It is official: I've gone STAX.
I got my pair of STAX SR-Lambda hybrid earspeakers from spritzer two days ago, and they generate the highest fidelity sound I've ever heard. Ever since I first heard the Lambdas about a year and a half ago, I knew I had to have a pair. They possess a level of clarity and articulation that no dynamic headphone (or speaker) can ever touch. Every last detail of the music is laid bare: the buzzing of a guitar string, the texture of a bassline, the overtones of a violin, the hard attack of a drum, the spittle in the back of a singer's throat. Where a dynamic headphone would have trouble "keeping up" with the music, the electrostatic headphone never trips up.
The weird thing is that the headphone actually moves only a small amount of air, and you cannot feel the impact of the sound on your head; it is as if the sound is coming out of thin air, just like everyone says.
The most noticeable difference is the sheer speed of the headphone's attack. A dynamic headphone has a relatively much larger amount of "lead-in" to a sudden transient like a string being plucked, for example. This headphone has none that I can hear, giving a very lifelike impact and hardness to these kinds of sounds. Sudden bass impacts are like getting hit in the face with a sack of concrete. Ghostly concrete that appears out of thin air.
Another plus is the headphone's ability to render great detail in both the bass and treble regions at the same time. Any normal headphone begins to suffer from severe intermodulation distortion in such a situation. The bass causes a large driver excursion which hinders the proper rendering of treble frequencies. But
this driver is so thin and light that IMD is no longer noticeable.
Yes. Yes, STAX is awesome. We need more STAX threads.
P.S. Who says electrostatic headphones don't have bass? These things are
bassy. The tactile impact isn't quite as big (but it is there), but they have at least as much audible bass an HD650. Unfortunately, the HD650s can't even touch them when it comes to delicate articulation.
