mwl168

Interesting. My North America, black SR007 purchased new in early 2015 also has a SZ3 serial number.

Does the rites involve strip naked and dancing on the table top of a 5 star restaurant wearing nothing but your favorite headphone?

5-pin XLR for a true balanced out headphone amp? I have to admit it's the first time I learnt about it. Do you add one pin for ground and take the non-inverted outputs from both channel to make a single-ended output?

Don't know if the Focal price cut applies to your market but the Focal Elear may worth a try based on you budget and the sound signature you described.. It's only been out a couple of years but the build quality sure looks like it'll last a long time. It's also easy to drive.

Broke out my old Dynalo because I needed a single-end output amplifier to use with the Focal Elear when I first got it. Ended up casing it up while I had some free time. Running on TPA's Placid HD power supply tuned for 18VDC and 50mA shunt current. Will likely play with that when I feel up for it.

It will also be helpful if you can share more about your preference of sound signatures and other characteristics (warmer or brighter sounding, is a wide sound stage important to you, etc.) which may help folks here to offer some recommendations. Also, is DIY an option to you? If you prefer to stay with dynamic headphone, there are a few very good headphone amps that can be built with parts cost only in the hundreds. The HD650 does scale well with better amps.

Good deal! Care to elaborate on the "slightly modified GG"?

Have been listening to the Elear every day for the past 10 days or so using both the original Dynalo and the SuSy Dynalo. Today I hooked up my HD650 for a contrast. I read many comments on the internet comparing these two phones to each other. I don't get it - these are two very different sounding headphones. The HD650 is very "polite" sounding, almost everything sounds good through it. The Elear on the other hand is a very intimate sounding, in-your-face kind of presentation. On some material it can be too much for me. The Elear also has more resolution and there is more substance behind the human voice and instrument. It's very dynamic. Now that I have a first hand experience in a familiar setting, I can understand some of Tyll's comment in his review. There is a quality of this headphone I have not experienced before which I still cannot quite wrap my head around it... Both headphones feel comfortable to me. The Elear is noticeably heavier and cramps tighter. I should mention that my HD650 is an older version with a Cardas cable which I re-terminated with a 4 pin XLR plug. It sounds warmer than my friend's 2 years old HD650 with stock cable. My Elear is used with my own DIY cable.

Maybe double check that the OPA445 was inserted correctly?

The typical use of variac is to gradually bring up and set the AC voltage supply to the rectifiers of your power supply so it does not get hit by 110vac the instant you turn it on. This allows you check and verify operation points on the circuit. You plug the AC cord of your power supply to the variac and plug the variac to the wall outlet. Make sure the dial on the variac is turned down all the way before you turn on the power supply.

@ TOMOKI: You mentioned "mica set" for the 10m90s in your earlier post. I hope you are not using regular mica insulator for this build. They don't work for voltage this high and have been known to cause short in this application. Check earlier posts and the BOM, you need Aavid 4171G and 4180G for the 10m90s and the CREE parts. Also, as Soren suggested, variac is your friend. Get one if you don't already have one.

The splitter is also from Norne Audio, came with the wire I bought. I've listened to the Focals a few months ago and always hoped to listen to them with my own gears. I know nothing about the Mr. Speakers headphones.

The parts I was expecting arrived last night. I made a 4-pin XLR balanced cable so I can listen to the Elear with my SUSY Dynalo. The wire is 22AWG OCC copper from Norne Audio.

Don't know exactly what you meant by "where the cups rotate". My pair has not made creaking noise to my knowledge and the cups pivots a little but they don't rotate.

Very much agreed! I was once asked by a friend to look at and possibly work on his Eico amps and Roger LS3/5A crossovers. After opening them up and look at the parts and the condition of the PCB, etc., my advice to him was "if it is not broken, don't touch it".

I have had a pair of HD650 and LCD 2 long before I started with the Stax electrostatics. It's too early for me to form opinions on the sound of the Elear. I can tell you that they feel solidly built and heavy, not as comfortable as the HD650 or the Stax 700/900. Just hooked them up with my Dynalo and I am reminded again how good the Dynalo is - it blows the doors off the Iris. The distance between the input tubes is roughly 41mm measured from center of the socket. The actual gaps between the tubes is just over 20mm.

I got really tempted when the Focal Utopia and Elear price reduction was announced a week or so ago. I finally pulled the trigger and bought a pair of Elear after coming across the free headphone stand deal at headphones.com (their customer service is first rate so far by the way). Unfortunately my orders of headphone plugs and wire have not arrived so I am stuck with the 4m long, singe-ended Focal standard issue cable at the moment. My Dynalo is not cased yet so I had to make do with my DIYZONE Iris OTL headphone amp.

Interesting. Looks like Mouser downgraded its rating since I ordered them some time ago. The Phoenix datasheet states "nominal current 17.5A, Norm. voltage 400V". Although this is not the first time I see manufacture datasheets for the same part contradict each other.

I checked my parts bin. The black Phoenix 651-54522548 has open bottom. interestingly, my green, Phoenix 651-1935174, which is rated at 400VDC, has the covered bottom. Maybe this should be the "official" Stax Mafia endorsed terminal block for B+ and B-?

I have plenty of 400VDC-rated black terminal blocks that I ordered from Mouser. Here is a part number for one of them: 651-5452258. They may not be the same one that Kevin mentioned. I'll check to see if they have their bottom covered when I get home.

FWIW, the early NOS 6SN7/VT231 are big money but not the later NOS 6SN7GTB and 6SN7GTA which are plentiful available and can be had for reasonable money for now - certainly much better than the NOS EL34. As JimL stressed many times, only the 6SN7GTB/A should be used in the SRX circuit unless B+ is brought down to within the spec of the 6SN7.

If the arcing is between B+ and O- why only one of the terminal block pins is charred?

There is no short supply of people with more money than sense. Some of these people cannot even tell when the left and right speakers are wired out of phase from each other. The only way they know to "judge" good gears from bad is by looking at price tags and reading BS reviews. Plenty of companies out there with little pride in their products know this well and are more than happy to exploit this phenomenon.

Maybe Kicad knows something we don't?

I have also been listening to my Grounded Grid with a matched quad of the beam tetrode EH 6CA7 and like its sound a lot. JJ and EH seem to be the only manufactures of current production beam tetrode 6CA7. Most other current production tubes labeled 6CA7 are really EL34 pentode.