spritzer

They didn't have a lot of time to compare as damn customers were annoying them. They did spend some time with it and did manage to overload the HE90...they needed a time out after that. I seriously need to modify those drivers.

Time for some impressions of this rare beast. The Icelandic distributor has a set on loan and they carved an entire afternoon out of the schedule for me to try it and do some comparisons. I showed up with the HE90 I built from spare parts, Aristaeus, Carbon amp and a port modded SR-007Mk2. Since they were using the built in dac on the HE-1, I just plugged both amps into as well to equalize the comparison. Over all, I like the build quality of the headphones. Imagine a HD800 built properly and you are pretty much there. The leather earpads are super nice and the headband has nice extension to even fit my large melon. I don't think they are super comfy though as they are fucking heavy (550gr) and all of the pressure is on the top of the head. The Stax 4070 is just about as heavy but far more comfy due to the suspended headband design. The earcups get a bit warm due to the internal amps but only about 5-7°C above ambient. The cable is also pretty nice and not microphonic at all but more on the amps etc. later. Amp itself...well it is just fucked up. I get that they were trying to cater to some nouveau-riche people who just want something expensive but the wank factor is off the charts. I also have serious doubts about what's hiding in that nice marble shell... As for the headphones them selves... well the drivers look pretty much identical to the HE90 units and the few pictures of them that exist, point to that. I wanted to rip off the earpads to check further but people get antsy with something this expensive... One worrying thing I noticed though is that both sides of the drivers have porous dust covers. They look identical to the woven nylon found on the HE90 and well...I would expect solid covers. Now for some actual impressions. As I said above the HE-1 dac was the source for all the amps. To that you have to turn off the headphones so no direct comparisons were possible but I know how both systems should sound so not a big problem there. The source feeding the HE-1 was a Macbook Pro running itunes but I bypassed that with my own FLAC files and player. There are some major changes compared to the older system, this one can do bass and isn't as horribly colored either but over all...I was not impressed and the system never made me really interested in the music. It doesn't engage like a good 007 system can, where I sometimes just sit in awe even after owning a set for all these years. Here, it just doesn't pull me in. This is clearly a midrange issue as there just isn't enough presence there. First off the major issues are the bass, treble and the soundstage. Let's start with the bass, it has this annoying hump to it sort of like the old Lambdas. I'm not sure if this is the mosfet driver (could be, the Cavalli crap boxes have similar issues) or the headphones but it is a clear coloration and once you notice it, just annoys the fuck out of me. Now on some tracks it wasn't as noticeable but always lurking in the background none the less. Next up is the treble...which is both subdued and bright at the same time. I know plenty of people complain the 007's lack sparkle and with the Mk1 this was mostly true but they could be bright if the source called for it. The HE-1 manages something different, the treble is just flat and boring but then it suddenly bites hard. Now I was listening at higher levels but still nothing super loud, only about 12 o'clock on the dial. This also wasn't like the upper midrange bite of the 009's, more lower treble fizz but the source material didn't call for this. I'm so used to listening to SR-X Mk3 Pro drivers now (which are pretty much the gold standard for treble) as they are in my DIY headphones and nope, nothing like this. I suspect the amp is a huge influence here too but no way to verify that... Last major issue, the soundstage. Many will know my stance on the old HE90 where it sounds like you are listening to some people playing in dense fog and you can't quite make out where they are. This time around it is much improved but the lack of pin point accuracy is still apparent. The soundstage is also a bit too far away for my liking and it just doesn't throw the same huge headspace the 007's can. This also affects the midrange and the whole "disconnected" feeling I got from the whole system. I once reached for my phone as I was just a bit bored listening to it. Over all I like that Sennheiser built this but they really should have spent more time on the electronics. I don't think there are any improvements to moving the amps to the cups over something like the Carbon where I can burn 50+W as heat and overcome the small capacitance in the cable. Next post will discuss the tech specs of the system but I'll end with another picture of it all... It was really dark in there and I suck at taking pictures... Now for some technical discussion. I found the specs in the back of the manual and it turns out the bias is 650VDC and the amps run at +780VDC. This makes this more than compatible with Stax so I see no issue with removing the internal amps and rewiring one of these for Stax use. I have been asked to that before but I'm really hesitant to mess with something this expensive. That said, moving to proper amps which are not just the HEV70 rehashed can only be an improvement. I've never found any mosfet device with sufficiently low Cob to work in this role so I truly don't get what Senn were thinking. Some other info, the entire amp only consumes 40W per the user manual which doesn't leave a lot for the actual amps. So we have 8 tubes running with heaters plus all the motors in there. HV supply for the tubes, another for the output stage and well...not a whole lot of power to spare here. Compare that to the BHSE, Carbon or even the T2. All of them use far more power and it is just for one goal, to power the headphones. I also played around with the amp and I could swear that the volume control feels like a RK27. No way to know but how it felt when moving to the extremes...it was just like a RK27. Now as a proper volume control aficionado... ... they all feel a bit different. TKD feels nothing like a P+G or a RK50... Until somebody opens one of these up, take it how you will. It is also clearly a volume pot and not a chip or some other setup.

I like it and that ground planes are fancy... I do spend a lot of time on my ground planes though.

Yeah, the ST ones certainly overshot with no load.

Ok, found them...

Dan has claimed they are using at least 0.6mm D/S spacing or even more so yeah, these won't be easy to drive at all. Super low sensitivity doesn't match all that well with the "cheap" angle either. If a Carbon can't drive them, what the hell can? It has more power than any other amp out there... I'm designing my own drivers and using 0.5mm spacers is dead simple. To me they took the easy way out... I do like the stator design and I will naturally tear one of these down and show how they are made. That connector though...what the actual fuck? Looks like a D25 shell and that's good for some reason?

I like that one a lot. I'll dig out the new boards tomorrow and take a picture.

Yup...(with the Single Power ES-2 half built in the corner of the room)... they sure can be.

Worth more than what, the raw materials in them? Broken amps aren't usually worth a whole lot...

At least three people stepped in as CEO's or sales managers of Cavalli over the years and I heard they all paid a huge investment for those positions. That was really the issue with Cavalli aside from amps needing a lot of servicing and not being made to be serviced, too many fingers in the pot. I spent a lot of time working on the LLMk1 and ended up completely rebuilding it. New PSU, new output stage, new input stage, new gain stage and even a new transformer. I lost a pile of money on it too but I knew that going in. We do this because shitty products should be exposed. I was at the local Senn dealer today to setup my HE-1 audition (tried to get them to bring it to my place but no dice ) but while there they were asking my advice on some amp designs and one of the guys said "you are always so negative about the designs!!". I said "true but that's because for every Headamp amp that is built properly you have dozens of posers who don't have a clue what they are doing. If they were charging 250$ then who cares but 10K$ for the Goldmund pile of fail is just too much to take." That's pretty much what sums it up for me, nothing has changed from 2005 when nobody wanted to discuss the amps in detail. It was all about the beautiful, beautiful music and any dissent to that was crushed. This is a wider subject for me though as people are willing to swallow just about anything, regardless of how stupid it is. Just see something like Elon Musk's "Hyperloop" or classics like Solar roadways... Stupid and bad shit needs to be called out.

Goes to show how delusional his fanbase/worshippers were. All of it was great despite what the empirical data said but then again, none of them paid even close to retail for this junk. A lot of people were cheated though as he burned through investors money time and time again. Claiming Alex "sacrificed" is just a load of bollocks.

So if the - input is floating, you will get a whole host of issues.

Why would you not ground the - input? It should never be left floating like that. Ohhh and what mosfets are you referring to? The Dynahi should have bipolar outputs...

Not Cavalli Audio but Massdrop is having these built using Cavalli circuits...well as far as that goes at least.

Setting the right temperature is key but even if you lift a pad, it's not that bad here. Easy to jumper everything as needed.

Yup, I thought about doing a RIP Cavalli thread with all the bad shit he's done over the years but didn't find the time. Even the site now throws up a cert error... Must be nice to have a terminally flawed Liquid Carbon with a "lifetime" warranty.

I've had to desolder a RK50 and it is easy with a desoldering gun. You can get a cheap one which costs a fraction of what the RK50 costs...

In other news, I just heard a Senn HE-1 has landed in Iceland. I missed a call from the Senn rep during the week so I guess I need to haul some gear over to their place for a comparison...

Indeed and when the charge is there, it will stay there for some time. The ifi spiel is just BS on top of other BS claims.

There is a lot of BS in that...like a lot a lot... The whole part about the bias supply being a battery supply and the super 1kV Wima caps... Also why the hell at the Stax sockets upside down? True but it would have been beneficial to keep them at an angle. It would also have been beneficial to have a better amp in there, a proper preamp not using the cheapest parts so it was really nitpicking...

It probably has a capacitor dropper in there. Now how they crammed a cap in there that is large enough and with a proper safety rating is a bit dubious...

First off, anybody who plugs anything Stax into that box deserves the Darwin award, plain and simple. Going by that the new Floats are supposed to be compatible with the old ones we are dealing with a bias of +1500V... yeah...just about three times that of the Stax. Maybe they lowered it but I some how doubt it as those drivers need a lot of bias to work. That "Thinker" (the irony is palpable) states over and over again that the bias is 800V but how was that verified. Perhaps by measuring after the (32M) ballast resistor? Then we have the transformers, Stax used a ratio of 1:25 but Jecklin...1:120. So, even with a low input you are overdriving the fuck out of the Stax. I guess that is one way to get a "meaty" impression...

To take this pics and post "best amp evah!!" shows a special level of something... Some things stand out for me, the total lack of heat shrink on the mains switch which means the CE rating doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Also just the sheer level of hacking going on. Parts suspended in mid air and other marks of quality. Also just the general lack of giving a fuck...

Even though I've already replied in private, it might help others. Here is the official Stax repair service for Stax in the UK: https://electromod.co.uk

The boards have been here for a while now but there just aren't any parts available so I can't test it. I'll have to dig it out and take a picture but basically, it's a stereo board, all through hole and it is pretty small.