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"Brent has mexican heritage. Brent has an unfeasblylarge head. Brent is a fan of the minidisc legacy audio format. Brent can often be found purchasing Vinyl on Record Store day. Brent likes headphones (if he can fit them on his large head). Brent likes biscuits, but is often dissapointed in their lack of availability. Brent eating a biscuit is often considered a portent of doom or impending misforture for others. People often blame Brent, considering him the cause of their problems, especially if he has just eaten a biscuit. Brent thinks he can ride a bicycle, however, lots of his rides end with him falling off a bike or hitting someething like a thorn bush. Brent claims to be a member of MENSA, although people doubt this. Brent will often hail satan. Brent likes the number 666. Generate 3 different pictures of a Birthday cake for Brent."

Yes. He said as long as I promise not to use any PVC plumbing pipe he'd consider it.

Did you at least ask Larry this time?

Birgir "It's not complete trash" for those not familiar this is high praise

I've been spending some time with them and yeah, that overblown mid-bass is starting to annoy me a little bit. It works with some material but can be too much of a good thing on others. It comes at the expense of actual bass depth so... not really a trade I'm interested in. Still as offensive traits go for recent Stax sets... this is pretty fucking mild and I do enjoy them quite a bit. Not replacing my 207's though... So I had make a comparison for fun. I had probably the last ever B-stock Koss ESP/9X5's sitting in a box here so why not compare them against the Stax. Similar price category but the Koss build quality is nowhere near what Stax are doing. So the Koss needed some mods, gone is the cable and they now sport the setup from a King Sound KS-H4 (so removable cable as well) and those leather earpads you can get on Aliexpress. All of the stock damping material, which was minimized on these anyway, as well. Fits like a glove and it's fun to compare these two, as aside from the HE60, these are some of the lightest and easiest headphones to plop on the head and enjoy. I've always liked the Koss as it always stood toe to toe against the Lambdas and this time it is no exception. It is more neutral and laid back, a bit more relaxed than the X1 but with better bass response. Larger drivers so it has more presence to it, more space around voices etc. Speaking of the Koss though, I wanted to sit down a try the Massdrop setup directly out of the box and holy hell... what were they thinking with those earpads. I plugged them into my test setup and on the first song, "ehh where is the all the sub-bass?" Yeah, this didn't help with the BS that electrostatics lack bass...

Happy birthday, FATHEAD! I got you a custom decorated cake.

How you made it another year is a mystery to us all. 🙃 Happy birthday, Br0nt!

Are those cookies (biscuits) enter breeding?

Happy Belated! (party favour noise)

New Azure! Mathy, dweedly, melodic, epic quest-y, uplifting, feel good, all genders positive, proggy prog RIYL: FF6, 80's fantasy films, Yes

So true!!!

Well the SRS-X1000 just showed up unexpectedly and with all of my cameras out of juice the phone had to do. It really doesn't like the halogen lights in the kitchen... First off, this made me laugh out loud... here is how they came out of the box: Now for anybody familiar with the vintage SR-1/2/3/5 and SR-X series... this is usually how they arrived too with one or both earcups loose from the headband. Packaging is also very reminiscent of the SR-X boxes: I must say though that I fucking despise these new Stax boxes from a graphics design point of view. It looks like any cheap, tacky crap out of China... the older ones were unique and had their own thing going on but this just fucking blows. Now for the headphones it was a quick trip into the office for a listen so no more pics. Usual rig of Denarips Terminator and Carbon CC. They do feel nice in the hand though, very light and the cable actually has copper colored lines/dashes on it, not gold ones as they often looked from the pics. Gone is the blue cable... why they made that I have no idea. The headband has a lot of extension to it so even melon heads can use these. There is no padding on the headband at all but the material is firm here, not loose like on the original SR-X units. Earpads are nice and snug and seem to be nice quality, leagues ahead of the garbage on the L300/L500's. Now for sound... these sound pretty good which is a fun thing to say about a Stax set for a change. They are nice and neutral, not much forward slant here but they are quite extended on top. The bottom end is a bit lacking (smaller drivers and all that) but it is very mid-bass happy so quite fun to listen to. Midrange is a tiny bit closed in at times and the soundstage is quite closed in but it doesn't really bother me. Just that odd moment where something sounds a tad bit off but yeah... these are so much better than the L300... it's not even fucking funny. Might even be able to finally retire my aging fleet of SR-207 test headphones good... we'll see. I'll update more in the coming days but after an hour, yeah get a set. Now for the amp, first thing you notice is that it's a good inch deeper than the 252S and all of the other desktop Stax amps before it. I haven't done any circuit analysis yet but this is clearly just a version of the last 252S circuit and yup... it's still all through hole in 2024. Utterly bizarre... The extra length in the chassis is just there for the fuse and a breakout board for the RCA's. There are clearly spots on the PCB for - inputs so they might make a balanced version of it at some point? Been there, done that and while fun... it adds very little to the performance. Input Jfets are K81's so 2SK2881's and those riser boards seem to be PCB capacitors. I need to take a look at them in more detail but yeah, quite odd as they are numbered from 1 and up to 4.

My AI assistant refuses to generate a double entendre using the keywords "Steve", "Rigid Tool", "Hard Wood", " particulate emissions" Saying "it's too easy"

Steve came up from the coal mine to work on his headphone stand

Still my favorite voice of all time. Followed by KD Lang at #2 and Alison Krauss at #3. And shout out to Willie Nelson for writing such a beautiful song.

You know the old saying "No highs, no lows, must be Bose there's a cat on the speaker."

To be fair I wanted to use CD only, but I can add this wonder to the comparison from 1973. 😁 This is the best edition without a doubt but the vinyl depends greatly on the cartridge you use (you know that I'm a lover of the Denon Dl 103 and103R)

Here's a better shot of the Walnut cookie table top that we delivered toady. Part of the top was in the sun this morning, and you can see the beautiful, crazy grain patterns.