8 hours ago, purk said:

Stax saw what Hifiman is doing to a highend headphones market, thus, they decide to do the same.  I really hope their new flagship will not be over 10K.

Purk, you forgot that Stax was Bought by Edifier....and Edifier is a China company...same as HifiMan.

12 hours ago, Whitigir said:

Purk, you forgot that Stax was Bought by Edifier....and Edifier is a China company...same as HifiMan.

i didn't not forget and not all Chinese companies are bad and greedy here.  I am just afraid that Stax will soon follow Hifiman's business model and start overcharging the consumer given Hifiman is getting away with it.  I don't think the new Stax flagship headphones will be priced under 6k.

I don't doubt that will be the case.  Just see the old SR-207 replaced with the L300 at a higher cost...

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.   

Edited August 6, 20178 yr by mwl168

On that note, it's amazing how many people at a meet/show will listen to headphones backwards and never notice unless its' pointed out to them: "oh, it sounds better this way..."

Well as a manufacturer it makes more sense to target the luxury buyer rather than the enthusiast buyer, so specialty hobbies like this one have an incentive to become luxury hobbies over time. The luxury buyer doesn't always know what's good - though sometimes they do - but they're mainly after something that makes them feel special. Meanwhile, the enthusiast usually knows performance but often doesn't have deep pockets, so they're after value, and creating well-engineered, high-performance products that also offer a good value is not something everybody can do and certainly not something everybody wants to do. So if you want to make money, you tell the enthusiast "sorry" and then you leave them in the dust as prices get sky high.

Or you try to cater to both, with a mix of good value products, and flagship high end stuff that has "sex appeal" beyond solid engineering

.... and, doesn't necessarily sound any better than their mid range stuff.....

On 8/5/2017 at 11:31 PM, purk said:

i didn't not forget and not all Chinese companies are bad and greedy here.  I am just afraid that Stax will soon follow Hifiman's business model and start overcharging the consumer given Hifiman is getting away with it.  I don't think the new Stax flagship headphones will be priced under 6k.

Not all are greedy, but seeing another one from the same origin does that, you just want to compete. 

 

it also seems that SR009 maybe the last greatest buy in price-performances from Stax  .  Hope this is not the case

Nope, that was the 007's and the SR-Omega.  The SR-009 is the overpriced hype product...   

Unfortunately Stax doesn't tier their product line-up with third party amps in mind. Even though the 007s do scale brilliantly with Kevin's amps and compete with the 009s, Stax is mute on the subject and for obvious reasons.

 

On 6 August 2017 at 5:31 AM, purk said:

i didn't not forget and not all Chinese companies are bad and greedy here.  I am just afraid that Stax will soon follow Hifiman's business model and start overcharging the consumer given Hifiman is getting away with it.  I don't think the new Stax flagship headphones will be priced under 6k.

I hope not. I heard the T-8000 at Can-Jam and it was a small step up from the 717 and 727 IMO, certainly not enough to justify the sudden price hike. Disappointed in it TBH after the earlier excitement. 

51 minutes ago, johnwmclean said:

Stax is mute on the subject and for obvious reasons.

Does Stax care, or even know much about aftermarket amps for its headphones? I gather that the bulk of its buyers live in Japan, where KG amps are vanishingly rare. I can't imagine Stax sells more than a few thousand systems a year, and the third party amp market can't be more than a fraction of that.

9 minutes ago, gepardcv said:

Does Stax care, or even know much about aftermarket amps for its headphones? I gather that the bulk of its buyers live in Japan, where KG amps are vanishingly rare. I can't imagine Stax sells more than a few thousand systems a year, and the third party amp market can't be more than a fraction of that.

True. Who knows... 

They know about us and do care to some degree but are mostly annoyed by our comments...   

well they are more annoyed by birgir's comments.

i'm slightly more politically correct. (when I wanna be)

15 hours ago, gepardcv said:

Does Stax care, or even know much about aftermarket amps for its headphones? I gather that the bulk of its buyers live in Japan, where KG amps are vanishingly rare. I can't imagine Stax sells more than a few thousand systems a year, and the third party amp market can't be more than a fraction of that.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if KG amps are vanishingly rare everywhere.  As you note, third party amps are a fraction of the Stax market (IIRC, BHSEs are up in the mid-200s), and DIY amps are probably a fraction of that.

Edited August 8, 20178 yr by JimL

I'm sort of surprised they don't have the two of you do some limited paid consulting.

Right. I tend to lump BHSEs in the KG amp category, and my casual impressions from forums suggest that most end up in the US, with a handful in Europe. Add to that the other vendors who made and sold a few stat amps over the years — maybe another 50-100 units? They surface routinely at various meetups. (Excluding exotics like the HEV90.) But I saw exactly 0 non-Stax amps on a trip to Japan, even at a well-stocked retailer where I thought I'd see at least something (e-earphone, which carries nearly the entire Stax product line).

Back to the T8000,  I half-expected a miniaturized, mostly-SMT mostly-solid-state T2.

I already found one of these:-

2 tube wonder.....

 

Clearly superior to the T2...   

4 hours ago, spritzer said:

Clearly superior to the T2...   

2 tubes can't outperform 4 tubes  simple analogy LOL!

received this in the mail today

 

img048.pdf

img049.pdf

img050.pdf

img051.pdf

Toroid, separate pcb for input tube, and aluminum chassis touted as amazing design features! And it does claim a gain of 1000... interesting stuff

On 7/24/2017 at 1:46 AM, spritzer said:

They keep polishing that circuit.  Funny to see if move from SRM-1 Mk2 to SRM-3 to 313 to 323 etc... 

Where could I find some advice on the STAX hierachy of amps?

I'm looking for amps for an L700 and considering used SRM-1 Mk2, SRM-3, SRM-323S, SRM-252S...