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ktm

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Posts posted by ktm

  1. IMHO instead of fucking the consumers, they'd need to protect them by limiting the silly margins their distributors want to charge.

    Maybe it's time for the new management to offer Web-direct. Given the fact that they completely gutted out North America's dealers in the

    last two years, this would be a good time to offer this for at least this region.

  2. The build quality with the modern Quad stuff is indeed a problem. Basic stuff such as the glue to use for the diaphragm isn't all so easy to do correctly and it's clear IAG missed some of the finer points of the ESL63 design. Such as the very frugal British way of having all the circuits of separate PCB's so if one fails you just change that one instead of scrapping the whole thing.

    That's common on just about everything made lately.. One board=cheaper to build. And makes it a paper cup. Use it once and throw it away.

  3. The Chinese could ride out the current product line for 5 years. They don't need R&D anytime soon.

    They could just be getting the rights to make the gear in the current product line and run with it, and just

    cut costs. Then take the Stax name and hang it on to whatever new product line they have sitting out there,

    even traditional headphones. Stax dynamics? Most likely going to happen.

  4. I'm in Plano; Shops of Legacy to be specific. But hell, I'd be happy to come wherever you are and bring my stuff. I'd welcome the chance to both meet another local into this hobby of ours and would be extremely grateful to try out the Pico (and your other DACs) with my CTH/TP setup.

    You have a PM. The Pico is a pretty good bang for the buck DAC. If i hadn't of gotten a steal on the NFB3, it would still be in use.

    I just had a conversation at the Club Polk website about DACS. It's hard to choose one anymore with all the new ones coming out.

    The reality of the DAC world is higher priced ones sound better(with a few exceptions). You have to just stop when the money runs out!

  5. The grill pops off and the driver just snaps into place. Its held by fours plastic tabs.

    So the question becomes, what happened? If it was properly seated, it shouldn't just come loose.

    The link provided above is a start. Here's another as part of a "de-foaming".

    http://apuresound.com/hdsennmod.html

    Hopefully once the grill is removed, the tabs aren't broken.

    If ok, it should all just snap back together. The whole set of cans is pretty much like that.

  6. What cap updates did you do?

    Replaced the electrolytics. They tend to be the 1st thing to age in an amp. Higher ESR and drifting values are the result.

    The elder Stax gurus talk about it. I tried it. It works. They speak the truth!

  7. Good info, thanks :) The build is bone stock aside from a few Takman and Kiwame resistors. You won't be the first person who hasn't been crazy about the eXstata. I remember reading some other middling impressions.

    The Exstata hybrid I built is alright. I like it better than the 313 I have. I've re-capped a SRM1-mkII as well.

    The Exstata midrange is a bit recessed, but it does kill the "etch". Not too bad of a sound. The sr-313 with 404's and to some

    extent with 202's is a bit bright, and the "etch" is more pronounced. The re-capped srm1-MKII sounds good all around. The midrange

    is back, and the sound is good. The 313 is the loser here, with the srm-1 with 202's or the Exstata with the 404's both

    sounding different, but good. I really need to weed out some stuff and build a KGSS.

    Overall, a set of 202's with an updated srm-1 MKII would be a very good starting point without breaking the bank.

    The SRM-1 before the cap update left something to be desired. The sound was very rolled off and a bit lifeless.

  8. There's a lot of fake boobs and tubes in Dallas, along with fake blondes and fake cowboys!

    There really isn't a lot of good reasons why there would be that many people who didn't open the box,

    lost the receipt,or got it as a gift.

    Add to it all the stupid Chinese ads with nonsense wording all going back to the same web site with different names.

    I flag their ads and sign up their hotmail accounts to porn sites. That should keep them occupied for a while.

  9. The local Craigslist is choke full of "NIB" Beats.

    Somebody must be bringing in truckloads of Chinese knock-offs.

    We have had a ton of those white van speakers around here, now these.

    There must be 20 a day listed. Worthless either way, real or not.

    Is this the case around the other metro areas around the country?

  10. I've on occasion shelved down the treble on the lambdas 2-3db from 1.5kHz upward. I don't bother trying to fine tune FR. It's kind of fruitless because most of the peaks are resonances or stored energy in the time domain that can't be really eliminated. And you are still going to get the same non-linear distortion relative to the signal anyways.

    EQ isn't evil. Just worthless in fixing most flaws in sound. Like you, I have tried this with 404's, and in the end found 202's to just work better.

    Until I can afford the really good Stax stuff, the 202's will have to do.

  11. Well, sound wise not so good. My guess the drivers have seen better days. Good thing they weren't anything but an add on.

    The guy just tossed them into the deal. I'm going to have to find a way to open them up for a look see. Or just set them out

    somewhere for eye candy. Maybe there's a reason you don't see much mention of them on the web.

  12. I was out horse trading some gear and came out of it with a set of JBL L100's and a set of these.

    Sound md-401b quad headphones. This is a stock photo, but my set looks almost new.

    I haven't had a chance to fire them up yet. It's going to take some thought as to best do it.

    I could try using two amps, and reverse the two rear channels, which is supposed to sound ok.

    I unfortunately no longer have the Marantz quad receiver or other gear around to do this right.

    post-1345-0-15491800-1308793913_thumb.jp

  13. I've had old school Paradigm and newer studio 6o v2. The older ones tended to sound bloated in the low end. Even the newer

    ones had a mid bass hump. But the studio 60's are a pretty good overall speaker. The later versions improved the sound.

    My biggest surprise as late is the soon to be released Polk flagships. They had them at the Lone Star Audio Fest.

    It's been decades since Polk had a really high end speaker, and they looked and sounded great.

    Here in the States, there are so many great speakers to choose from. Used, there's a great set of speakers

    up on Dallas craigslist, or an audiogon listing within driving distance all the time.

    Don't get too hung up on tubes. There's a lot of great SS choices out there. I only went tube because I stumbled into

    a great deal.

  14. I went to my regular hi-fi store, MacBook Pro in hand, for some speaker evaluation today. The plan was to try the Harbeth 7ES-3s originally, but things were considerably altered by my running into the fluent-English-speaking KEF dealer the last time I went there who pointed out a new pair of Q900s in the store. I'd neither experienced Harbeths nor KEFs, so was somewhat intrigued. The KEFs are cheaper, but have a funky combined tweeter and mid designed to improve the soundstage and image even when listening off-center, along with a passive cone instead of a port, the whole aim being making them very room-friendly.

    Modern Kef's don't do much for me. Somewhere along the line they started tweaking for HT, and like a lot of other speakers companies, they lost that

    2 channel music magic. The only Harbeth dealer close by is 240 miles away. I am a big fan of the British sound. I currently have Proac and Rega.

    Proac and ARC tube gear have a great sound, somewhat on the warm side with a good soundstage.

  15. I don't want to create a new thread for this minor question- I have noticed some crackling in the left side of my HD580, is this an issue with the cable or the connector inside the headphones? I can't remember which one it was but do remember this being an issue back in the day when more people liked Senns :)

    I don't have any other cables to test it out with.

    Most likey in the cans. The contact point for the pins of cable is a small short spring. If the winding of the spring spreads out a little, you get this.

    You could of course swap the left and right connectors to verify. There was a thread with pictures showing how to fix this. If I find it later, I'll link it.

  16. The price of old 70's receivers is unbelievable.

    i had a couple of old Marantz units I paid $5 and $20 for.

    When I got tired of looking at them, I put them up on craigslist

    And almost got run over by a stampede. There are old units worth

    the Big $$$, and then there's just old stuff. When did "vintage"

    replace "tired old crap"? There's some really great old gear out there,

    but much of this stuff isn't it. At minimum, it's going to need re-capping.

    The sr40 setup does sound good, with no balance issues at all.

    The earpads are flat, and it doesn't look like I'll be replacing them anytime soon.

    I use the extension cord(5 or 6 pin style) and sometimes use the sr40 for testing.

  17. I just wanted to chime in and say just how bloody awesome the SR-1 is. :) This headphone is at least 45 years old (probably a few years older than that even though it isn't the first version) yet after sitting for at least a year untouched the drivers came up to song is a few seconds and with no channel imbalance.

    The sound is nothing short of stunning with ample bass and treble. The sound field isn't as expansive as with the modern Stax sets but this can still embarrass quite a few modern dynamics.

    There's a lot of old Stax still out there. I've got a cheap pair of sr-40's that sound just fine. That's what got me going on the Stax sound.

    Comfort isn't so great, but 35 year old ear cushions certainly don't help. I was in a lot better shape 35 years ago myself.

  18. The wow is definitely there - quite obvious in the piano notes, but it's hardly audible on phones, compared with speakers. It sounds like a recording on a home tape recorder.

    I ran it through Proacs with the Audio research amp. Then through headphones. I'd say the whole album is a good example of how not to engineer sound.

    But it is much worse on speakers than cans. I guess that's why it doesn't get much play time here.

  19. This isn't strictly limited to Stax phones, but I was wondering why the terrible wow in the piano on masterings of "Changes" from Black Sabbath Volume 4 is hardly noticeable on phones and mind blowingly annoying on speakers. Any theories?

    You've got my interest. My speaker system is all tubes, I can go full SS or hybrid on the Stax. If I can avoid working again Monday night, I'll give it a whirl.

    I believe there was quite of bit of Sabbath that never sounded right on sand amps.

  20. I can see why it's well though of. It nails the proper sound of many instruments dead on, and does a pretty good job with female vocals.

    The Stax kills it in soundstage and separation. But it is a fun headphone to listen to. And I'm all about budget!

  21. I recently fell into a deal on Grado sr-100's that I couldn't pass up.

    No, not the HP drivers. They appear to be pink,white lettering plastic grill.

    Either way, they seem to sound better than other Grado's I've had around

    here. Not up to the Stax sound, but pretty good with a Millet minimax.

    Either way, $30 well spent.

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