catscratch
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Posts posted by catscratch
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The hobby is fucked, but it also opens up the opportunity for others to come in and sell stuff that isn't bullshit. That's kinda where we see stuff like ES Labs come in (though here in the US the tariffs make it harder, but that's another brand of bullshit). Basically, the old guard can go ahead and price themselves into the stratosphere, but smart people will take advantage of it and outcompete them.
Or so I hope. Maybe it's just the booze talking. I'm usually not optimistic.
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Welp. There goes that I guess. Be careful what you wish for. Hopefully it's mostly a pad issue and we'll find something that works eventually.
How hard are these to drive compared to the older versions? How do they compare to the two new ES Labs headphones? Seems like that's going to be the closest competition. Also, would the increased acoustic damping, if that's indeed the case here vs the last gen, reduce resolution?
Hopefully someone with a squiggle machine can post some squiggles. Technically I have one, but I'm not going to jump on these just yet.
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What do you think causes the double resonance in the mids though?
I may be the odd man out here cause I don't see too many others complain about it but to me it is very audible in the 2.5 and later models, but less so in the mk1.
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Interesting, but I also expect crappy tuning and 2x the price. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.
They need to revise the pad mounting mechanism too, I'm not an expert here but the spring in the middle of the driver thing seems stupid and I'm guessing that's where the resonances in the mids in the old version come from.
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Corporate media is a bit like fast food. In small quantities it won't hurt you, but if that's all you eat, you're gonna get very sick very quickly. By the same token, if it's all you watch, you're gonna end up with a very distorted worldview.
Keep in mind though that other people's corporate news doesn't exactly contain less bs and propaganda than ours, it's just different bs and propaganda. You kinda have to cross-check, fact-check, and put two and two together, and then you might end up with something resembling an accurate view. Or not, it's honestly hard these days.
I don't think the US public will tolerate boots on the ground in Iran, but Washington is certainly salivating at the thought of bombing them back into the stone age, and is more than happy to let Bibi do the dirty work. Iran is both weak and vulnerable, and the mental image of Hamas getting their hands on a nuke is all the justification they need.
At the same time, the mullahs have certainly learned the Libya lesson, nukes are their lifeline and they're gonna try their best to hang onto it, any and all negotiations for them are simply a way to buy more time.
It'll be ugly, but probably not as ugly as our worst fears make it. And Iran is not exactly popular in Sunni countries either.
(In before eating my words in 3... 2...)
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I think the point of all that AMTS stuff is to act sort of as a passive EQ and reduce treble resonances. The Corina does seem to measure quite nice:
Graph courtesy of techpowerup which is a reasonably sane spot for reviews.
Now, if only the point of a headphone was to measure nice and not actually sound good to real humans.
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Are any of these midrange artifacts position dependent? From what I've read their AMTS damping or whatever they call it can give a lot of FR variability based on headphone position.
Is their self-adjusting headband system fine for bigger heads? I always had huge issues with the 007 and its system.
The Voce's FR with the stock earpads looks like a complete mess, and I was wondering why you praised them, but with better pads it makes sense. How's the build quality on them? Are they likely to hold up over time?
Too bad the price of the ES2a is likely to skyrocket over here, but what are you gonna do.
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Huge fan of Lynch. This sucks.
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Right, so let's say Donny ends this - by giving in to Russian demands and giving them land concessions and blocking Ukraine from EU/Nato membership. How is that going to be seen in any way but a Western loss? How will this discourage Putin from going further? Already Georgia has a pro-Russian puppet government and brewing civic unrest, and have we already forgotten what happened there in 2008?
It's a shit sandwitch any way you slice it. Keep the war going, more people die. End the war, Putin gets a dub, the West gets an L on its record, while Putin starts another conflict and more people die. Those are your choices, folks, and I fail to see how the Very Stable Genius makes this any better.
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From the man who brought us the world's fastest trashcan.
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6 hours ago, skullguise said:
^^ But do they say that when they're wearing their lingerie?? 😄
Well those are technically mating calls, so I'm going to have to go with yes.
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Goats are hilarious though NGL
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FWIW mine's been working just fine with daily use. But the question is, are the issues limited to the initial batch or are they still happening with new ones. I haven't heard too many new reports of it lately but all I've got to go on is stuff from the internet, I'm not in touch with vendors or anything.
I hope they got this shit sorted out as I'd quite like to recommend these.
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$6000? Please. All the cool kids are asking $8-9k for their new flagships. What, are they trying to tell us their headphones aren't as good as the new Hifimans or Raals?
Also, they should make the cables a subscription-based service and sell the bass separately as pre-order DLC.
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Mine's been working fine since I discharged it. Fingers crossed.
They definitely screwed up the launch and I hope they're aware of the issues and can fix them. This would be a great headphone at a good price and a real disruptor in the market... if only I could safely recommend it.
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Mine actually developed a channel imbalance too. The right channel started getting weak. I discharged it and let it sit for two weeks, and now listening to it for the first time since then the imbalance seems to have gone away. But I've been reading quite a few reports of channel balance issues in these things.
Seems like Stax did botch the launch and I hope mine holds out, cause I actually like the sound of this thing a lot. It does need a bit of eq to tame 1-2khz and the bass is definitely seal dependent but otherwise this little thing punches way above its pricepoint in sound quality... when it works.
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Ok yeah the X1 doesn't suck. Some very early impressions:
Small, lightweight, comfy. The fit is somewhere between supra-aural and circum-aural. The build is minimalistic but seems fine. The only thing I'm concerned with is dust and stuff accumulating on the back of the driver. When you live with a german shepherd dog hair gets in absolutely everywhere. I was wondering why my 650s crackled until I pulled a wad of dog hair out of the driver. How it got in there past all the foam, who even knows.
I'm using them with a stock 007t atm. It's a bit light on power but not too bad. Still you can hear that it could use some more.
The sound is pretty monitor-like. A bit light on the bottom end but not too thin. The mids are surprisingly realistic. The treble is also pretty smooth. I think the 1-2khz region is a bit pushed and 3-5 is a bit recessed, but not so badly that stuff sounds weird. You get used to the sound signature quickly and then it just sounds normal. Resolution is fine for what it is, but staging is a bit small.
These are a far cry from the alien weirdness that is the L700 pre-EQ and even with my treble allergic ears I can listen to these with no EQ just fine. But they could use a bit of tuning up. I'd want them a bit fuller and 1-2khz slightly toned down.
Seems pretty solid so far, NGL. I was beginning to think Stax forgot how to make something that sounds relatively normal, but here we are.
Spoilercall hell, see if they take ikon pass
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As the Dude said, that's a bummer, man, but I hope it's not the end and they update it with something. All it really needs is a proper swivel/articulation mechanism for the earcups and a better earpad mounting mechanism, the rest can stay what it is. A bit more linearity in tuning would be good too - the current one sounds a bit honky and nasal in the mids to me with resonances at 950hz and 1.5khz, and is a bit bright past 10k too, but the driver performs and the resolution is there.
I'm sure with a light touch and a few smart tweaks they could turn it into something contemporary and even better, but on the other hand, this is Stax.
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I dunno, I enjoyed reading it. His enthusiasm is evident, and as much as I'd love to be a cranky fun-hating git it's nice to see someone having fun with the hobby for once.
Still, pontificating at length about minute perceptual nuances is thoroughly pointless given how completely subjective and unreliable all that stuff is, and I've learned to not do it.
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Looking forward to your teardown. Also is it just me or do the drivers look awfully exposed behind that rather open grille?
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Interdasting. But this will have quite a lot to do. By which I mean the tuning needs to not suck, the headband needs to not crack, and the drivers need to not be 10db apart after 3 weeks. You know, the usual.
I sincerely hope that Stax can get themselves out of the rut and put out some bangers, for obvious reasons.
Regarding modern Lambdas being not good... well yes and no. Their flaws are fixable and with some EQ and mods they're very good sounding IMO. The question is, why do we need to do the work to extract good sound from them rather than Stax doing it right the first time.
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You mean to tell me nobody is buying plastic fantastic Lambdas with no deep bass, 5db of midrange shout, and the build quality of a ksc-75 at $1700? Wow, I never would have guessed.
But according to HF somebody contacted Stax and they had this to say:
QuoteHi, We are still offering SR-007A (limited quantity) and SR-007MK2. Although SR-007A has been discontinued in manufacturing, STAX is still keeping stock of the spare parts for warranty service until certain years and stock lasts. Also, SR-007A is same as SR-007MK2, except color is silver. SR-007MK2 is still on-going.
So I guess it's not entirely DC'd? It would definitely be a dumb move, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't do it.
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Finally AI is put to proper use
Edit: never mind, this got taken down. It was a series of videos about Warhammer 40k lore narrated by an AI of David Attenborough, and it was amazing. Sadly, the BBC hates humor, happiness, and kittens.
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Being a Very Stable Genius I went ahead and spilled mead on my 007t. It was off at the time and hasn't been powered on for a few months. I removed the top and bottom panels and cleaned off the PCB with some isopropyl alcohol. Most of the stuff didn't get through but there were a few stains. Now I'm letting it dry... is it safe to power up once it dries out or is there anything else I need to watch out for?
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The Headcase Stax thread
in Headphones
Posted
Have you ever heard the 003 / 001 mk2?
I kinda agree with this, but you can make some of the new Stax stuff sing with some EQ and a few mods. I had a L700 mk1 that was pretty magical after some fettling, and same goes for the new X1. But the old stuff did do it out of the box, and modern day Stax are certainly way past their prime and tuning seems to be a lost art for them. Or making headphones that properly fit human heads.