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Holy Crap! The New Stax Omega Looks fierce! (Stax SR-009)


Jon L

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I'm expecting about $4500 street price in the usa.

Yep, not cheap. Worth it. Seriously worth it.

Better and non-resonant stators than the he90.

Less internal reflection.

Have you heard these fellows, Dr. Gilmore?

One could buy a decent rig and a few hookers with such money.

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Yes i have heard them. :D Fixed pole in this case means the rigidity of the stator.

The design of the stator is years in the making. And far better than etched and plated glass, or

copper on phenolic stators. The other pieces allow the earcups to rotate better front to back.

You really want these things.

Welcome to head-case and sorry about your wallet.

Now if stax was going to actually do a T2 version 2, (correctly this time)

with these headphones, the MSRP would likely be well into the $25k range...

As it is, with the diy T2 and these headphones, the results are truely glorious.

Edited by kevin gilmore
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look at post #25, that was a mistranslation, ujamerstand posted the correct one...

Yes i have heard them. :D Fixed pole in this case means the rigidity of the stator.

The design of the stator is years in the making. And far better than etched and plated glass, or

copper on phenolic stators. The other pieces allow the earcups to rotate better front to back.

You really want these things.

Now I get it! I am always late... :palm:

About the air displacement with mid-bass and bass frequencies: I forgot dimensional analysis once more.

SR-003 is in-ear, with the smallest stator and membrane and has enough bass (less air inside the chamber, less air volume to be driven).

Perhaps those outer holes are just for anchor.

Best regards,

Jose

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Those outer holes are probably there to secure the insulation and the diaphragm mounting to the stators. Stax have taken the necessary lessons from their errors with the SR-Omega where the whole housing would loosen up with time and cause driver issues. Most users don't realize that the hex bolts at the back (well 3 of them at least) are there to secure the resin shell and the 4 screws underneath the earpads do the same plus keeping the whole driver assembly under tension. Making sure these are properly fixed should keep the phones running for decades.

As for the stators, it is all about having a non resonant structure. With the He90 (the HE60 used molded plastic with conductive paint) Sennheiser used etched glass panels for stiff and well damped stators but since the technology to do this was in its infancy in the early 90's, rejection rate was very high. That is probably why no two HE90's sound the same since no two drivers are identical. Since day one Stax have used solid brass plates for stators, mostly uncoated. The only exception was the SR-X Mk1 which used mesh electrodes but since I've never owned one, I don't know why they discontinued that model so quickly. These brass plates are set in a plastic frame which provides insulation and also sets the correct diaphragm/stator distance. All of the phones made prior to 1993 were like that but the SR-Omega and the Nova series changed things. I covered the Omega driver above but the Nova models (well the Classic and the Signature, Basic still used the old stator design) moved to a coated metal stators to eliminate arcing and to damp the metal plates. The SR-007 is different since its drivers are dirt cheap to make using PCB material but the money is spent elsewhere. PCB's are actually a good choice since they are naturally insulated, very strong, stiff and dirt cheap to make in massive numbers.

As for the arc, it looks very odd indeed. I can't but cringe a bit when I catch my reflection wearing the 507...

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