[Radio_head]

Well to be fair walmart carries peanut m&m's, which are the very best m&m's out there, so I think his assumption is a logical extension.

 

[John Buchanan]

Quote:

Name some music pieces that were produced using STAX? I doubt any significant piece of music was recorded with or targeted at being used with STAX.
 
LOL, some niche brand from Japan is supposed to be above and beyond what music and studio engineers around the world use. Nobody but some audiophiles with more money than sense use STAX for the placebo. As if STAX is going to unveil a whole new world of detail and depth that the engineers and producers missed while mixing in the studio.
 
If you enjoy STAX, go ahead. More power to you, it's just that, in my opinion, a lot of high-end industries are based on pseudo-science and placebo.

Ahhhhhhhh hahahahahaha. Troll alert!

 

[Amarphael]

Or a classic 'ignoarance is bliss' example case. 

 
@Radio_Head, thanks for the heads up though hardly a surprise since a protoype has been reported in the Tokyo festival a year ago. I'm still yet to decide whether i should go for this or MDR-EX1000.... But defintely one of these two. 

 

[nick n]

classic, commenting on something they haven't heard.

 

[Currawong]

Commenting on record production as well. Kids these days....
 
Anyhow, I don't think Stax ever aimed to be extremely popular, just do what they do very well.

 

[ktm]

Hobbies aren't sane. End of story. Bike riders drop thousands into their gear, as well as camera buffs.
I really hate that PLACEBO phrase.Anytime someone want's to insult something, throw it out there.
Bottom line, many will find a balance of price and sound. Some will drive forward and drop a lot of money doing it.
You can get good Stax gear at sane prices. Bot the top of the mountain stuff is going to cost you.

 

[analogsurviver]

Quote:

They are the most detailed, usually most linear, and have the least distortion of all headphone technologies in their price range. Oh, and they sound fantastic. It is something of a revelation to listen to a good electrostat for the first time, even if you decide they are not for you.
 
They lack popularity mostly because of terrible marketing. Secondly, they are more impractical, as they require a special type of amplifier or a transformer box to power. In this world of plug 'n' play and mobile listening, only the most dedicated will sit down at home in their special spot to listen and relax to their electrostatic rig. Many would rather listen to speakers instead. The portability and popularity of electrostats may greatly increase in the near future, however, with growing numbers of headphone listeners seeking the highest fidelity. 

As much as I adore electrostats, it is not likely we will see QUALITY portables - ever, not from Stax or anybody else.  First, making a closed or semi closed small portable electrostat transducer does border on Mission Impossible for reasons in physics, and even if that was overcome, amplifiers that are possible on anything like juice one can pack even with the latest of batteries are still underpowered.  Even desktop wall outlet driven Stax amps can not  play at real life loudness on tough for electrostats music; a single soprano will shatter it to pieces, let alone a female choir in fortissimo. Just read the specs on Stax amps - it will state frequency response for certain output level, which will be considerably lower than the maximum output available at low frequencies.  As of now, the best Stax combo in this regard is the Stax IEM driven by desktop amp. 
 
If Stax were not that good in the first place and their long term reliability was not second to none ( they are at least as reliable as best dynamics, considering what can go wrong with either type in long time terms that means they are at least one order of magnitude better made than dynamics ), they would have been long time ago extinct due to the terrible/poor/...../......./......./ non-existant marketing and distribution. People are willing to go to all the trouble because of the sound and reliability.
 
Why they are not used more often in studio ? The first reason - cost. They are not "I forgot my phones at home go to the grocery store and get me some" item.The second - they are listenable with programme that would sound awful on more "normal" equipment and producers have to have this factor in mind if they hope to sell the end product in anything like numbers that guarantee profitability. Listen to anything on Water Lily Acoustics by Kavi Alexander : http://www.tnt-audio.com/intervis/waterlily_e.html - reading this interview will reveal he does use both of the best transducers in the world , the mighty Beveridge speaker and Stax Lambda. Lambda might have been superseded/improved upon a bit since this interview was made, Bev has been not. Using transducers of this level will have terrible consequences on your other equipment in the recording chain - practically nothing will be good enough anymore, and going custom is VERY expensive. The quality of recordings is so high only a handful of the biggest audio nuts with comparable equipment will be able to trully appreciate it - on any average HIGH END system, they would prove "too much" and will actually sound inferiour to more normal recordings on such equipment.
 
The story behind the succes of the ECM jazz label of producer Manfred Eicher is a stark reminder of this dilemma; Eicher/ECM is from Munich, Germany, and he simply went from audio store to audio store and asked which speakers sell in greatest numbers - and pared down the quality of final mix just enough so they did sound good on these best selling speakers. Had he insisted on best speakers available at the time and made recordings to suit them, ECM label would have most probably ended up its history long time ago. 
 
That is the real dilemma whether to use Stax or not in studio, not their inadequacy in any sense of the word.

 

[ProjectDenz]

I didn't like the STAX sound, that's just my personal reason.

 

[atonce]

For me , money is the biggest concern.. I do really want to get the 009.

 

[anetode]

Name some music pieces that were produced using STAX? I doubt any significant piece of music was recorded with or targeted at being used with STAX.

LOL, some niche brand from Japan is supposed to be above and beyond what music and studio engineers around the world use. Nobody but some audiophiles with more money than sense use STAX for the placebo. As if STAX is going to unveil a whole new world of detail and depth that the engineers and producers missed while mixing in the studio.

If you enjoy STAX, go ahead. More power to you, it's just that, in my opinion, a lot of high-end industries are based on pseudo-science and placebo.

I think you are conflating ignorance and arrogance and claiming the result as common sense.

There really need not be any elitism about Stax. The relative scarcity of electrostatic headphones is simply a result of market pressure towards homogenization (mainly to drive down production costs). If you pay attention you'd notice that electrodynamics were never the only game in town and that competing technologies like planar magnetics are making a rather strong comeback.

Oh, and at least one Stax model was created specifically because a company was looking for more accurate monitor headphones to use in product development. Ask any studio engineer who has used the 4070 whether their market value was justified.

 

[complin]

Originally headphones were only one small part of the products they produced before the financial problems they experienced some years ago
They were a very innovative audio company producing products at the high end.  Generally the products were very well made and bullet proof which is why vintage stax equipment is still sort after today.
 
Their production included, power amps, preamps, pickup arms, cartridges, phono transformers, DAC's, speakers etc....... and of course headphones 

 
 
Quote:

Commenting on record production as well. Kids these days....
 
Anyhow, I don't think Stax ever aimed to be extremely popular, just do what they do very well.

 

[complin]

IMHO its not really market pressure but that making electrostatics require very high precision and almost high technology clean room conditions.  That means they are more expensive to produce in the first place and are not really suited to high levels of mass production like dynamics.  Most of the top headphone manufacturers have made an electrostat, and Stax used to OEM for many other audio companies.  I guess that the margins on dynamics are much higher and production simpler which is why most of their competitors in the headphone arena have exited.
 
You mention the rise of planar magnetics, and whilst they use a similar principle they are not IMHO comparable to a good electrostatic.  When I first bought my Audeze I was very impressed and hoped they could match the performance of the Stax 007.  However; having now lived with them for some time its obvious they are no match in so many important areas.  I've tried so many headphones over the past several decades, including many iconic dynamics, but few if any can match that natural ease and rightness of sound of an electrostatic, so having ventured on to dynamics I always return to stats.  Stax don't have a monopoly on this sound, Sennheiser and Jecklin produced some timeless examples too.
 
Quote:

I think you are conflating ignorance and arrogance and claiming the result as common sense.
There really need not be any elitism about Stax. The relative scarcity of electrostatic headphones is simply a result of market pressure towards homogenization (mainly to drive down production costs). If you pay attention you'd notice that electrodynamics were never the only game in town and that competing technologies like planar magnetics are making a rather strong comeback.
 

 

[complin]

You don't need a 009, try a 007 MkI or MkII
 
Quote:

For me , money is the biggest concern.. I do really want to get the 009.

 

[Currawong]

Quote:

Originally headphones were only one small part of the products they produced before the financial problems they experienced some years ago
They were a very innovative audio company producing products at the high end.  Generally the products were very well made and bullet proof which is why vintage stax equipment is still sort after today.
 
Their production included, power amps, preamps, pickup arms, cartridges, phono transformers, DAC's, speakers etc....... and of course headphones 

 
 
Quote:

Commenting on record production as well. Kids these days....
 
Anyhow, I don't think Stax ever aimed to be extremely popular, just do what they do very well.

 
Indeed. The irony is that if they did what they were doing then today, they'd have had more of a market for that level of equipment, given how much more prevalent super-expensive hi-fi products have become, and might not have gone broke.

 

[Radio_head]

The internet has been huge to popularize them, specifically the Head-Fi megathread and other headphone forum megathreads.  They would have had next to zero international presence otherwise given how they marketed themselves.  If they were founded during the internet/forum age, they would have had a whole lot of immediate international hype with the quality of product they put out.  As it is, they languished in relative international obscurity for a long time.