HiFiMAN Shangri-la Jr. Electrostatic Headphones

[wink]

... or, perhaps, "The Swindle".....

[spritzer]

Holy necro-bump Batman!! 🫣  I just got the new Mini Shangri-La - aka. Jade 3.0 (as the last one didn't sell) so instead of making a new thread or filling up the Stax thread, this kinda belongs here. 

I don't know how Hifiman does it but these manage to feel even cheaper than the Jade 2...  this "new" headband works just fine but premium it sure as shit isn't.  Same trash cable as on the rest of the lineup, why they continue to use this I can't even fathom. 

As for the sound... "mehhh" comes to mind quite a bit over the last 4 hours I've used them.  They like to be played pretty loud but nothing really stands out, they are inoffensive, rather bland sounding.  I'll play around with them some more but the highlight is they are reasonably comfy and they fit large heads. 

[Kung]

I guess the loose wires are used to make low capacitance cables at the lowest cost. I have measured hfm electrostatic headphone cables with a diy Wheatstone bridge. At a test frequency of 7.8khz, the capacitance between the wires (L+ to bias and L+ to L-) is in the range of 22-30pF per meter, while modern stax cables (such as 007 cables) are in the range of 18-38pF per meter. They are all lower than the capacitance of normal 20AWG silicone flat cables (in the range of 28~62pF per meter, vintage stax headphone cables are also in this range).

[spritzer]

I'm sure it is just pure cost saving... I mean King Sound has some nice cables with a production volume which is likely a small portion of what Hifiman make and at a far lower cost. 

[spritzer]

I've been using the Mini for all of this week but lacked all motivation to post more impressions as the sound is just so bland and not "there".  Now my Stax SR-X1 has its issues but when it works... is a far more engaging listen.  The sound of the Mini just hangs there in mid-air... for some music it ok but other it just falls flat on its face.  The lack of a proper seal is clearly an issue here as they exemplify all of the negative traits of electrostatics.  Similar to the utter trashfire which is the Shangri-La SR. in this regard.  

Now I woke up this morning, turned on the rig and one driver squeals like mad.  Typical Hifiman quality control then, they lasted less than a week.  🙄 I had planned on opening them up, swap out the trash cable and take pics of the insides but hadn't got around to it so they are completely untouched. 

[Kung]

It looks like the HFM diaphragm is stick to the stators. Most of the diy estats failures I encountered were due to conductive coating problems causing the buzzing sound.

I found a frequency response test of Shang-mini, and it seems that the mini driver is a reduced tension version of the Jade2. Considering the diaphragm size(Jade2 and Shang sr are almost the same area as the 90mm Omega）, the DS-gap of the Shang jr/sr is 0.7mm+, while the Jade2 is 0.5mm. For low-tension diaphragms, 0.5mm DS-gap is difficult to work stably.

I can understand the "hangs there in mid-air" of HFM estats. The bass of HFM estats are even weaker than many Lambdas. The main reason is that HFM adds additional gaskets on the stators for support to prevent the low-tension diaphragm from sticking to the stators, but the gaskets will significantly suppress the diaphragm swing, and the overly breathable design of the HFM earpads also make it impossible for the low-tension diaphragm to work like many planars. Perhaps this is what HFM thinks is good, cause there are many treble heads audiophiles.

[Omega_ELS]

After reviewing the Spritzer and seeing the internals a few years ago, I was put off buying the JR.
But now that I've listened to almost every full-size es earphone, JRs priced under 2,000 seem like such a not very bad buy to me.
Don't they have a mesh stator, similar to the Omega 1 and X9000?
seems they should sound good..

I would also be very interested to see the SR driver and what's inside...

Edited yesterday at 01:32 PM by Omega_ELS

[Kung]

9 hours ago, Omega_ELS said:

After reviewing the Spritzer and seeing the internals a few years ago, I was put off buying the JR.
But now that I've listened to almost every full-size es earphone, JRs priced under 2,000 seem like such a not very bad buy to me.
Don't they have a mesh stator, similar to the Omega 1 and X9000?
seems they should sound good..

I would also be very interested to see the SR driver and what's inside...

From an engineering perspective, hfm and stax differ in design in many aspects,  the mesh stator alone cannot be used as a simple evaluation criterion. I would like to briefly discuss the following points:

1. Different Assembly Structures. Hfm uses glue to bond both spacers and stators, unlike stax driver house. Their assembly method also borrows from early Sennheiser and Sony design concepts, attempting to isolate the shell and driver vibrations through flexible coupling. In other words, if you disassemble any non-latest hfm headphone, you can see the driver is sandwiched between the EVA foam and panel on both sides. These three headphone assembly methods—"stax（driver house + rigid shell）," "senheiser、hfm（flexible coupling assembly）," and "completely ignoring vibration transmission"— will produce some differences in subjective listening, but these differences are not significant in the frequency response curve.

2. Different stator acoustic designs. Stax stator acoustic surface size is consistently significantly smaller than the diaphragm size. This design improves sensitivity a bit and also provides a gradient radial damping for the diaphragm. Limiting the acoustic surface size at the stator level is also one of the reasons why stax have a bit different image compared to other estats.

3. Different mesh counts. Stax uses lower mesh counts, such as 60-80 mesh in the Omega and x9000, while hfm uses higher mesh counts, around 300 mesh in the Shang JR/SR. Lower mesh counts result in more transparent sound waves, while higher mesh counts provide more uniform but higher damping, leading to audible differences in subjective listening, but there are no winners in this regard.

4. Different earpad and wearing design. This goes without saying, it greatly affects the sound of electrostatic headphones, and hfm and stax have almost opposite design philosophies.

5. Different diaphragm. Whether it's the thin film material itself(pet vs pps), the conductive coating, or tension, hfm and stax are all different.

 

[philodox]

Price? Sorry, I know I can google. They kinda look like omegas. How do they rate birgir?