spritzer

Ehhh Mk2.95 now... we kinda boxed ourselves in with the 2.9 moniker... 😉 Not much different from the Mk2.9 (which dates back to 2014 at least) , new earpads being the biggest change.

They are a bit more relaxed sounding and neutral to me. It's not a huge difference but the L500Mk2 gave a wow feeling for the first time in a long while when I first put them on. I just got them for the bloody cable... 😉

The L500Mk2's are excellent and probably the best new Stax on offer aside from the 007's (which are hardly new at this point). Far more balanced than they used to be and easy enough to fit L700 earpads if that is your thing

No real change and I just put them away as I got new toys. I did give them another chance and yeah.. I'm never going to use these, it is unforgivable for me that they can't play all music without sound off, some songs are just not right. They are just placed in my reference collection now and... yeah I'm not happy about this. Hell I'd take the L500Mk2 over them...

This thing is actually worse than previously thought when you look at it. So first thing, never, ever use the balanced input... those are clearly opamps next to each XLR socket so... yeah badly converted to SE. Pure quality there... Then we have one input tube feeding both EL84 push-pull output stages so it has to be a phase splitter for them. There is not a whole lot of gain here plus the limitation of the choke being used... this is pretty dire A bit of context here, when you dig through history, the first ever mention of electrostatic headphones (DIY) is from the 50's and something like this is what was suggested as the amplifier to drive them... as there were push-pull tube amps everywhere at that time. Leave the output transformer secondary floating, take the signal through caps off the output tube plates, some high value resistors to ground after the caps and a simple bias off the B+. So this is somehow high end now?

Just this line shows the utter lack of knowledge at play here... speaker or headphones sure... but dynamic vs. electrostatic is sure as shit matters. Wow... just wow...

It has all the same issues as the Woo Audio WES, their absurdly expensive unit, probably the new ES8 (based on the tube choice) and the LTA unit. The biggest issue is how the tubes are being driven, i.e. a center tapped inductor. With a normal loudspeaker, this isn't an issue but with electrostatic loads, it creates a lot odd issues and they can be clearly heard, if you know what you are looking for. It is not linear and neutral as it moves through the frequency range so to be simple, a high quality CCS, is pretty much utterly inert to what the amp is doing, a resistor far less so but here you add an inductor to the mix and a lot of weird stuff happens. Now why use inductors, well they are cheap all told. Palatauf are using nice Lundahl units but compared to the cost of CCS's and cooling it, it is a cheap option. Second reason, lot of voltage swing but that is problematic on its own. I've been hearing through the grapevine that Stax are not happy about these amps and why they've come so hard down on warranty repairs for headphones. A brief burst from one of these amps will kill the drivers at high volume levels

So here in Austria, we don't use our brains at all and life is so much better? Yeah, I don't buy that.... It's been the same shit for the last 20 years I've been active in this hobby, Single Power, RSA, Woo Audio and all those other crap amps, the fanboys when faced with actual circuit analysis, it's fingers in the ears and this stuff sounds amazing!! Shut UP!! What I don't get is that you like the crap amp, fine, that's your problem. I'm not trying to sell you anything but because your bad tastes validate some crap design, that suddenly makes it good? So the KGSSHV, which is a monitor amp - designed to be as neutral as is possible, sounds flat and lifeless... might that just be the source? Just throwing that out there... Also, this has the be the lamest attempt to try a Carbon I've ever read...

No, I don't have any BH builds.

You need to replace those wires or it will never work and make sure they are connected into the transformer. You can lift up that plastic cover on the transformer to access the tie pins. Then bridge the following contacts on the PCB for 120V: 2,4,6

Any amp can be made with any bias so a Blue Hawaii with normal bias is not a problem.

The Paltauf is a bad joke... I mean look at it: It's a speaker amp with the electrostatic signal taken off the plates through capacitors. Yeah... all the issues of doing that.

Did you check the offset and balance of the channels? It's odd that it acts up but clears up when it is just running on the charge stored in the capacitors. Might point to an over voltage situation somewhere or some part acting up when under full load.

That is correct except I'd move the white wire to the other empty hole as it would be connected through the jumper anyway.

Wait until you have your unit in hand as there are so many different versions of the 313

It was one of the Stax amps and he measured it as if it were a dynamic unit. When puzzled by the sheer stupidity of his findings he said he couldn't believe people thought this sounded good. Two things there that spring to mind, not listening at all and the sheer lack of technical know how needed to pull something like this off.

Indeed, you have no clue what you are talking about and you come to us... and expect what exactly? This isn't Head-fi where nobody has a clue what the hell they are looking at, we spot BS from miles away and shills as well. You may think this stuff is as good as it gets but for me that just points to inexperience more than anything else. Nothing wrong with that, everybody starts somewhere but barging in and claiming you have a clue what is going on... it's not a good look.

While I'm at it, here is the cable they use: Just took some quick picks with the phone, can't be arsed to spend any more time on this: So those are the cheapest XLR's money can buy and possibly the oddest cable I've ever opened. The signal is carried on those thin wires but the bias is on a massive copper mesh for some reason. Now somebody spent a lot of time making this but that doesn't mean any of it is a good idea. First off, the teflon is clearly very thin when the proper 600V stuff is not and in what world is it a good idea to have the highest current capacity for the bias wires? The bias supply is tied directly to the mains, if the bias resistors fail and all hell breaks loose... you don't want what is essentially a mains cable coming up to your head.

I tried to read that article... holy crap do you honestly believe those cables and idiotic footers make a difference? For fucks sake... Also first good point is build quality... sure. Thanks for the internal pics though as this thing sure is a hot mess. So you have a tube amp... and you could use that to directly drive the stators but nope, they went the worst of all worlds. They take a push pull amp, step that down to speaker level and then step it back up for the electrostatics. WHY!!!?? In what universe is that a good design choice, double up the transformers and cram it all in a small chassis... right next to the power transformer and the inductor. You would be much better off with a cheap tube amp off ebay (the China specials) and a SRD-7. That way there is at least some isolation. Same bias supply as the transformer box, despite this being a tube amp and thus safe, high voltage AC being present which is easy to step up. Hell, a dedicated tap off the transformer would suffice. I just love that one nut in the back right hand corner just not fully fixed. Shows the amount of care. All the same earthing issues as the other amps as it uses the 3D printed corner pieces which don't conduct.

I've seen detailed internal pictures of both of the other units and yeah... pure utter trash. Every corner has been cut, product which springs for ChangX capacitors... yeah they really care about quality. If I'm so wrong, post internal pictures and tell me how wrong I am using actual facts, not feelings.

Ahhh yes, the age old "ohh this model is way inferior to the others"... despite it having the same driver setup. The issue isn't down to voicing, it is the fundamental setup of the drivers, they just don't work. They are simply not stable so when you try to compensate for the lower sensitivity with more drive voltage, it all falls apart. Plenty of others have compared them in the Mafia and yeah... there are no favorable reviews to be found. One thing that should also be clear, none of these are actually amps, they are basic speaker amps driving the same transformers across the range. The transformers are ok, nothing more than that but the rest is just a dumpster fire. Now let's start with the truly dangerous stuff, none of the chassis is actually earthed or uses proper high voltage parts. Sure the back panel is earthed but the other 5 chassis panels are in no way electrically connected to it. Since they like to run non isolated bias a fraction of a millimeter away from the front panel... yeah this is a big problem. Then we have the whole fake XLR's from China being asked to carry 600VDC and high voltage AC though a cable which is a bad joke. It's actually worse than the Hifiman one and that says a lot... I can't remember if I ever posted a picture of it but I'll try to do that later. Reading something on HF? No... I don't waste my time on that unless there is solid technical background. Impressions are all but meaningless.

Amps are dangerous, the headphones aren't great... There is potential there but they just didn't get the point.

I wouldn't touch any of these, they are utter trash, all of them.

Just check the offset and balance, if they are within spec (+/-20VDC) then it should be fine.

1.6A should be fine and you can always measure the resistance of the windings. There should be a resistance reading when measuring from one end of the windings to the other when they are set to 240V.