Stax Interview and Factory tour 12/12/12

[rubenpp]

Thank you to everyone that has made this possible and for sharing it to the community, Very nicely done !

 

[Anders]

Quote:

I don't think this information means they need break in/burn in. They do it as part of their quality control to make sure there is no transducer failure.

My intention was not to start a new discussion on break-in, rather that that discussion was pointless because much of it was based on listening impressions of headphones that already had been played for 2 weeks (more than 300 hours).

 

[spritzer]

Quote:

Yeh - Black Gates have gone and heard today that the company who were making the Sit's and Jfet's in the current range of FirstWatt by Nelson Pass have ceased making the components.
We will all end up with OpAmp based rather than discrete component based amplifiers if this is the trend?
 

 
This plus Stax only use Japanese semi's means not a whole lot of options.  Now they could do what Koss have done in the E.90 and stack lower voltage sand but that leads to a whole lot of issues. 

 

[mrtim6]

Great work gentlemen Stax really is a slayer of giants 13 vs the mega-corporations, just amazing & also.

Had no idea the company was so small - not sure why but assumed they would have 2-300 staff couple of factories etc.

Once again this type of journalism in my opinion is the best - speaking to the source & not just the salespeople.

 

[MrViolin]

Quote:

Great work gentlemen Stax really is a slayer of giants 13 vs the mega-corporations, just amazing & also.

Had no idea the company was so small - not sure why but assumed they would have 2-300 staff couple of factories etc.

Once again this type of journalism in my opinion is the best - speaking to the source & not just the salespeople.

That'd by quite a bit lol. I'm not sure many people go around buying/know about electrostats 
As for the staff, I never really thought about it... STAX was STAX... until they revealed it

 

[Scottsmrnyc]

Great comments and some lively debates.  I like this.  Thanks for the comments about how well written the article is?  I will continue to check in daily to see what has been posted/blogged. 

 

[gilency]

OK, Stax builds between 20-30 SR-009's per month; that is a maximum of 360 per yr, and the release date was April 2011. So far only 630 built?
On top of how many Lamdas, how many amplifiers? per month (or per year?).
Do they assemble their amps in the same site?

 

[dukeskd]

Quote:

OK, Stax builds between 20-30 SR-009's per month; that is a maximum of 360 per yr, and the release date was April 2011. So far only 630 built?
On top of how many Lamdas, how many amplifiers? per month (or per year?).
Do they assemble their amps in the same site?

I believe it's closer to 1000.

 

[gilency]

If the mechanical properties of Mylar changed after a week of "break in" then they surely chose the wrong material. 
To tell the truth, I don't know if there is any objective data out there showing it makes a difference. I stand happy to be corrected, but not based in anecdotal experience. 
I don't want to derail the subject though so I won't mention this topic again in this thread. 
Based on the interview however, sounds like their engineers use measurements before they listen?

 

[Currawong]

Gilency: It's a kind of stupid question. 

Quote:

Quote:

 

"...my speculation for the reasons for the Edifier buy-out was it that was straight-forward business decision aimed at keeping Stax going in the future by entering into the Chinese market."
 
[size=x-small]If that was the reason for the selling-out then they over-calculated. There was no need for this. The report says that there is a waiting list for Stax headphones and as far as I know the chinese government did not forbid selling of Stax headphones in China. The country is in the WTO [World Trade Organization] now and would be obliged to allow Stax products to be sold in China. In the future there will be chinese meddling into all matters Stax. Stax being owned by a chinese Co. means for me, and others, not buying Stax headphones in the future.[/size]
[size=x-small]A pertinent quote, from the wonderful play/film "A Man For All Seasons" written by Robert Bolt, when sir Thomas More finds that Richard Rich 'sold his soul' by perjury in court to obtain a high position as the Attorney General of Wales and says : [I paraphrase the quote a bit]  - "For China ? Why Mr. Sasaki and Mr. Meguro, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world...but for China!"[/size][size=small]  - [/size][size=x-small]http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1358325-a-man-for-all-seasons[/size]

 
The problem is not the earspeakers (headphones) it is the amps.
 
Quote:

This has been discussed several times:
- The acquisition was necessary to ensure a stable operation as the sr009 lead Stax in the red the year it was released. There may be a waiting list, the product is expensive, but with such a low volume sale, it's hard to imagine the company is making large profits.
- The owner of edifier is a stax fan and he was mostly concerned about the perennity of the company rather than a plan to change the business. The interview confirms this.
 
In regards to the future amp not getting to the level of the T2, considering the DIY T2 would need to sell for 10k to be sustainable, I can understand the  point being raised. However, Stax clearly said it would need to exceed the performance of the T2 as sold by stax at the time (so bit different from the diy T2).

 
The figure I've seen around was $20k. If dealers were selling the BHSE it'd likely be somewhere close to $10k. The investment required to start up commercial manufacture of the T2 would probably be well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not heading towards $1m.
 
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This has nothing to do with burn in, they are simply weeding out the standard infant mortality rate found in any manufacturing. 

 
They said, in effect that the vast majority of any changes happen within those 2 weeks of run-in. My impression of their intent was to ensure the customer received a reliable, consistent product, hence the thorough QA practices.
 
The problem with discussing "burn-in" is that people have to let go of all the uninformed discussion that has accompanied it and look at it from the manufacturer's point of view. The problem is, very likely, that manufacturers aren't going to be interested in discussing it as it would open up a quagmire, just as driver inconsistency has lately. It's not an issue for Stax to say they run-in their drivers as it emphasises the with which they make their products. That's why question 3 has two answers. Mr Sasaki went out of his way after the interview to specifically show us the QA practices.

 

[gilency]

There are not stupid questions, only stupid people asking them. 

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

 
 
 
This has nothing to do with burn in, they are simply weeding out the standard infant mortality rate found in any manufacturing. 
 
 
 

 
Exactly. I've been in electronics manufacturing for more than a dozen years (from servers for SUN, to MIL/AERO/Medical) and we've done this for pretty much all products. 
 
BTW, thanks guys for this. Great seeing the inner workings of Stax!

 

[rgs9200m]

I wonder how Koss has managed to make and sell the E950 at $499 for so long (at least that's what I paid in 1990...)...

 

[Headzone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilency View Post

I don't think this information means they need break in/burn in. They do it as part of their quality control to make sure there is no transducer failure.

Indeed, I thought they use burn-in to check that every driver is working like they should. Not that they would change after the burn-in process anyhow.
 
I wonder how much more it would cost if companies like Sennheiser did the same to all their headphones.

 

[Hutnicks]

You got a deal. I paid 750 for mine about '94 and they look to be hovering around the 800 mark thesedays. Koss of course makes a large variety of mainstream and econo phones so they can carry the manufacturing of a 'stat in the overall production costs. Lets not forget though that Koss almost disappeared from the earth not too long ago.
 
The employee count at Stax now seems very low and I suspect the several masters that they have had since the mid nineties have stressed the niche market low volume approach. I would love to know what the head count on staff was at peak. I think it would have been significantly larger. I suspect the low head count is why you will not likely see a new amp or any other product that digresses from the the Earphone itself. There just do not seem to be the resources there for that kind of effort.
 
   If there are any dealers or past or present out there who had intimate dealings with Stax in the heydays please post up or start a new thread with what you know of the companies workings in those times.