I called it
One thing I've noticed is that people who want you to think they know more than they actually do tend to speak of things as recipes. If you put this particular amp with this particular headphone and that particular type of recording, it is perfect. Of course the particular things they are talking about are always very obscure and expensive so no one else can afford to verify what they say. The people who tend to know what they're talking about don't mention specific brands and models. They speak in terms of the way things work and doing things in a way that optimizes performance. I imagine following the recipe sometimes works, but you aren't going to ever know why any more than the person reciting the recipe to you.
Please do yourself a favor - and read about the things mentioned in JAES. I might even dig up all the references - somewhere in my bookmarks. Lots of it is in German . I am citing the exact models only because it is one of the two ( both from Stax ) options to have been ever made commercially available, by any brand - and, given the price, obviously could not penetrate the market more than it did.. Perhaps less than 1 % of Stax Lambda Pro users have ever heard, let alone posess an ED-1 Monitor diffuse field equalizer - and Stax Lambda, regardless of the exact model, although if taken together perhaps represents at least one third of all electrostatic headphones in actual use today, is still relatively rare in grand scheme of things of usually moving coil dynamic headphone world. Stax went belly up in financial terms at least twice, simply because they refused to lower their standards of (near...) excellence and pursuit of perfection over commercial success. Long are gone the days of their loudspeakers - and extremely powerful class A amps ( which have served as an inspiration to MANY American designers ) that have been necessary in order to power the extremely inefficient and electrically tough load electrostatic speakers... then they dropped the phono cartridges ( their best ever product ), followed by diffuse field equalizers.
After the chinese Edifier bought Stax a few years ago, the fear of Stax going down in quality in order to generate more sales has fortunately not materialized in practice - Stax is even introducing new models, including finally decent electrostatic amp, capable of going head to head with any of the aftermarket amps available. These are all priced way above my reach - but see the comment below.
I did post the link to Lambda Pro - in which it is more than clearly written and argumented why a 3 decades old Lambda Pro plus at least SRM1MK2 amp ( the least of what I would reccomend to anyone interested in decent electrostatics ) would make mockery of say HD 800 and similar current dynamic phones. And it can be had for LESS than HD-800 & similar dynamic phones..
I have not heard MANY good audio devices - but would NEVER try to dismiss them just because they are either far to expensive for me to ever hope to posses them, are much different to whatever I am familiar with - or for whatever other reason. I would only do that in case they did not deliver the promised - or if a new device at appreciably less cost could do ALL the previous high priced design could do.
I doubt that in California ( one of the richest places in the world ) there is sooooo tough to get to hear Stax ; OK, ED-1 Monitor IS rare, but everything else should be rather well represented at any given can jam and all major audio shows ( CES, RMAF, etc ). Also, I did not mention using any really expensive Stax stuff - there is any number of current dynamic phones exceeding the cost of decently preserved technically immaculate Stax aged 30 or so years.
