[spritzer]

Quote:

And how's the bass, Spritz? How does it compare with a KGSS? Do you agree there's no dynamic headphone with bass to match the Stax Omega II? The analogy I give to someone who's never heard them: "This is what a bass drum sounds and feels like on the Sennheiser 650s (I flab the palm of my hand on his chest). "This is what a bass drum sounds like on the Stax (I hit him in the chest with my fist). It gets the point acrossWhich brings up the whole issue of how to handle sub-bass response accurately in headphones. My reference mastering room includes accurate JL subwoofers which actually can flap your pants legs with the low bass (to say nothing of how it feels in your chest). Obviously there's no headphone that can replicate that experience. However, the O2s have such extended sub bass that you can feel it in your eardrum and perhaps in the bones of your head as an impact. At first it's an eerie experience to feel clean, impacting, low distortion sub bass where no previous headphone you've ever heard was able to do it. But you quickly get used to it, and with some willfull suspension of disbelief, mentally supply the missing chest sensations. I know this sounds too much like imagination gone wild, but you have to experience rock and roll or fusion jazz (think Anthony Jackson or Marcus Miller) reproduced on O2s yourself to understand the literal physical (not just acoustic) sensations these phones can produce. Wimpy headphone amps need not apply. I'm very glad I rebuilt, recapped and minified an ancient Stax amp before I got these O2s! Just how much better is the KGSS going to sound?

The bass on the Blue Hawaii amps is even more powerful and controlled.  Again even more so with the DIY-T2 as we just keep throwing more standing power at them.  Basically it is a matter of making sure that there will always be more then enough current on hand for any stage, regardless of the impedance presented by the transducers.  On top of that the amp has to swing enough voltage to be just idling at normal levels (but also have a massive amount of headroom) and have a low enough output impedance and a high enough slew rate to make good use of these.  Just look at those massive heatsinks on the T2 and when it is stacked it runs hot enough that people can burn their fingers on the volume knob.    That is just a lot of Class A stages and constant current sources burning off current.  The amp might be the most complex headphone amp ever designed but the signal path is very simple, it's just the stuff supporting it that is so complex. 
 
As for the KGSS, it is a brilliant design but the reason we are doing a new one, the KGSSHV is to make up for the lack of a CCS in the third stage.  This was due to the lack of good parts at the time of the design and the extra cost of adding those parts.  I love my KGSS but it has been sitting unused and buried under crap for a while now due to surplus of other amps that had to be modified and evaluated.  I did just fire it up though.   
 
No dynamic can come close to the Stax, even the 1979 SR-Lambda is far better in most aspects then the Sennheiser HD800.  Let alone their very own HE60 which may be 17 years old but still makes the HD800 sound really poor in direct comparison.  When I did that comparison I even dealt the HE60 a crap hand on purpose by using an old Stax SRM-T1 amp which was in dire need of refurbishing and I didn't even bother to bias the tubes.  Still it was way superior to the HD800/SPL Auditor.  I've also recently spent some time with the HD6xx line, Grado RS1, RS2 and HP2 and the AKG K1000, none of them are even close.   

 

[DaveBSC]

Quote:

As for the KGSS, it is a brilliant design but the reason we are doing a new one, the KGSSHV is to make up for the lack of a CCS in the third stage.  This was due to the lack of good parts at the time of the design and the extra cost of adding those parts.  I love my KGSS but it has been sitting unused and buried under crap for a while now due to surplus of other amps that had to be modified and evaluated.  I did just fire it up though.   

Could a KGSSHV be built without a volume control? All headphone amps are integrated, but with DACs like the Perfect Wave or a traditional linestage in the chain, I'm wondering if they need to be.

 

[spritzer]

The design never incorporates the volume control or assumes that there will be one.  The amp has resistors which set the correct input impedance regardless of whether you have a pot there or not

 

[silverlight]

Quote:

Hi Silverlight. Good to see you. What's your real name? I thoroughly agree that the Metric Halo Dac makes a superb Dac for stax. When I get the KGSS Ill set up a shoot out of the MH against my Benchmark DAC, which I intend to use to drive the O2s in studio A. I've donated my Pro sr5 golds to my mix engineers in my studio B and the DSP eq in the MH is just perfect to libraries its bass response and so the MH has to reside in stu B.

Hey Bob, real name is Geoff btw, we've been in some threads together I think over at Computeraudiophile.  I've spent a lot of time on the source side of the equation and over the past year really enjoyed getting into headphones.  I'm on the waitlist for a BHSE amp and excited to get that (hopefully soon) given the great comments here on the forum.  On the source side was working on trying to get the PS Audio PWD+Bridge to match the Metric Halo (some minor internal tweaks like fuses, changing connectors, quicksilver gold in a few places, EMI/RFI treatments, etc.), and it's very close but personally still prefer the MH (although changing the software filters to the min. phase apodizing filter can soften some otherwise poor recordings to make them more listenable). Both are fantastic and my 2 favorite DAC's right now having gone through a few others in this price range or lower past couple years.  Look forward to hearing more feedback from you on the Stax setup, esp once you get the Headamp unit.  All the best
 

 

[bobkatz]

Well! Let me know when you're ready to sell your old KGSS

 

[bobkatz]

Is there an apodizing filter plugin for the MH?

 

[silverlight]

Quote:

Is there an apodizing filter plugin for the MH?

I haven't heard of one yet (only mucking around with an editor like Izotope RX and re-sampling/processing the audio file, which would be a PITA to do although Izotope does have a batch mode - would require finding the right combination of cutoff and steepness settings, etc.).  Worth asking as I know it was discussed a while back when the Meridian CD player first came out with it (followed by PS Audio).

 

[bobkatz]

The design never incorporates the volume control or assumes that there will be one.  The amp has resistors which set the correct input impedance regardless of whether you have a pot there or not

Depending on the output noise and efficiency of the DAC you may have to build a fixed attenuator at the input of the amp. The key is that the headphones should be noiseless if the dac is connected and a cd player is connected, in pause and the dac is locked to it. I'm also concerned about the resolution of the volume control technology used inside the DAC. There are a number of technologies (such as MDACs) which sound slightly inferior due to their distorion, adding a bit of a veil to the sound.

In fact I'll go on record (having perfumed the shootings) as saying that only two volume control topologies are acceptably transparent! My favorite is switched resistor (either relay switched or using a rotary switch). In many cases this can be installed at the input side of the amp. The second topology is a superior PCM dithered attenuator operating in it's optimum range. Its holding point for normal SPL should be no lower than about -10 to -12 dB to keep the PCM resolution higher than the rest of the system resolution and noise.

A third technology, VCA, is now pretty rare, but the THAT VCAs can sound quite pleasant, not as pure as the first two, but more transparent than MDACs, FET or virtual ground switches and other analog and hybrid technologies, many of which sound quite grainy and not worthy of a high end playback system.

Find out exactly what volume control technology is used inside your DAC. Don't accept any b.s from the manufacturer that "our implementation is proprietary or better than others". In almost all cases I've discovered that their implementation is sonically compromised and they either built it that way to save money, or were misguided or optimistic. I've NEVER heard a transparent MDAC, no matter whose brand or type of chipset.

 

[bobkatz]

I am a newbie here and just wanna say Hi to everyone. I am Daniel from Pennsylvania, US.


 


 


__________________


http://www.photoshop-garden.com

Welcome Daniel. Is Photoshop garden your site? So you're a graphic artist who also likes sound!

 

[bobkatz]

I want to say I've been using my iPhone to post lately, and if you're not careful it can make the strangest corrections before you notice it! I typed "shootouts" and it turned it into "shootings"! There---it did it again! Fixed before I hit "submit" this time

 

[bobkatz]

"performed" became "perfumed". Hilarious!

 

[svyr]

ummm, bit much offtop and multiposts?

on a side-note. any-one find SR-507 a bit dark sounding?

 

[graben]

 
Quote:

ummm, bit much offtop and multiposts?

on a side-note. any-one find SR-507 a bit dark sounding?

I don't through a T1, not bright either. Very neutral.

 

[svyr]

 
Quote:

ummm, bit much offtop and multiposts?

on a side-note. any-one find SR-507 a bit dark sounding?

I don't through a T1, not bright either. Very neutral.

too much time with SR-404 and EX700 then.
nomnomnom piano though. probably the most natural I heard from any of my HP.

Guess I'll find out when DHL deliver my TransistorAmp-V3

02.11.10 04:14 Hours Saulheim, DE The international shipment has been processed in the export parcel center
26.11.10 10:32 Hours Hamburg, DE The shipment is being transported to the destination country

oh yay, almost a month now (instead of 11 avg, 16 max-ish), no responses to queries why/apologies. f-.-.-.- DHL... at least the status changed.


edit
Hmmm I don't think I was wearing the SR-507 correctly. I had the headband too low and it was putting a LOT of pressure on the top of my head/ears. Moving the sliders a bit up fixed the giant headache and partially fixed the 'sound dark' bit... (bear-hug lambdas )

Also noticed the cup HOLDERs now pivot where they stick to the headband assembly (so now 2 pivots - at headband and and earspeaker-'cups'). Don't think that was the case for SR-404 or previous lambda assemblies

 

[Mr.Sneis]

Wow brand new pads from ebay shipepd fast!  Arrived today and I ordered them early last week, that's basically 6 days total!