spritzer

It's a bit amazing how people like this are like leaches on the industry. I did a little bit of digging and yeah... found this: https://www.startengine.com/offering/danclark So sites like these are iffy to say the least and a good way to be utterly fucked as the investor and why would any legitimate company go down this route. There is Bluto himself singing his praises...

There was at least the combo board with the TKD 601 as well

Well he's right about one thing, a 6SN7 feeding a 300B hasn't got a hope in hell of driving electrostatics simply because of the voltage gain. Why anybody would want to use 300B's for this role though when the 20B exists is beyond me.

It needs more mil-spec gold anodizing... 😉 I tried to listen to the Viva a few times but it was always occupied. The fact that they use Rifa caps for coupling, the same type which is notorious for failing short as X and Y caps in PSU's... yeah this is not a good thing. It was awesome seeing everyone and totally worth it for landing back home this morning running on 23 hours with no sleep. I didn't try a whole lot of stuff other than the DCA headphones and I tried the Hifiman Shangri-La too out of the Headamp amps. What a fucking waste of time that thing was, did a direct comparison against the Audeze CRBN and it failed in ever regard, didn't do a single thing better than the CRBN's. It is vague sounding with no real impact and being Hifiman... built like absolute shit.

I'm happy that at least got him to stand up and move from that fucking chair... 😉 It was funny to see the difference compared to other vendors who had perfectly affable people working there and this shit show. I wonder if DCA is doing the Cavalli route, have some idiot show up with an investment and blow through all of it and move on to the next sucker? But vaping in and around delicate electronics like this is beyond stupid. What does think is in the smoke, magic fairy dust that makes electrostatics better?

Yeah it has SE and balanced inputs and a volume control. Could be a simple chip amp feeding some transformers which is very popular in China now. As for why Stax stopped making transformer boxes, it doesn't make any sense to do so these days.

I listened to the Cortina three times, twice off a BHSE and once off the new GC amp. Unfamiliar sources are an issue plus regular meet conditions but there was something about the midrange that bothered me, like an etch to voices which came off as very artificial but I need more time with them to nail it down. I also feel that headband is utter trash, on the second time I put them on my head the headpad caught on the metal springs causing the headphones to make a very lough "twang" sound through the earcups. I prefer the older type on the Voce, seems much more solid and better made. I'm also not sure if these are worth the price, just put them next to the CRBN and it looks like some cheap fake out of China, The headpad and earpads feel cheap and nasty and not high end in any way. This is always a personal thing but they were both sitting in front of me and they don't look, or feel, like a comparable product. The biggest issue for me though are the people who were there from DCA, I mean fucktards doesn't really cover them. I know fullwell I can be brash and bombastic but these people are utter fucking idiots. I went to their table to try the Voce and wanted to know when they were fixed as the original release of the Voce... they were fucking awful. This earpads never made any sense and it's clear to anybody who has messed with electrostatics for s long time. Same issue as with the King Sounds back in the day and they now, too, have moved to new earpads. Now the guy there, who was quick to point out he was the president of the company, said this gem when I said the Voce was awful, "Ohhh you like electrostatics so you don't like bass!" Yeah... and he also wanted to ask if I had ever designed headphones and when I started to listen, he ran over to Justin to bitch about me... which I heard most of. What a fucking idiot. Then we have the lady who was there, when I said matching of earpads was stupid loudly said this "SIR, THEY ARE HANDMADE!!!" Well fucking duhhh, all earpads are handmade outside of the molded ones super cheap ones. Most of my life I've been making things by hand, which have to be extremely consistent and it is easily done with far worse materials than these. Now I reached out to two manufacturers and asked if they had measured earpad effect on the sound. 0.1-0.4dB is worst case and with large production runs of earpads they are much closer. So the bottom line, the people making them are fucktards but I need to spend more time with the headphones. I don't feel they are worth the extra cost over the Voce, which looks much better made, and now sounds far better than they did. Add to that the Audeze CRBN being sold as B-stock for less than 3k$ and this becomes a pretty hard sell.

The KSE headphones are great but the amps are trash. Luckily China has us covered as you can get them now fitted with a Stax plug for very little money. Don't use them on Pro bias though, only normal bias outputs.

Yeah,I'm not so sure about this one but naturally it will be ripped apart.

Hehe, the jetlag is killing me too plus the general NYC issue of "walkingtoomuch". I'll be at the meet 10am sharp though

I look forward to trying these out but the damping does make the worried. DCA feel the need to add damping to everything while being shit at doing it, I mean the Voce was pretty much terrible in ever way. Also the matched earpads has to be the stupidest shit ever, this is worse than Hifiman levels of utter BS.

I've landed in NYC but no plans set for tomorrow. We almost died from too much pizza at John's plus I've been up for almost 24 hours...

Any noise which changes with the volume control points to a source issue as the volume control is at the front of the circuit. The noise is being amplified and attenuated with the volume control. Could also be a ground issue as that would tie into the volume control as well

Indeed, the rails are just not high enough. Even the old SRM-001 has a single 600v rail for the output

The specs, go read the datasheet. Because Stax, under Chinese control, doesn't give a shit? The D10 and D50 have very little to do with Stax in Japan.

I'd take a transformer solution, that is properly driven, over the the Apex garbage. Just look at the specs of those modules, they are truly terrible.

Yeah, it's in many ways worse to have an external PSU but let's not get some actual engineering involved here. Go buy the Woo 3ES with a 500$ opamp electrostatic amp. That is 14K$ all in and has an external PSU... well kinda as they saw the need to have the power transformers right next to the output sockets.

The Koss unit draws 9W from the wall, max so factor in PSU losses, very high rail voltages, that you driving 4 amplifier channels and yup, there is not a lot of power there. So Woo has a new electrostatic amp out, WA7e... who wants to guess that it is a tube pre driving some Apex modules?

My friend has tagged along for the trip so I'll have to check with him but I'm sure we'll up for something on Friday.

They are odd, I'll give them that. I'm going acquire a few more (as they are all so different) and then do a review on them.

Anybody claiming that Stax bias voltage needs to increased, immediately file that with "doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about".

No... just no.

So I should cram a Koss E/90 into a gold box and charge 20k$?

Yeah and this one has more power it seems. Still pitiful but a bit more.

Yup... Apex.