[n3rdling]

The SR5 is one rocking little headphone

I think everybody that has heard mine has come away pretty impressed at the price/performance ratio of the little guy.

 

[edstrelow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilency /img/forum/go_quote.gif I guess I am one of them who does not seem to mind the midrange bump some people complaint about. My feeling is that if the 404's continue to sell they must be popular and enjoyable by a silent majority. I certainly like them a lot. The emphasis here seems to be a well deserved appreciation for the Omegas and some of the vintage gear, plus a dislike for the newer Staxes, as well as a lack of appreciation for the more affordable earspeakers. That is a shame IMO because it may turn people away from electrostatics, thinking that you need a several thousand dollar set up or very old equipment. In fact, even the "cheaper Staxes" are IMO much better than anything else I have heard including the 701's and 650's amongst others. I really liked the sound of the SR-007 more than the HD-800's. I am quite happy with my set up, although I am sure eventually I will buy the SR-007's.

I agree with just about everything you said. The 404 midrange bump was not enough to lessen its appeal in my recent review of my current 3 Lambdas. It is the bargain among stat phones. Excellent for classical orchestral in particular.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f113/s...lassic-430113/

The 007 is better but at 5 times the price it should be. And really it's not 5 times better, maybe 20% better IMO. And then it really needs a top amp which the 404 does not.

I find some of the praise of old Stax gear to be offbase when the prices reach or exceed the new Lambdas.

 

[spritzer]

I just wanted to clear one thing up since people are always asking me about this and manufacturers are using this to falsely market their products. When we talk about voltage swing in amps then that has nothing to with final volume level of said amp. Even though we've broken the 2000v P-P (1400V RMS) barrier with the latest amps then that isn't in the quest for more volume but rather more headroom. You can have an amp like my Supercharged Egmont which swings a lot of voltage but has relatively low gain and thus lower amplification factor. To reach full output swing you need higher input voltage to make up the difference. This means I can run it at full output without is breaking a sweat. Try that with the Stax amps which have high gain but relatively low voltage swing. They are also severely limited by the power handling ability of their tubes. Not only can the 6CG7 only take 300v but both plates can only handle 5W together. The 6S4A I used in my Egmont (and the upcoming mini ES-1 amp) can handle 500v easily and take 7.5W on the plate per phase or 15W if it were used in the same configuration as the SRM-T1. Now running the tubes at their max level is stupid and should never be done but the 6S4A has not only more voltage but more power as well.

Which brings me to my next point, more power has nothing to do with volume. While the larger amps swing more voltage then they also have more current at their disposal. While electrostatics are voltage based creatures they do need a lot of current from the amp due to the wild load they present. The Koss E.90 amp can swing a lot of voltage but it is useless without the current needed to back it up. As the impedance fluctuates then Ohm's-law demands current as well as voltage so that the voltage doesn't sag. When listing the power output of speaker amps you see the truly powerful ones double their output power as the impedance is halved.

Since the topic of calculating the voltage swing of the transformer boxes was brought up earlier, then that is certainly possible. They run at a fixed ratio (roughly 1:25-1:30) which means that a 1v input gives you 25-30v worth of output. Some speaker amps like the old Krell monsters can swing a lot of voltage (up to 200v P-P) but most amps swing a lot less then that. Still here we are facing the age old problem of power. The transformers in the boxes can only transformer so much power due to their size and construction so power hungry phones are left wanting (SR-007 for instance), never mind what monster you feed the transformers with. Larger transformers will work better here or using lower ratios (i.e. what Frank Cooter is doing) but they aren't cheap.

So the bottom line is, power is everything but it has nothing to do with volume. Rant over but one can only answer the same question so many times via PM...

 

[Keithpgdrb]

Thanks spritzer. I know the problem for me, probably for most, is understanding the basic differance between voltage and current. I spoke with an electrician friend of mine about it, and I gave up after a short time because even he was getting irritated and confused while explaining it. I went so far as picking up an electronics for dummies book, got stuck on the same concept. Looks like it wwont be understood to me without taking a class.

 

[spritzer]

It does have some analogy to water so that is often used to explain. It's far from perfect and leaves out a lot of stuff but it will do. The voltage is the water pressure and current the amount of water. If you are going to shift say 1000 liters of water though a pipe then you can use a large pipe with low pressure (low voltage, high current) or a small pipe with high pressure ( high voltage,low current).

The size of the pipe also holds true to electricity since you can only move so much current through a wire of a certain thickness or it will just melt from the heat generated by the "friction" of the built in resistance. This is why we use very high voltage on larger power lines so that large amounts of electricity can be shifted through smaller wires (i.e. cheaper wires).

With increased voltage, you need insulation just as you need a stronger pipe with more pressure. Same goes for capacitors, resistors, relays etc., they all have voltage ratings. Since the insulation doesn't "stop" the electrons, only impedes them, then when you push past those engineered in ratings, you can have arcs (i.e. the electricity jumps to another point).

This is what happens in electrostatic transducers when the voltages get too high and the insulation of the atmosphere (roughly 100v/1mil) isn't enough to contain it. Since the insulation changes with the level of moisture in the air, it is easy to see how higher humidity makes the panels more likely to arc.

Also if you think of voltage as pressure or potential then you can see what effect driving a Pro bias headphone off a Normal bias socket will have. It will work since some of the potential to move the diaphragm is there but the stators don't the the wise like grip they would have if the bias was up to spec.

Hope this clears up a few things...

 

[gilency]

wow! this is the best way of explaining it I have ever heard. That was very helpful. Thank you.

 

[The Monkey]

moar please.

 

[gilency]

Quote:

Originally Posted by edstrelow /img/forum/go_quote.gif I agree with just about everything you said. The 404 midrange bump was not enough to lessen its appeal in my recent review of my current 3 Lambdas. It is the bargain among stat phones. Excellent for classical orchestral in particular. http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f113/s...lassic-430113/ The 007 is better but at 5 times the price it should be. And really it's not 5 times better, maybe 20% better IMO. And then it really needs a top amp which the 404 does not. I find some of the praise of old Stax gear to be offbase when the prices reach or exceed the new Lambdas.

Thank you Ed. Actually you are one of the head-fiers that picked my curiosity on electrostatics. There were a couple of other guys in the same room with all that mouth watering Stax equipment at CanJam that also let me listen to their gear for my first ever jaw dropping listening experience.

 

[insyte]

Ah thanks for the explanation spritzer

 

[spritzer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Monkey /img/forum/go_quote.gif moar please.

What would you like to know my primate friend?

 

[jgazal]

Suppose that during the recording, the orchestra goes from 50dB to 70dB. How dac and amplifier know that is going from 50dB to 70dB?

I know you are going to say something like dealing with dynamic range in the digital media (CD, max. 96dB?; SACD, 120dB?; vynil?) and voltage/current transformations in the dac and amplifier, but what I would like to know is how the amplifier senses the correct amplitude if the volume knob is fixed (read user not controlling the volume). Just reading the dynamic range recorded in the media?

I know that we are able to match the base level the DAC starts with the volume knob when hitting play, but that not explain the amplitude in headroom.

If an amplifier have low headroom, that real orchestra 50dB to 70dB will be at headphones, I don’t know, perhaps 50dB to 55dB. If you have high headroom, are we going to have 50dB to 90dB in our headphones? Is more headroom going to be more faithful to reality?

Once I visited an audiophile and he had a huge amplifier. Every time I gave him a CD he asked me if it had some volume variation. I thought they hadn’t. Then he was always slowing down the volume at peaks, because we were going deaf. They were audiophile recordings. Therefore, they might have not compression at all during the mastering (but that's just speculation).

Will the additional stages used to increase current and voltage swing worsen resolution? I mean, if each stage modulates a higher voltage/current path, it might have some loss in signal resolution. I presume you cannot copy the signal exactly as it is in the previous stage.

If headroom really means that, I think I prefer to avoid that and work with less stages and better resolution, even if that involves more linear/plain headroom (as unfaithful as huge overloaded headroom with worse resolution?).

I would like to hear more opinions about that.

p.s.: I would only desire more power until that improves frequency response and tighter bass...

 

[shomie911]

The majority of todays music doesn't have that much inherent change in volume because engineers aren't catering to the audiophile crowd, but instead the everday iPod listeners that just want loudness, thus maintaining a fairly stable volume level throughout the recording (and thus sounding "flat").

But audiophile recordings do have large variations in volume, so you do have a point there.

I'd like to see what others have to say about that, you brang up a very good point.

 

[powertoold]

I'm enjoying my Stax SR-X Mk3 - very good value... Love the mids! If only it had the bass of my LNS. My LNS's mids aren't as good (somewhat recessed and therefore not as detailed), but it's amazing as well...

 

[edstrelow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by spritzer /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just wanted to clear one thing up since people are always asking me about this and manufacturers are using this to falsely market their products. When we talk about voltage swing in amps then that has nothing to with final volume level of said amp. Even though we've broken the 2000v P-P (1400V RMS) barrier with the latest amps then that isn't in the quest for more volume but rather more headroom. You can have an amp like my Supercharged Egmont which swings a lot of voltage but has relatively low gain and thus lower amplification factor. To reach full output swing you need higher input voltage to make up the difference. This means I can run it at full output without is breaking a sweat. Try that with the Stax amps which have high gain but relatively low voltage swing. They are also severely limited by the power handling ability of their tubes. Not only can the 6CG7 only take 300v but both plates can only handle 5W together. The 6S4A I used in my Egmont (and the upcoming mini ES-1 amp) can handle 500v easily and take 7.5W on the plate per phase or 15W if it were used in the same configuration as the SRM-T1. Now running the tubes at their max level is stupid and should never be done but the 6S4A has not only more voltage but more power as well. Which brings me to my next point, more power has nothing to do with volume. While the larger amps swing more voltage then they also have more current at their disposal. While electrostatics are voltage based creatures they do need a lot of current from the amp due to the wild load they present. The Koss E.90 amp can swing a lot of voltage but it is useless without the current needed to back it up. As the impedance fluctuates then Ohm's-law demands current as well as voltage so that the voltage doesn't sag. When listing the power output of speaker amps you see the truly powerful ones double their output power as the impedance is halved. Since the topic of calculating the voltage swing of the transformer boxes was brought up earlier, then that is certainly possible. They run at a fixed ratio (roughly 1:25-1:30) which means that a 1v input gives you 25-30v worth of output. Some speaker amps like the old Krell monsters can swing a lot of voltage (up to 200v P-P) but most amps swing a lot less then that. Still here we are facing the age old problem of power. The transformers in the boxes can only transformer so much power due to their size and construction so power hungry phones are left wanting (SR-007 for instance), never mind what monster you feed the transformers with. Larger transformers will work better here or using lower ratios (i.e. what Frank Cooter is doing) but they aren't cheap. So the bottom line is, power is everything but it has nothing to do with volume. Rant over but one can only answer the same question so many times via PM...

The self-biasing phones provide an interesting variation on this theme. As the volume goes up so does the bias and the volume of the phones goes up some more. At least that is true with my Koss ESP and ESP9. So you get a sort of dynamic range expansion, like the old dBx system, built in.

BTW I still like my ESP6 and 9. They are not the fastest stats out there but they can be quite listenable when I need isolation like when I am sitting next to an air conditioner on a 100 degee plus day.

The 6 has a better midrange and ambience than the 9. The 9 sounds a little distant with its recessed middle and upper midrange and it has even less air than the 6. On the other hand it handles bass well and has a somewhat more refined sound.


Quote:

Originally Posted by jgazal /img/forum/go_quote.gif Suppose that during the recording, the orchestra goes from 50dB to 70dB. How dac and amplifier know that is going from 50dB to 70dB? I know you are going to say something like dealing with dynamic range in the digital media (CD, max. 96dB?; SACD, 120dB?; vynil?) and voltage/current transformations in the dac and amplifier, but what I would like to know is how the amplifier senses the correct amplitude if the volume knob is fixed (read user not controlling the volume). Just reading the dynamic range recorded in the media? ...

I used to know the answer to this. What I recall is that you may be confusing absolute decibels, i.e. a ratio based on a specified energy at 0dB (or is it 1?) with relative dB. At any rate dB is a ratio measurement and in your example, the amp sees a 20 dB ratio coming in at the input which it tries to match in output. But it doesn't mean it will produce the 70 dB of volume of the fixed dB scales.

 

[spritzer]

I must say I don't really understand those questions. What the dac outputs is just voltage (the standard spec is 2VAC RMS for line level, double that for balanced operation) which the amp then amplifies with fixed gain, lets say 500-1000 for an electrostatic amp. The output from the DAC isn't fixed though, rather the voltage fluctuates with the given amplitude encoded in the digital data, same can be said about vinyl where a pickup generates more voltage, the more distance it moves. All the volume control does is reduce that input voltage so the amp isn't running at full volume all the time. As the input voltage increases then that change is passed through the volume control (at a reduced level) and the amp sees that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by edstrelow /img/forum/go_quote.gif The self-biasing phones provide an interesting variation on this theme. As the volume goes up so does the bias and the volume of the phones goes up some more. At least that is true with my Koss ESP and ESP9. So you get a sort of dynamic range expansion, like the old dBx system, built in. BTW I still like my ESP6 and 9. They are not the fastest stats out there but they can be quite listenable when I need isolation like when I am sitting next to an air conditioner on a 100 degee plus day. The 6 has a better midrange and ambience than the 9. The 9 sounds a little distant with its recessed middle and upper midrange and it has even less air than the 6. On the other hand it handles bass well and has a somewhat more refined sound.

The ESP's are very different from the Stax models and not even true push-pull electrostatic transducers. The diaphragm is also driven very differently and soaks up a lot more power then any Stax unit would. Stax built the SB bias supplies so that they were pretty much identical to the AC powered units (i.e. a transient limiter on the input) except they made sure they were fed enough voltage by using a second, bias only, transformer inside the box.