[MacedonianHero]

I know this may be out of topic, and I apologize for that. However, since the 009 and 007 is being used in relative terms to describe the sound of the Abyss, this might be useful...


Below are the overlaid left channel FR measurements from the 009 and 007 using Tyll/Innerfidelity data (hopefully Tyll doesn't mind). The two are normalized so that the FR are matched at 1 kHz.


MH, while not the same set from the link you provided, the responses IMO seem match closely to those.





Seems to me the 007 has more bass than the 009 in this set of measurements. The 007 does have a steeper drop in the bass to sub-bass transition though.

Here is another view using similar scaling than Arnaud:






Now, regarding the Abyss distortion in the sub-bass region. According to Innerfidelity, it is ~1% at 20 Hz @ 90 dB/SPL, and below that throughout the sub-bass and bass region... and so is the 009. Pretty close IMO, so not sure what you mean. the Abyss does have more distortion in the mids and highs relative to the 009 though.


Innerfidelity linky to Abyss measurements:
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/JPSLabsAbyssAB1266.pdf

Not sure if you realize that 1kHz is just an arbitrary point? Turn up the volume a bit on one and the graphs shift up. Basically they are the same and most likely within the tolerances of the measurement system. Pretty darn close, just like I hear it too. BTW, they are so close, I would hardly call one bass heavy and the other bass lite.

Have a look at the same pair of headphones measured by Tyll (before and after burn-in). Not sure how much of the variability in the bass to attribute to burn-in vs. headphone placement vs. measurement variability. There's not much variability here, but its close....just like the SR007 and SR009. When headphones measure this close, then I default to first hand subjective listening (which as stated they're pretty close indeed to my ears and on my rig).

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009SZ91278.pdf
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009SZ91278afterburnin.pdf

And with araud's measurements, I shall default to the author's comments and go with Tyll's data instead.

 

[grokit]

Quote:

There is no similar setup for lcd3 and stax. The builds are very different after the dac.

 
I drive my LCD with a modified WA22 that also acts as a preamp to my electrostatic amp, which is solid state and neutral and amplifies the same sound signature for the 009 that the LCD receives.
 
I prefer to bypass the tubes when I listen to my phono amp with the 009, and I cannot do that for the LCD since I use it direct out of the tubed preamp.
 
But for digital the setups are the same; I can also drive power hounds like the HE6/K1000 out of it through speaker taps and that's the same for both digital and phono as well.

 

[citadel]

There is no similar setup for lcd3 and stax. The builds are very different after the dac.

 
Sure. But I did not mean literally similar (hence the quotations around the word similar) but somewhat similar.


 
 
 
 
Quote:

 
I drive my LCD with a modified WA22 that also acts as a preamp to my electrostatic amp, which is solid state and neutral and amplifies the same sound signature for the 009 that the LCD receives.
 
I prefer to bypass the tubes when I listen to my phono amp with the 009, and I cannot do that for the LCD since I use it direct out of the tubed preamp.
 
But for digital the setups are the same; I can also drive power hounds like the HE6/K1000 out of it through speaker taps and that's the same for both digital and phono as well.

 
From your own 'similar' setup, does the LCD 3 have a more bass (in terms of impact and amount (without bloat of course))?

 

[citadel]

Quote:

From your own 'similar' setup, does the LCD 3 have more bass (in terms of impact and amount (without bloat of course))?

Sorry, I meant to say with regards to bass quality, impact and tightness without elevation (ala Dr dres).

 

[ultrabike]

Quote:

Not sure if you realize that 1kHz is just an arbitrary point? Turn up the volume a bit on one and the graphs shift up. Basically they are the same and most likely within the tolerances of the measurement system. Pretty darn close, just like I hear it too.

BTW, they are so close, I would hardly call one bass heavy and the other bass lite.

Have a look at the same pair of headphones measured by Tyll (before and after burn-in). Not sure how much of the variability in the bass to attribute to burn-in vs. headphone placement vs. measurement variability. There's not much variability here, but its close....just like the SR007 and SR009. When headphones measure this close, then I default to first hand subjective listening (which as stated they're pretty close indeed to my ears and on my rig).

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009SZ91278.pdf
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009SZ91278afterburnin.pdf

And with araud's measurements, I shall default to the author's comments and go with Tyll's data instead.

 
Dunno, I'm not sure I would leave those differences to measurement tolerances...
 
In this THIS article, which you co-authored, it seems it was concluded that FR measurements are fairly repeatable up to the midrange region....
 

 
Now lets normalize the 007 and 009 IF measurements so that the bass better aligns itself (basically your suggestion to turn the volume up):
 

 
IMO, where we set the normalization point (1 kHz, 100 Hz, ...) just means whether the glass is half full or half empty... In the previous post, one could say the 007 has more bass than the 009 relative to the upper-midrange. Now we could say that the 009 has more upper-midrange than the 007 relative to the bass... which is basically the same thing.
 
To me this and most measurements I've seen of these two cans show the 007 with a clear emphasis in the 50 to 60 Hz region relative to the 009, and the 009 with a clear emphasis in the 1 to 2 kHz region, relative to the 007. Upper-mids tend to be higher in the 007 as well...
 
I have heard the 007 and 009, and thought the 009 was brighter... But it was on different setups and I was not comparing them directly at the time.
 
Going from memory, the Abyss is different from the 007 and 009 IMO. Less lean and a more bass. Very high quality bass as well. Quite a bit of air and speed for an ortho. Perhaps a little bright still IMO, but not too much. Not as clean as the Stax offerings in the treble.

 

[arnaud]

Quote:

 

 
IMO, where we set the normalization point (1 kHz, 100 Hz, ...) just means whether the glass is half full or half empty... In the previous post, one could say the 007 has more bass than the 009 relative to the upper-midrange. Now we could say that the 009 has more upper-midrange than the 007 relative to the bass... which is basically the same thing.
 
To me this and most measurements I've seen of these two cans show the 007 with a clear emphasis in the 50 to 60 Hz region relative to the 009, and the 009 with a clear emphasis in the 1 to 2 kHz region, relative to the 007. Upper-mids tend to be higher in the 007 as well...
 
I have heard the 007 and 009, and thought the 009 was brighter... But it was on different setups and I was not comparing them directly at the time. If you feel the 009 and the 007 sound very close, why did you end up going for the 009?

 
UB, I think the truth lies in the middle really. I certainly feel the bass is more prominent on the 007, but not that the 009 is bass light for most of the recordings and levels at which I listen to. I do also hear the slight emphasis in the upper midrange / lower treble of the 007mk1. It's more pronounced with the mk2 though, and I prefer the mk1 for that reason. 
 
The 009 is more neutral sounding to my ears and objectively so: it is pretty darn close to flat on Tyll's rig when using a DF compensation curve. While brighter than the 007mk1, it is not unnaturally so for me. I attribute this to a mid/treble presence that comes from the extended bandwidth of that particular design, as opposed to bandwidth limited transducers that may rely on undamped diaphragm resonances to boost the treble presence.

 

[Joe Skubinski]

Mid/treble presence due to extended bandwidth? Turning up the volume to resolve FR differences between models?:rolleyes:

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

 
Dunno, I'm not sure I would leave those differences to measurement tolerances...
 
In this THIS article, which you co-authored, it seems it was concluded that FR measurements are fairly repeatable up to the midrange region....
 

 
Now lets normalize the 007 and 009 IF measurements so that the bass better aligns itself (basically your suggestion to turn the volume up):
 

 
IMO, where we set the normalization point (1 kHz, 100 Hz, ...) just means whether the glass is half full or half empty... In the previous post, one could say the 007 has more bass than the 009 relative to the upper-midrange. Now we could say that the 009 has more upper-midrange than the 007 relative to the bass... which is basically the same thing.
 
To me this and most measurements I've seen of these two cans show the 007 with a clear emphasis in the 50 to 60 Hz region relative to the 009, and the 009 with a clear emphasis in the 1 to 2 kHz region, relative to the 007. Upper-mids tend to be higher in the 007 as well...
 
I have heard the 007 and 009, and thought the 009 was brighter... But it was on different setups and I was not comparing them directly at the time.
 
Going from memory, the Abyss is different from the 007 and 009 IMO. Less lean and a more bass. Very high quality bass as well. Quite a bit of air and speed for an ortho. Perhaps a little bright still IMO, but not too much. Not as clean as the Stax offerings in the treble.

Apples and oranges. We used the HD800s specifically because Tyll mentioned that they were the least positionally affected headphones he's measured. 

 Other headphones varied quite a bit more throughout the spectrum. In hind sight, I should have made mention of that in the article.Just look at the "before" and "after" burn-in on the exact same pair of SR-009s. I seriously doubt the differences were attributed to burn-in. But there certainly is variability in the bass:
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009SZ91278.pdf
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009SZ91278afterburnin.pdf
 
Again, a few dB can easily be accounted for by measurement differences, positioning on the dummy head, upstream gear (amp/dac) synergy, or simply dialing up the volume a few dB. As I mentioned, the 1kHz threshold is purely arbitrary. The somewhat dark SR007MKIs can give the impression of more bass (and might very well have a BIT more bass, though NOT enough to call one bass heavy and the other bass light 

) due the their lack of what arnaud and I consider more "neutral" treble. Just another thing to consider.
 
I totally do agree with arnaud's assessments here FWIW.

 

[purrin]

Rather than looking at graphs, may I suggest a listening to a track with a good amount of low bass content such as Jennifer Warnes Rock Me Gently on the SR-007, SR-009, HD800, LCD-3, and the Abyss.
 
Limp [redacted] may be relative, but both Staxen's run out of steam at the 40Hz bass drop. The HD800s, less so. The LCD-3 performs admirably, but at the expense of having too thick of a presentation. The Abyss hits its clearly and cleanly with power. It sounds most like my two channel + sub reference.

 

[Golfnutz]

Comparing my speaker system to my SR-009 setup, I thought the SR-009 did a pretty good job with Rock Me Gently. However, with Robbie Robertson Somewhere Down the Crazy River, the bass extension comes up a bit short with the SR-009 (compared to speakers). I would say if you can manage that on the Abyss, that would be impressive.

 

[arnaud]

Mid/treble presence due to extended bandwidth? Turning up the volume to resolve FR differences between models?:rolleyes:

Not sure where you're going with volume increase, but loudness matching certainly is more relevant than having two curves cross at an arbitrary frquency like 500 or 1kHz...

As for the natural roll of of heavy membranes, it's well known, pretty difficult to go against physics. Using resonances in the diaphragm or enclosure to compensate for this seems pretty typical, and is not going away as we've seen from not so old releases of even major players.

 

[Joe Skubinski]

Not sure where you're going with volume increase, but loudness matching certainly is more relevant than having two curves cross at an arbitrary frquency like 500 or 1kHz...

As for the natural roll of of heavy membranes, it's well known, pretty difficult to go against physics. Using resonances in the diaphragm or enclosure to compensate for this seems pretty typical, and is not going away as we've seen from not so old releases of even major players.

Question is at what mass is a diaphragm considered 'heavy'?

I would say the effect of the mass of the diaphragm on bandwidth is relative to the drive mechanism. An electrostatic drive is weaker compared to electromagnetic, so having a very low piston mass is of higher priority.

For example, using the same diaphragm material, we can shift the low or high frequency extension points using variables other than mass within the driver design such as tensioning, suspension, and magnetic field manipulation. Of course as with all transducer designs everything is a trade-off for something else so ultimately you are balancing all factors to hopefully arrive at or beyond the intended design goals.

BTW, minimizing resonances without the use of traditional wide band absorption was one of many goals so I do not feel it's appropriate to suggest we are using resonances in some negative fashion to improve high frequency extension. Every transducer resonates.

 

[Audio Jester]

If only we could get the Abyss and the 009 to breed...

 

[M-13]

Quote:

If only we could get the Abyss and the 009 to breed...

People would still complain. I'll quit Head-Fi if someone comes up with something nobody can complain about.

 

[arnaud]

Question is at what mass is a diaphragm considered 'heavy'?

I would say the effect of the mass of the diaphragm on bandwidth is relative to the drive mechanism. An electrostatic drive is weaker compared to electromagnetic, so having a very low piston mass is of higher priority.

For example, using the same diaphragm material, we can shift the low or high frequency extension points using variables other than mass within the driver design such as tensioning, suspension, and magnetic field manipulation. Of course as with all transducer designs everything is a trade-off for something else so ultimately you are balancing all factors to hopefully arrive at or beyond the intended design goals.

BTW, minimizing resonances without the use of traditional wide band absorption was one of many goals so I do not feel it's appropriate to suggest we are using resonances in some negative fashion to improve high frequency extension. Every transducer resonates.

Joe, first and foremost, thank you for the reply.

I am surprised by your response on the effect of mass on high frequency extension. This article explains in easy terms the mechanism: http://headwize.com/?page_id=722 and I did not see where the mild estat forces play a role besides requiring high voltage drive.

AFAIK, estat and orthos work the same way at low frequency. They both rely on sealed baffled plate / earpad system and control the first coupled resonance (typically in 50-90Hz range) by the diaphragm tensioning. Indeed, tensioning must be affected by the mass of the diaphragm and also the effective mass/stiffness of the earpad/cavity system.

For high frequency extension, the mass density is a critical parameter. I agree both orthos and stat diaphragms have zillions of modes by the time we reach 10kHz but the overall radiation efficiency is supposidly affected my the mass.

You've gone way beyondfyour duties to answer posts from silly people like me but, it's always fascinating to be able to hear from the designers so feel free to enlight us further!

Arnaud