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The Headcase Stax thread


thrice

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We are all the prisoners of our perceptions and biases.

I, for one, have heard differences in cables when I was totally skeptical of the concept.

Cable burn-in..? now, that's a different ball-game.

I've had a few cable burn-outs, though..... Too much current application does that..!

This makes me wonder if the cables sound different after a severe overload as compared to a new one.

I do NOT intend to sartisfy this curiosity.....    :P

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Who am I to dispute the feelings of audiophiles who, evaluating any cable in the context of program source, amplifier, speaker, and listening room, decide they can hear the difference? A few guidelines have emerged here, but the final judgment belongs to the user. All the special cables mentioned worked well on the test bench and, given the assumption that series impedance should be minimized, all of them work better than 16 gauge wire. If, like many audiophiles, you have spent a small (or large) fortune on your hi-fi system, money spent for high quality cables and connectors is a reasonable investment.

might be worth a read

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I tend to agree re no cable burn in. I have heard DAC / Amp burn in, in fact many manufacturers say allow 200 hours for example to 'realise full potential'. I am guessing this is a combination of events in the unit including capacitor burn in? Anyway, whatever the reason, I have heard it.

Cable burn in though, never heard that. I would say though it is good practice to periodically clean the connectors on the cable ends and the inputs. Perfect contact is good.

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10 hours ago, Dusty Chalk said:

So I have two responses:  on the one hand, I applaud your beligerence.  On the other, just because you can't comprehend something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The lack of objective evidence means that it doesn't exist - not a lack of comprehension.

 

6 hours ago, astrostar59 said:

... I have heard DAC / Amp burn in, in fact many manufacturers say allow 200 hours for example to 'realise full potential'. I am guessing this is a combination of events in the unit including capacitor burn in? Anyway, whatever the reason, I have heard it.

Cable burn in though, never heard that. I would say though it is good practice to periodically clean the connectors on the cable ends and the inputs. Perfect contact is good.

+1 on the amp / DAC burn in. Have experienced that on several pieces of gear. But cable burn in is taking the piss IMO.

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Folks contemplating using PriceJapan.com might be interested to know that my PayPal dispute was resolved in my favour after no response was received by PayPal from the vendor (surprise, surprise). Assuming there are sufficient fund in the vendor's account, I will be getting my $1,660 USD back for the TA300Bs ordered in April.

While I might come out even financially, I can't help but wonder about the folks that don't launch a dispute fast enough and either 1) miss the 6 month cut off for launching a dispute (from date of ordering), or 2) don't get a refund because the vendor account has been drained. Tough shit for them, basically, as best I can figure.

Use PriceJapan.com at your peril, folks. Unless/until Kaneda gets back into the business of responding to customers and shipping product you are throwing your cash away.

9 minutes ago, Hopstretch said:

Yay, let's have this discussion again. It always goes so well. In other news -- Trump rules, God doesn't exist and I banged all your Moms.

Those last 3 all make much more sense to me than cable burn in.

Apologies for unleashing yet another chapter in the cable mythology saga. I posted in reference to get spanked on HF - not my intention to spark controversy here. I will cease and desist.

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4 hours ago, DonkeyBalls said:

The lack of objective evidence means that it doesn't exist - not a lack of comprehension.

No, there was a time when that meant the world was flat, for there was as yet no way to observe any empirical evidence to the contrary. 

Now, I'm not saying that the opposite is true, I'm just saying you can't prove a negative.  For example, there's no objective evidence that I can play the guitar.  That doesn't mean I can't play, but it also doesn't mean I can.

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After buying many headphones from the '70s and '80s, I can attest that cables do make a difference. Most of the dynamic headphones cables I received are intermittent or just plain open circuit on one channel, and there is significant measurable impedance at the solder joints in particular. So I have determined 30-40 years of cable burn in is usually not great.

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Should I get a sigma pro or sigma/404,which one sounds better?

recently i come across two sigmas: normal and pro and i have long determined  to get one , and now im thinking of just getting the pro or get the normal one with defects(noise while playing it loud) .But i would do a sigma/404 transplant on the normal bias and it cost roughly the same as buying the pro bias one

After searching i still cant conclude which is better.

the price of a sigma nowadays has gone high ,very high...... as high as a 007.

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P.S. IMO burn in of cable only effective in the first 40 hrs of usage

some dealers use it to deal with complains from the customers that their product is still not in full potential right after open-box

or just Sales tactics to make use of psychological effects ,just like Apple making their I phone package hard to open and cause you a minute ,making you more eager

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, bwck2000 said:

Should I get a sigma pro or sigma/404,which one sounds better?

...

After searching i still cant conclude which is better.

I'd also very much like to know. I was in a similar situation... bought a Sigma Pro and SR-404 in order to do the driver swap, but never ended up doing it because both already sound good. The key to messing with Staxen is to never listen to the beautiful, beautiful music.

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13 hours ago, Dave R said:

It has been mentioned on that other site ( somewhere) about tube burn in, but to me that's just a load of BS.

Well, except that for tubes this is a measurable phenomenon.  In Glass Audio, Vol 1, No.2, Charles King has an article on extending tube life, and it has a graph from GE that shows the transconductance of a tube declining gradually by about 20% during the first 1500 hours, then stable over the next 3500 hours.  And from an old post from Kevin Gilmore on biasing replacement tubes in a Stax SRM-T1, "... new tubes

 drift like crazy."  That means the parameters in a new tube change as it is run in.  Now whether this is audible or not I can't say, but it certainly is measurable.

13 hours ago, Dave R said:

 

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I am a cable burn in skeptic, but I do very much experience tube burn in and burn in on most of my DACs and amps.

The tube coatings undergo chemical changes in the first 50 to 300 hours (depending on the tube) - these change impact the emissions and that impacts the sound (at least that is my understanding).

Something like a WE300B or TA300B takes about 300 hours (or more) to fully stabilise. I have gone through the burn in process with TA300Bs twice. These tubes are highly variable in the first 100 hours, then settle down and slowly open up all the way to 300+. Most other tubes (like 6SN7s) settle in the first 50 hours or so. The SQ swings can be quite dramatic early on.

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1 hour ago, JimL said:

Well, except that for tubes this is a measurable phenomenon.  In Glass Audio, Vol 1, No.2, Charles King has an article on extending tube life, and it has a graph from GE that shows the transconductance of a tube declining gradually by about 20% during the first 1500 hours, then stable over the next 3500 hours.  And from an old post from Kevin Gilmore on biasing replacement tubes in a Stax SRM-T1, "... new tubes

 

 drift like crazy."  That means the parameters in a new tube change as it is run in.  Now whether this is audible or not I can't say, but it certainly is measurable.

 

 

All I can say is that I've not heard any difference in SQ from using a tube after so many hours, or at least I've not noticed.

However I heard quite an improvement from using the NOS Mullard xf4's to the stock Mullard's and SED's, but this was straight away.

 

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