Leaderboard

I have compared the 009 and 009S running from the same amp (T8000) today. The room was somewhat quiet, but I had only two source options: my iPhone (connected through Apple's lightning adapter directly to the T8000) or their CD player with their own music. Even though the listening conditions weren't ideal, I could make a rough comparison. The 009S had a more evident bass, a fuller body and overall sounded more natural IMO. The treble on the 009 (at least out of the T8000) is a little bit annoying for me, and the 009S had this fixed (phew!). I thought it was a bit more resolving too. I talked with Mr. Sasaki (former Stax Director and Sales Manager) who also hosted me when I visited their factory last year. He has been working there for decades now, and unfortunately has retired last month. He is a very nice and knowledgeable guy. He said that the 009S started being developed 3-4 years ago. For its voicing, he said they used the 006t and 727A initially, and then the T8000 when it was released. I asked about discontinuing the old 009 and he said that for now they will keep both, but depending on the sales, the 009 may fade out or get discontinued. I also asked if the 009S is meant to be just a different flavor from the 009, or a higher level product. He said that "S" stands for "Special" and that the 009S has been developed to improve on the 009 imperfections. This hobby is weird and some may prefer the older version, but I know which one I'm buying when my T2 arrives. On another note, I told him about the DIY buildings of the T2 and showed some pictures of the ones made by Kerry. He was very happy and proud to know about it, and even happier and "grateful"- his words - to know that it bests every other stat amp out there.

The new A/V rack... The Gray stain on the butcher block is subtle, but Grayer in person.

I don’t have much to add to hugo’s post, agree on the findings except perhaps sounstage which felt a bit more closed in on the 009S compared to 009. I also used my source (sony dap) HP out to drive the T8000 so it wasn’t ideal + noisy environment but I was pleasantly surprised by 009S. These days I am applying dig. EQ to my 009 to take the edge off the mids and boost the subbass a little so I did not think I’d get into the 009S. But what I listened to today was quite promising, the 009S improves on the 009 across the board and I could not find a drawback. It sounds cleaner, fuller body, more natural mids, looses that tendency of 009 to sound thin / agressive at high volume levels and does not loose any treble extension or resolution. I think this one is going to be popular with the mafia given the number of 007 fans and 009 haters ;-). Design wise, besides the official blurb on housing, stators and grill, the pads felt definitely stiffer than the 009 and I bet part of the chances in voicing come from there (perhaps more so than the gold plating of the stators). The 009 really do sound cleaner than 009 from bass quality to transparency overall, the structural redesign of the grill and such may be more influential than I would have thought. It was good to see Sasaki-san there (apparently the head designer Suzuki-san is joining tomorrow) but the new generation of employees seem to be on top of the game already so I can only wish a bright year ahead for Stax. Besides talk on the 009S, Suzuki-san mentionned all D/A related designed are outsourced to edifier (the new portable dac amp fully is), the upcoming dac board addon for the t8000 also won’t come out of Japan (they stick to analog components design). Apart from that, Edifier still leaves Stax full autonomy today it seems.

Andytown at home

I made some modifications to my Megatron. Most of them are under the hood. changed the CCS tubes filament supply transformers from 25VA Antek AN 0206 to 50VA AS 0506 (one for each channel). Now the under-load filament voltage is at 6.15v. changed the transformer supplying the front end filament and current sink to 50VA Antek 0512 to accommodate the higher filament supply when using E80CC in place of the 12AU7 and drill some holes on the PSU chassis to help with cooling. added an LED indicator on the amp chassis which comes on when HV supply is on.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Fragships in Doom or World of Warcraft.

Lamb Shoulder, Lemon Potatoes and veggies Rabbit Kalamakia - Rabbit Loin surrounded by lamb sausage and wrapped in bacon. Moussaka Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Levitating eggs taste any better than those pulled by gravity?

Rolled around Seattle Center chasing Xavier and the Ginger Avenger on skateboards, dropped by KEXP to plan a heist. Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Vinyl....

Mmmm dinosaur. Tastes like chicken.

From the scrolling pictures on https://stax-international.com/

Salted caramel cheesecake shake. YUM!

Well... I dug out the screwdrivers... Sorry for the crappy pictures, I just had the iphone to hand. First off, the true quality Stax plug: So that disk there normally sits flush with the plug as the pins are too long. They had that problem with the Jade so nothing has changed in a decade... Pure class. It is also incredibly crude. Funny how King Sound could make a ribbon cable and a proper plug at 1/8th the price... Speaking off the cable, you can barely make out the loose wires in there when I press it together. Here's the earpads...well one of them. They are pretty comfy but they do stink quite badly. No expense spared here... I did order some new pads to try out. Here is the baffle and the cable entry. The latter seems to not be molded around the cable so I might be able to remove this cable and put in a proper ribbon. Very long screws... They go all the way to the back of the housing which is plastic and has nice metal inserts. Now the baffle is off and it has this nice rubber gasket to maintain baffle seal. Now we can see the cable and the metal frame which provides the bulk of the assembly. Here is the back of the protective mesh. These are not the stators so why Hifiman uses this in the promo's as the stators is beyond me... Another gasket here which is good. Here we have the driver. There is a protective mesh but it is odd. It's not a solid sheet but some sort of a porous membrane. Copper mesh stators and the pitch is very fine. Finally the back of the drivers and the second protective mesh. You can also see the plastic frame which holds it all together. The drivers are glued together so I didn't want to mess with them more at this time. One funny thing, the cables inside the cups are really long. Like 10cm even though they would need only about 2cm or so... Over all, I'm impressed by the build quality. It's not Stax quality but they are getting better. I eagerly wait for the Mk2 version next month...

No crash videos?

The boards are in the US. I should have them Monday

mwl168, you are really making me want to build one of these. Darn you! Well done all around and thanks for sharing with us.

Ah - that would be birds. Just think about that when you eat an egg or have roast chicken or turkey. "What do you fancy for Sunday lunch?" "Dinosaur"

That is so true. I have no idea what they do when they can't get human. Over 4000 species of spider, with the Sydney Funnel Web being the most toxic spider on the planet. 140 species of snake, of which 12 can kill you. I have a friend who lives near the Great Barrier Reef. He was canoeing in a nearby river, and the canoe was attacked by freshwater crocodile trying to get his teeth into my mate. He got away with it, fortunately. Deaths by shark attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_shark_attacks_in_Australia mostly by the infamous Great White. Having said that, in our three weeks in Australia (NSW and Queensland) we saw no spiders, snakes, crocs or sharks. We were bitten by various insects (including ants), and Carole was clearly bitten by a spider; her leg blistered locally, but it is healing fine now two weeks on. No idea what got her. At least there are no grizzlies in Australia!

Meanwhile ... The important music news http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43924609

The construction looks pretty solid. But I don't like it that they glue the driver together.

Are you talking about his reviews or actually dissembling things!

Yeah. It is what is called a self-selecting sample. It is the basis of the crap statistics you see on shampoo, face cream etc TV adverts "67% of 106 people report a difference in 2 weeks". Which is bollocks for two reasons. First the confidence is low. With 90% confidence and a buying public in the UK for that brand of face cream might be 500,000 is +/-12%. So all you can say is that the data is somewhere between 55% and 79% with 90% confidence. The second way it falls down is that the sample is self-selecting - it is not a true randomised test. Either they have been selected by the company, or they only include data from a subset of customers who contact them. The sample sizes are always suspiciously tiny for major billion dollar brands. Why do they not do a sample of 1000, or 10,000? They certainly have deep enough pockets. Or perhaps they know that in a real statistical randomised test with a large sample size they will get about 50%. In other words that their massively expensive product does nothing whatsoever. <rant mode = off>

So...Justin knows how to make me do crazy shit so I'm now the proud owner of a set of these. What strikes anybody holding these is just how fucking cheap they feel, they make even the old Jade feel well built in places. So let's start to examine them, I'll take some pics later when I have some time. The drivers are metal (copper?) mesh on a spacer ring. I'll get a better look at them when I take these apart. No solid dust covers on the back, clearly woven nylon so a huge fail there. The earpads are woeful... some odd mix of what feels like fake leather and cloth. They are also very badly fixed to the phones which means the baffle seal could be compromised. They feel ok on the head but are just so fucking cheap looking... They also smell like cheap fake handbags from China aka. a whole isle at Marshall's or HM... The headband is the standard HFM fair with the same fake leather headpad. These cost 6k$ so leather was out of the question? Seriously...no money left over for that? Very Sennheiser in 1991... The housings are aluminum and feel solid enough but they are not a one piece unit as Stax would do it. The back is a separate plate and how it fits with the rest of a the housing is a bit of a joke. No gap on the bottom...1mm at the top. Pure quality here. Now the for the best part, the cable. This thing is so fucked... Now the plug is a clone of the Stax one but they used the wrong pins (look identical to the old Jade pins) so they had to make a spacer which fits over the end of the plug to shorten the pins. Such quality and attention to detail... Now the actual cable is clad in the cheapest tech flex from the 90's that money could buy which makes it look a bit like something which would be shipped with a cheap computer PSU. You can see the wires through the techflex if you push it together and they are super tiny with transparent insulation. Not formed into a proper ribbon either so this is not good at all. I wonder if this cable would last a year with normal use, it's just that flimsy. I'll report later on the sound but spoiler...there are issues I don't hate them.

Indeed... I had a mild panic attack when I saw it and my wallet tried to self destruct... For those that don't know this was the TOTL Stax system back in 1994 and could be considered the answer to the Orpheus. They don't excist on the same dimension though with Stax rewriting the rulebook with both items. When old Stax went under in 1995 they had sold about 300 SRM-T2's and about 500 SR-Omegas when it took Sennheiser 15 years to sell all 300 of the Orpheus. The Blue Hawaii is based on that amp with the power it can output though it doesn't use tubes in the first stage as Stax did.

Well that's it. Surely there's more to life than recommending <$50 portable cans / teh best amp evar. Headcase here I come. Birgir, having now bought Lambdas from Faust2d (3d?) that he no longer needed after buying your gear, and an SRM-t1 that goosepond didn't need after buying your Srm-T1s, I'm starting to feel like your high school son who inherits all your old stuff after you're done with it. Except I have to buy it from other people. That last bit kind of ruins the whole metaphor.

A mutual friend of ours sent me this video of Brent and his family on a ski vacation earlier in the year. Unfortunately unbeknownst to everyone on the mountain, Brent had a quadruple helping of biscuits for breakfast and well... Don't go skiing when Brent has had a biscuit.