The Stax Thread III

[ToroFiestaSol]

   
I'm pretty sure that I read a fellow Pavane owner state that the Carbon was night and day better with the 009 over the kgsshv. I think nobody is a stretch.
 
I get where you are coming from but I respectfully disagree. To me once you hit $5k for your amp and headphone, which is around what I paid for my kgsshv/007mk1, it becomes very much in the ears of the beholder as far as a summit fi end game is concerned. I demoed the Abyss on a very expensive amp for example and owned a he-1k and tried it out on amps more expensive than my kgsshv. I still thought that the hd800 and 007mk1 were better and there is not much arguing that the abyss and he1k setups I listened to qualified financially speaking for summit fi "end game".  I would also take the 007mk1 over the 009 as far as comfort goes.
 
Just me but $5k for a headphone and amp is allot of monies. Maybe chump change for speaker guys but headphones yeah I'd say it's summit-fi endgame territory or if not at least very close.

 
From a Spritzer's post on "the other forum":
 
Question:
What do you think about the 009 specifically with the Carbon, I've read a lot of your opinions on the 009 over the years but I somehow failed to catch any updated thoughts from you since the Carbon came into existence. Has the Carbon made them worthy, or does the plugged port Omega 2 mk2.98735 still conquer all?
 
Spritzer's answer:
That is a good question as most of the fiddling I did to the Carbon circuit after the common release was to make it work better with the 009.  Now this isn't the idiotic audiophile notion of tuning (i.e. put in some different parts) but rather seeing what actually enhances the performance of the transducer.  The end result is the best I've heard the 009's but they will never be my go to set.  They are just too ****ed to be ever taken seriously but the amp does help a lot. 
Another point of reference are the almost 10 people who own a Carbon and a BHSE.  All of them prefer the Carbon with the 009 and that makes perfect sense from a technical point of view.  One of them even recently got a brand new BHSE and asked me what he should do with it...the Carbon was much better.  

  Most of this is due to the superior high frequency driving potential.  This was a large part of the design process but it naturally works just as well for the 007's.  More HF power means they aren't as dark as they used to be.  The BHSE will roll off a bit so this is a change to the better. 
 
Carbon is far better than KGSSHV and even the BHSE...so is the best option for 007 and 009, hands down without any question.

 

[arturo71]

  How are the people making out who ordered/e-mailed from PJ within the past month or so?  
Has PJ shipped/responded since?

I passed one order on 1 July. PJ sent me an email with the order details and I instructions for payment. I wired them the money the same day. Afterwards nothing. I sent them an email one week later but they did not reply.
 
I want to believe they are a small operation and they closed for summer holidays or suspended activities temporarily (e.g. accident or something). If they wanted to shut down the business they would announce in their website. It is weird if they were to run away with the customers' money after building a brand name operating for a number of years.

 

[joseph69]

  I passed one order on 1 July. PJ sent me an email with the order details and I instructions for payment. I wired them the money the same day. Afterwards nothing. I sent them an email one week later but they did not reply.
I want to believe they are a small operation and they closed for summer holidays or suspended activities temporarily (e.g. accident or something). If they wanted to shut down the business they would announce in their website. It is weird if they were to run away with the customers' money after building a brand name operating for a number of years.

Thanks.

 

[comzee]

Does anybody have opinions on shaving the foam down on 007A ear pads mod?
Suppose to make the drivers closer to your ear, and mimic mk1 sound.

 

[rgs9200m]

I don't find my SR007 (mark 2.5) warm or rolled off at all. I've had the SR007 in some form going back to 1999, and I never found them recessed or rolled off with either Stax or KG amps.
If anything, you have to be careful because a shrill recording and a too-revealing DAC can generate digital glare in vocals, so a good, maybe darker DAC, is better.
(A uniquely great headphone IMHO by the way; still more musical to me than the 009, like Spritzer says. It has classic status by this time I would say.)

 

[paradoxper]

Misread.

 

[mulveling]

   
From a Spritzer's post on "the other forum":
 
Question:
What do you think about the 009 specifically with the Carbon, I've read a lot of your opinions on the 009 over the years but I somehow failed to catch any updated thoughts from you since the Carbon came into existence. Has the Carbon made them worthy, or does the plugged port Omega 2 mk2.98735 still conquer all?
 
Spritzer's answer:
That is a good question as most of the fiddling I did to the Carbon circuit after the common release was to make it work better with the 009.  Now this isn't the idiotic audiophile notion of tuning (i.e. put in some different parts) but rather seeing what actually enhances the performance of the transducer.  The end result is the best I've heard the 009's but they will never be my go to set.  They are just too ****ed to be ever taken seriously but the amp does help a lot. 
Another point of reference are the almost 10 people who own a Carbon and a BHSE.  All of them prefer the Carbon with the 009 and that makes perfect sense from a technical point of view.  One of them even recently got a brand new BHSE and asked me what he should do with it...the Carbon was much better.  

  Most of this is due to the superior high frequency driving potential.  This was a large part of the design process but it naturally works just as well for the 007's.  More HF power means they aren't as dark as they used to be.  The BHSE will roll off a bit so this is a change to the better. 
 
Carbon is far better than KGSSHV and even the BHSE...so is the best option for 007 and 009, hands down without any question.

Spritzer doesn't like the 009, so consider that before you take his advice on amp parings for it. I own a Carbon and don't own a BHSE -- and I call BS that 10 out of 10 owners of both prefer the Carbon w/ 009. Who are they? The Carbon (which, BY THE WAY, he has a financial interest in selling well) sounds awesome, but it doesn't have tube mids. It may be the better technical/measured performer, but there are definitely some reasons to prefer a BHSE from a listening perspective. Also he shuns vintage tubes, so no big surprise that he's not a fan of tube amps...
 
Spritzer is a super-talented & skillful guy, but has also has very, very strong opinions (which have changed over time), and he's surrounded by a forum that mostly (with a few exceptions) adapts themselves to his opinions. Things like that get skewed over time.

 

[yates7592]

Anybody here compared Carbon to BHSE with 009?

 

[bmichels]

  Spritzer doesn't like the 009, so consider that before you take his advice on amp parings for it. .... I call BS that 10 out of 10 owners of both prefer the Carbon w/ 009. .....BY THE WAY, he has a financial interest in selling well......there are definitely some reasons to prefer a BHSE from a listening perspective. 

 
+1   

 

[paradoxper]

  Spritzer doesn't like the 009, so consider that before you take his advice on amp parings for it. I own a Carbon and don't own a BHSE -- and I call BS that 10 out of 10 owners of both prefer the Carbon w/ 009. Who are they? The Carbon (which, BY THE WAY, he has a financial interest in selling well) sounds awesome, but it doesn't have tube mids. It may be the better technical/measured performer, but there are definitely some reasons to prefer a BHSE from a listening perspective. Also he shuns vintage tubes, so no big surprise that he's not a fan of tube amps...
 
Spritzer is a super-talented & skillful guy, but has also has very, very strong opinions (which have changed over time), and he's surrounded by a forum that mostly (with a few exceptions) adapts themselves to his opinions. Things like that get skewed over time.

He has done the same dogging with the T2. Of which, he ****ed building. I also think he has been held accountable in that regard on the other forum.
 
I definitely wouldn't take any one persons findings as any absolute. Talk to different Cabon, BHSE, T2 owners and gleam tidbits. but always try to listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

 

[arnaud]

I also don't quite understand what the logic is: to his ears the sr009 is totally messed up and he used to claim it needed a specific amp to roll off the treble a bit. I recall reading this number of times since 2010.

Today, shift the other way around: the carbon works better with the 009 because it's got even higher slew rate (read, it rolls of the treble of capacitive load to a lesser extent than other amps like the BHSE which are miles ahead of stax production amps already).

Ime, the main issue one can have with the 009 is not with its treble extension (certainly not in comparison to the Omega 2 that has articifial sparkle at 10kHz), it's in the midrange that is too prominent for those who listen loud etc. There's a reason why SR009 haters typically hail the Omega 2 mk1 (or the current production omega 2 as of late).

Ime again, the SR009 does not sound best with a BHSE in stock tubes (or those previously hyped psvane metal base replica). It needs some xf2 or xf4 to indeed get that midrange magic, I concur with Purk on this one (although I am 100% birgir has a stock of nos mullards for generations to come though ).

Cheers,
Arnaud

 

[purk]

It needs some xf2 or xf4 to indeed get that midrange magic, I concur with Purk on this one (although I am 100% birgir has a stock of nos mullards for generations to come though ).

Cheers,
Arnaud

I certainly think less of the BHSE + SR009 until I tried the Mullard XF2 & Holland XF4 in my system.  Personally, I find the BHSE to be just as good if not slightly better than the KGSSHV Carbon because you can always dial the sound slightly to fit one system better.  There is no right or wrong here and ultimately, it is about listening and musical preference.

 

[jibzilla]

   
From a Spritzer's post on "the other forum":
 
Question:
What do you think about the 009 specifically with the Carbon, I've read a lot of your opinions on the 009 over the years but I somehow failed to catch any updated thoughts from you since the Carbon came into existence. Has the Carbon made them worthy, or does the plugged port Omega 2 mk2.98735 still conquer all?
 
Spritzer's answer:
That is a good question as most of the fiddling I did to the Carbon circuit after the common release was to make it work better with the 009.  Now this isn't the idiotic audiophile notion of tuning (i.e. put in some different parts) but rather seeing what actually enhances the performance of the transducer.  The end result is the best I've heard the 009's but they will never be my go to set.  They are just too ****ed to be ever taken seriously but the amp does help a lot. 
Another point of reference are the almost 10 people who own a Carbon and a BHSE.  All of them prefer the Carbon with the 009 and that makes perfect sense from a technical point of view.  One of them even recently got a brand new BHSE and asked me what he should do with it...the Carbon was much better.    Most of this is due to the superior high frequency driving potential.  This was a large part of the design process but it naturally works just as well for the 007's.  More HF power means they aren't as dark as they used to be.  The BHSE will roll off a bit so this is a change to the better. 
 
Carbon is far better than KGSSHV and even the BHSE...so is the best option for 007 and 009, hands down without any question.

 
I don't know about far better. To all the try BHSE, Carbon, DIY T2 with the 007 people, I pretty much feel that I have. Never listened to any of those energizers, but I listened to a TT and phono pre that costs as much as all 3 of those energizers combined with my kgsshv. Lucky enough to have a Brinkmann dealer near where I live and he was interested in what my headphones sounded like as well.
 
The hd800/Teton and 007mk1/kgsshv scaled but nowhere near the 009/kgsshv and why I came to the conclusion that I was not just a 007mk1 fan. With my Pavane I felt the 009 and 007mk1 were even and considering how much less the 007mk1 is, I thought I just might be a bigger fan of the 007...Sadly not the case and if I were financially in better shape I would def. get the 009 and build something crazy around it. Like $50k crazy. To all the BHSE, Carbon, DIY T2 guys running a 007, I know it's better but I think you get 98% of what those energizers offer with kgsshv, 009 is a different story in my experience.

 

[lojay]

I certainly think less of the BHSE + SR009 until I tried the Mullard XF2 & Holland XF4 in my system.  Personally, I find the BHSE to be just as good if not slightly better than the KGSSHV Carbon because you can always dial the sound slightly to fit one system better.  There is no right or wrong here and ultimately, it is about listening and musical preference.

I think the varied comparisons between the T2, BHSE and Carbon can be accounted for by the difference in tubes people are using.

My T2 really required the Holland metal based EL34s to open up, with which the amp is as transparent as I hope it could be while having liquid and sweet mids. If I used lesser tubes I could imagine comparing the KGSSHV more favourably to the T2. But with my current tube combo and especially the Chord DAVE, there is no way I'm going back to the KGSSHV. It beats it in terms of transparency and bass, aspects one would otherwise expect a solid state amp to excel in.

Haven't heard the Carbon but would love to. Anyone want to build me one?

 

[purk]

I think the varied comparisons between the T2, BHSE and Carbon can be accounted for by the difference in tubes people are using.

My T2 really required the Holland metal based EL34s to open up, with which the amp is as transparent as I hope it could be while having liquid and sweet mids. If I used lesser tubes I could imagine comparing the KGSSHV more favourably to the T2. But with my current tube combo and especially the Chord DAVE, there is no way I'm going back to the KGSSHV. It beats it in terms of transparency and bass, aspects one would otherwise expect a solid state amp to excel in.

Haven't heard the Carbon but would love to. Anyone want to build me one?

Birgir can...he has made several Carbons.