spritzer

That thing is so utterly fucked. Pure limitless incompetence all around there. I think we need a list of badly made crap, RSA, McAlister etc. Viva Audio is the newest one I'm laughing at, holy crap they are badly made and the part choices there make no sense at all. They use PSU caps notorious for shorting (Rifa) as coupling caps... in 20k$ amps. Very Singlepower...

It really depends on how loud we are talking but yeah, most amps start to fall apart when you push them with the 007's.

I'm sure we could do a comparison like that.

It was an account I started for us but I don't have any way of getting in there as I don't know the password... or the user name for that matter. 😂

I truly don't get the name... why 9000? The TOTL amp is the T8000 so is this 1000 better...? Doesn't make any sense and is actually worse than the names I come up with...

Please do as there are a lot of people out there with broken crap by them. I'm urging them to come forward with their stories so we'll see

I'm cautiously optimistic that Stax didn't fuck these up but none of the new factors matter at all if they messed up the voicing.

True...

They are not detachable

Same reason as always, zero clue what the fuck they are doing...

They are not as focused as the 007's so the sound stage is more diffused, the bass isn't as impressive and not quite as much detail either. More than anything, this is just a different approach and won't supersede the 007's for me. It's nice though to have something different at times and it's not annoying after a while (like the 009's for instance) or just crap like the Voce.

I agree, a complete rebuild is in order. Nothing really aside from input wiring, attenuator etc. could be reused. I would ditch that stupid tube PSU and just fit a new PSU board there. We could whip up something nice and simple but yeah, part shortages now are a total nightmare. Want a 10M90S... that will be 50weeks...

The treble is similar but that's really where the similarities end as they are very different headphones.

The hot treble was fixed but there is a massive hole in the bass response and I don't know how they could ship something like that.

The treble is very reminiscent of the 007's, slightly dark and laid back but can get bright if the source/material calls for it. The 717 is pretty much a KGSS so that will work well.

It's been a month but the CRBN is finally here, well this is actually the second set I've received. First set was one of two units to have an assembly issue which Audeze have now identified and fixed. I sent that one back and they sent a new one out. Now these are loaner sets but if I want to keep it, I will buy it. Just wanted to make that clear as I always own everything I tear down. The first set was setup to make it easier for me to take a peek inside so the pics I'll post later, will be of that unit. They are identical though and to say the CRBN looks gorgeous... well that would be an understatement. First thing that came to my mind when lifting out of the sturdy aluminum flight case, was a comparison to the Hifiman Shangri-la jr. Similar price range (I paid 4000$ for my set back in the day) and by comparison the Shangri-la looks like a 200$ Aliexpress special. The carbon fiber headband, the forged carbon earcups and nice thick leather earpads. Yeah, this is for sure no Hifiman product and it really puts Stax to shame with their shitty SR-009 headband design. Not that I was expecting anything less from Audeze but the attention to detail is nothing short of exemplary. Nice long strain relief on the cables as they enter the cups, the quality of the Stax plug, the sheer comfort of having these on the head (even with my melon of cranium) and the list goes on. The only issue I could find with them (and it was true of both sets) is a rather strong chemical smell as they are fresh out of the box. It doesn't bother me at all but it might bother some so best mention it. In terms of amp requirements, they are rather power hungry. It was a clear design choice to make them a bit less sensitive so the amps need to be pushed further in terms of volume level but it's nothing extreme. I had a KGSSHV in my system when the first unit arrived so I kept that to compare against the new one. It drives them just fine but the Carbon is a better choice with roughly 4 times the power. I would place the KGSSHV/KGST as the baseline for them to get excellent performance and it only gets better from there. Now it's been only been an hour or so with this second set (a few days with the first one) so it's early but first impressions are great. To keep it short, it's what the Sennheiser HE90 could have been but never managed to do. The CRBN has that same ethereal, diffused quality but with far more midbass and bass presence. They are not the bass monsters which the 007's can be but there is enough there and they are not bright or forward sounding at all. I'll post some more impressions later and the teardown pics as well.

It's always great to have new sets to play with but the recent Stax sets have just been such a massive letdown. The 009BK is the only one of the recent sets I've actually kept but that's more down to me needing to have a set of 009's rather than using them for fun. The 009S is such a disappointment... Speaking of the CRBN... I'll be posting about that soon as I have them sitting on my head right now... Ohhh and teardown pictures as well.

Yeah, the SRM-500t is the same amp as the SRM-006tS but the price is up by 35% or so, the SRM-400S is a far worse design than the SRM-353X and again, the price is up by 30-40%. Don't get me started on the SRM-700 amps...

That's probably the mesh stator but I have very little enthusiasm for this. All of the Stax prices are now nuts so this is probably going to be 10k$ or more.

That looks like the paint failing and not the actual plastic?

It is a copy of the SR-Omega so it has all the same issues as the Omega... i.e. a headband which Stax should never have used for them. They break... a lot... and have since 1993. As for the ES-1a, i have been using my set pretty much daily for 18 months now and they are still perfect, no issues at all and always sitting on a Stax stand... even with a couple of tumbles to the floor as I pulled on the cable.

Some progress on my end, the amp is up and running now. It only took a new KGSSHV psu, new transformer, new power switch and I also swapped out the Stax socket as that nylon one just bugged me. I also dropped the voltage from +/-400V to +/-350V as hacking up the amplifier boards would have been a lot of work and the lower voltage negates most of that. Couple if funny things, the sheer number of misspellings on these boards is hilarious, bias is always written "Bisa" and look carefully at the text on those amp boards for some hilarity. One other thing, I was going over the PSU board and noticed one thing, the caps for the bias supply are 630V rated... now to generate the bias this is a voltage doubler, it takes the raw AC input (which is 325V or so) and doubles it. For that the parts need to be rated at least double the input voltage and guess what... 2*325V is more than 630V. That is assuming the line voltage remains stable and there are no spikes. Yeah everything done to save just a little bit of money.

If you want to let it go then I'd love to mess with it. Having these basket cases around is just so much fun... Something like that could work as a helping hand (similar to what we have in Spice and other simulation software) but it's no replacement for the human mind. The issue with everything is that building stuff (as in physical stuff) is hard and you run into issues that nobody thought of. One thing comes to mind, my very expensive office chair at home failed this week. It basically split in half where it was attached together with 4 M8 screws. Now they were large torx units and the head was only about 10mm in diameter and with the deep torx head, there was not a lot of material there to actually make the connection. Add to that they had not been properly tightened at the factory and bam... the heads broke off. If they had been torqued to spec then it would have been fine but just that little bit of play (plus I'm a mountain of a man ) was enough to make them fail. We've had similar stuff happen with the PCB's we've used and parts that should work just fine but are marginal. Then we have the issue that if you were to design like that, that means trusting datasheets etc. and well no... just no.

If you want to let it go, I'd love to take it off your hands.

I really need to find a McAlister amp for the collection.... 😉