FjR1q5UxWslj/view?usp=sharing