antonyfirst
Headphoneus Supremus
Thanks to Ludoo, who pushed me until I decided to try, I made my first two interconnects.
My very first one is made of Tasker OFC copper and connectors. It's a Mini to RCA which looks fancy (especially for the connectors, which I simply bought
) and sounds very nice with Stax SRS-005.
It's extremely flexible, and I'll try to find it some use with portables. The wires are twisted and uncovered, that's nice to see.
The second one took me three hours to build: I had a Headphile blackmax lying around, which was Mini to Mini and very stiff, so I didn't have any use for it in my portable rig. It was expensive and useless, so I decided to work on it.
I wanted to see if there were any improvement with Blackmax on my Babystax, so I took the soldering iron and cut the blackmax to single wires.
The blackmax uses a silver wire and a copper wire for each signal channel, and two copper wires for ground.
So I kept track of the two couples of wires (one for each signal), and sent them to two Tasker RCA connectors (red for right, green for left). Ground became a copper wire for each channel. The Tasker are very expensive, and the brand is one of the best in Italy. I also replaced the Neutrik 1/8 jack with a Tasker one. This wasn't strictly necessary, but it helped me to understand how blackmax was made in the first place. It took me three hours of hard work to complete it, but it works very well (I tried it with Stax too). I covered the cable with laces, but one of them is too wrinkled as I used a bit too much length.
I haven't compared the two directly, but the Stax sound good with both. The blackmax is not harsh, but seems to add some lower treble splash, more precise imaging/separation and sense of space. The strong midbass authority of the Stax SR-003 is tamed too, while it's fuller with the copper cable.
I'll keep updating sound description while listening to more songs with both
Source is an iMod with blackgates.
Pics will come tomorrow.
My very first one is made of Tasker OFC copper and connectors. It's a Mini to RCA which looks fancy (especially for the connectors, which I simply bought
It's extremely flexible, and I'll try to find it some use with portables. The wires are twisted and uncovered, that's nice to see.
The second one took me three hours to build: I had a Headphile blackmax lying around, which was Mini to Mini and very stiff, so I didn't have any use for it in my portable rig. It was expensive and useless, so I decided to work on it.
I wanted to see if there were any improvement with Blackmax on my Babystax, so I took the soldering iron and cut the blackmax to single wires.
The blackmax uses a silver wire and a copper wire for each signal channel, and two copper wires for ground.
So I kept track of the two couples of wires (one for each signal), and sent them to two Tasker RCA connectors (red for right, green for left). Ground became a copper wire for each channel. The Tasker are very expensive, and the brand is one of the best in Italy. I also replaced the Neutrik 1/8 jack with a Tasker one. This wasn't strictly necessary, but it helped me to understand how blackmax was made in the first place. It took me three hours of hard work to complete it, but it works very well (I tried it with Stax too). I covered the cable with laces, but one of them is too wrinkled as I used a bit too much length.
I haven't compared the two directly, but the Stax sound good with both. The blackmax is not harsh, but seems to add some lower treble splash, more precise imaging/separation and sense of space. The strong midbass authority of the Stax SR-003 is tamed too, while it's fuller with the copper cable.
I'll keep updating sound description while listening to more songs with both
Source is an iMod with blackgates.
Pics will come tomorrow.
