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Mr Speakers Electrostatic Ether E


complin

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Dan is now my spirit animal, he clearly knows nothing about electrostatics, how Stax are made etc. so he just spreads misinformation to cover his ass.... 

Quote
arnaud said:
Afaik, the usual method is to use a non-tensioned mylar film or such to keep any dust out. It must be impermeable film or otherwise, you’re bound to hear buzzing sound and such after a while. I am surprised you can get away with a porous screen.
Arnaud

Oh that. My understanding is that they used that on some older models, but it is not in use on their newer products. Among other things that would effectively triple the mass of the driver the driver.

Every Stax set made since 1993 has been fitted with loose, wrinkled PVC dust covers on both sides of the drivers and they add nothing to the mass of the diaphragm or the driver.  See there is this thing call physics...Dan should really look into that.  It's kinda cool and does explain some things... 

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I cant believe that he or anyone else with the intention of making an electrostatic headphone would not take the step of disassembling the driver from a pair of Stax to see what conclusions they have reached. I really do not understand the strategy of playing ignorant here, if he has other ideas on how to build electrostatic drivers just own it and state why. Unless these are going to end up as vaporware; we will see in the not to distant future if he has been successful in both SQ and reliability. 

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Indeed, a 400$ set of the cheapest Stax set would be the mandatory minimum just to see how the industry standard does it.  There is nothing wrong with new ideas, hell Stax once though dual solid dust covers was a bad idea or purely air damping would  never really work but here we are.  Simply covering up what you are doing and being misleading about it...that's something different. 

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17 hours ago, SeaWolf said:

I cant believe that he or anyone else with the intention of making an electrostatic headphone would not take the step of disassembling the driver from a pair of Stax to see what conclusions they have reached. I really do not understand the strategy of playing ignorant here, if he has other ideas on how to build electrostatic drivers just own it and state why. 

This. When Jude made one of his vids about HE-1, you could clearly see Sennheiser looked at Stax's design. And that's considering Sennheiser has some knowledge with stats Mr. Speaker doesn't have (yet). Generally speaking, this industry is strange with this aspect. Looking at stat's, maybe they fear the unlimited wrath of our icelandic grumpy baker :D

BTW I'm curious. They may claim they don't look at competitors, but round re-inforced stators and metallic finish are screaming 009 btw.

Ali

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from Mr Speakers on Head-Fi

 

:Regarding the question about the driver "stack," here's our configuration:

:1) outer metal grill
:2) protective super-fine screen
:3) outer metal stator
:4) diaphragm
:5) inner metal stator
6) mylar shield with a protective super-fine screen (I guess this was what was meant by "impermeable", we use the mylar to mitigate humidity on the stator on the ear-side as the :metal will be colder than body temp and in humid environments this could cause condensation on the stator, which isn't a potential issue on the outside)
:7) Optional filters which can be used for tuning. The headphone will include two filters for three different tunings (they can be above or under the ear pad)
:8) Cloth dust screen integrated to the ear pad

:We hadn't considered "sealing" the driver to be permanently dust free but this is physically simple to do. If there is no effect on the sonics we will add this.

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16 hours ago, johnwmclean said:

Stats aside I think Mr Speakers plannar line-up is competitive and competent with current offerings.

Fair enough. Its just that i didn't hear any excitement when i auditioned their Alpha dogs and Ether. Bland sounding and unexciting to my ears. To each his own then.

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So, as of Friday, the official word:

After a lot of tests this week we concluded we are able to add an outer barrier without audibly or measurably degrading the sound or performance parameters. Accordingly we will modify the driver stack to add an outer dust barrier so the driver is now "impermeable" to particulates. Since the changes are trivial to implement, won't materially impact cost, have no effect on schedule and could potentially improve long term reliability we've decided to make this change and the driver stack will be:

1) outer metal grill
2) protective super-fine screen
3) mylar barrier
4) outer metal stator
5) diaphragm
6) inner metal stator
7) mylar shield 
9) inner metal grill
7) Fine cloth dust screen integrated to the ear pad
B) optional filters which can be used for tuning; VOCE will include two filters for three different tunings (they can be above or below the the ear pad's screen). This is particularly fun, as you can instantly tweek the headphone to sound closer to a planar, with minimal loss of resolution. I hope people will enjoy this!

 

Which means, TA DAH! Now it has dust covers, which it didn't have before. I'll let someone else draw the obvious conclusion.

Edited by JimL
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1 hour ago, nopants said:

why did they make the cable detachable? sounds like they're asking for trouble when it comes to third party. I also like how they have to specify it's not for daily dis/connecting haha

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

The cable only has about 600V running through them, what could possibly go wrong.

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Well it has more than that...1200Vpp so yeah this makes no sense.  You can't use just 600V insulation for this unless it has some special properties like the Belden wires. 

Add to this that many cable makers fuck up cables which carry 2V max...this is a scary proposition.  I for sure would not fix any of my amps which were used with a sub standard cable and damaged by it. 

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Possible 3rd party cables for electrostatic headphones - what could go wrong?!!?

 

Oh, and notice this:
 

"Energizers are available from Woo Audio, iFi and Stax, while amplifiers are available from HeadAmp, Malvalve and Stax."

IIRC, Stax hasn't made energizers for a couple decades, the Woo WEE and iFi have questionable engineering, and notice that he left out the Woo WES (probably just as well).

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