ShaolinRasta
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2005
- Posts
- 276
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- 10
Quote:
There are many variables to this discussion, not least of which is that the nature of how most listen to music has changed dramatically in the two decades since Stax stopped making their transformers. Up until that point, it was understood that all "serious" music listeners had good amps to drive their speakers -- there was no other alternative, as dedicated headphone setups simply didn't exist. Given that environment, it made a great deal of sense for Stax to create and sell simple transformer boxes to drive their headphones. The resulting sound quality would scale up depending on how good your amp was, with the transformer box doing its best just to stay the hell out of the way.
Times have changed, so much so that my guess is that the majority of the folks on this site don't have a serious non-headphone amp. For those, the best way into the Stax game is clearly via the dedicated amp route -- while it isn't the greatest thing out there, the SRM-313 is an excellent choice given its relatively low price on the used market. For anyone who already has a good beefy amp though, the SRD-7 Pro and its variants are a no-brainer. As entertaining as it is, I'm not sure why this whole argument about which is better even exists, since I think it's entirely system dependent. Given my setup, the SRD-7 Pro blows away the SRM-313 by such a large margin that there isn't any comparison. That said, I certainly don't think that everyone should run out and get a transformer box -- in fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if some people would be entirely unimpressed with the performance -- in that case, the fault wouldn't lie as much with the transformer box as it would with what's feeding it.
Originally Posted by spritzer Sure it's old but thats not why Stax stopped making them. Back in the day it was the simple way to add a transformer to an existing stereo system but today everything is line level so stand alone amp is a much simpler way. I'm not saying that the transformers are better, because they aren't but they are better then the cheaper Stax amps. The SRM-313 is so shockingly bad and annoying that I gave it to my brother and use the SRD-7 Mk2 instead for testing phones under repair and new untested arrivals. The transformers sins are those of omission so they don't add the hard edge the budget amps do. |
There are many variables to this discussion, not least of which is that the nature of how most listen to music has changed dramatically in the two decades since Stax stopped making their transformers. Up until that point, it was understood that all "serious" music listeners had good amps to drive their speakers -- there was no other alternative, as dedicated headphone setups simply didn't exist. Given that environment, it made a great deal of sense for Stax to create and sell simple transformer boxes to drive their headphones. The resulting sound quality would scale up depending on how good your amp was, with the transformer box doing its best just to stay the hell out of the way.
Times have changed, so much so that my guess is that the majority of the folks on this site don't have a serious non-headphone amp. For those, the best way into the Stax game is clearly via the dedicated amp route -- while it isn't the greatest thing out there, the SRM-313 is an excellent choice given its relatively low price on the used market. For anyone who already has a good beefy amp though, the SRD-7 Pro and its variants are a no-brainer. As entertaining as it is, I'm not sure why this whole argument about which is better even exists, since I think it's entirely system dependent. Given my setup, the SRD-7 Pro blows away the SRM-313 by such a large margin that there isn't any comparison. That said, I certainly don't think that everyone should run out and get a transformer box -- in fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if some people would be entirely unimpressed with the performance -- in that case, the fault wouldn't lie as much with the transformer box as it would with what's feeding it.