My Current Audio Systems

[tmallin]

I'm not guaranteeing these are my "final" headphones, just the best I've heard so far. I find electrostatic headphones and speakers to be the most transparent/clearest transducers, both with speakers and headphones. I listen to new models of both each year at AXPONA and at dealers. The long-term trend of both most speakers and most headphones is toward a brighter in the highs, leaner in the bass sound. This is not good, to my ears, especially since the trend in remastering old recordings is in the same direction.

People who don't listen to live unamplified acoustic music much if at all tend to lose their way when it comes to natural sounding reproduction. Last night I was at a Mexican restaurant and was treated to an unamplified male duet of singers both playing acoustic guitars. Even though I was at most five feet away from this duo, the sound was not bright at all. I was again struck by how much low end even guitars generate, not to mention the richness of the male voices. You would never know this truth from most recordings played back through most modern speakers and electronics.

Sure, one can use electronic equalization to correct the overall response any way you like and I do use such with my Sanders 10e speakers via the dbx VENU360 loudspeaker management unit which is a necessary part of that speaker system. EQ can also be used with headphones, but I think it still helps to start off with transducers which are as natural sounding as possible before electronic equalization.

The Stax SR-007 Mk 1, being a model which has been around for about 25 years is not a product of this thinner-and-brighter sound trend. Stax expert Spritzer says the set I bought is from 1999 or 2000 and thinks this was the "golden age" of that particular model's production run--late enough that early glitches had been ironed out and early enough that later production/sonic tweaking problems had not yet occurred.

I'm actually somewhat embarrassed that it took me this long to buy these since at this point they are often referred to as "legendary" among the Stax cognoscenti and since I've purchased two later model Stax phones, the SR-009S and SR-X9000. Birgir/Spritzer has been talking about these SR-007 Mk1's for a long time. The now-557 page Stax thread on one forum I've been looking at lately, Head Case, goes back to at least 2006 and Spritzer has been a major contributor there all that time.

 

[AMR / iFi audio]

I'm not guaranteeing these are my "final" headphones, just the best I've heard so far. I find electrostatic headphones and speakers to be the most transparent/clearest transducers, both with speakers and headphones. I listen to new models of both each year at AXPONA and at dealers. The long-term trend of both most speakers and most headphones is toward a brighter in the highs, leaner in the bass sound. This is not good, to my ears, especially since the trend in remastering old recordings is in the same direction.

People who don't listen to live unamplified acoustic music much if at all tend to lose their way when it comes to natural sounding reproduction. Last night I was at a Mexican restaurant and was treated to an unamplified male duet of singers both playing acoustic guitars. Even though I was at most five feet away from this duo, the sound was not bright at all. I was again struck by how much low end even guitars generate, not to mention the richness of the male voices. You would never know this truth from most recordings played back through most modern speakers and electronics.

Sure, one can use electronic equalization to correct the overall response any way you like and I do use such with my Sanders 10e speakers via the dbx VENU360 loudspeaker management unit which is a necessary part of that speaker system. EQ can also be used with headphones, but I think it still helps to start off with transducers which are as natural sounding as possible before electronic equalization.

The Stax SR-007 Mk 1, being a model which has been around for about 25 years is not a product of this thinner-and-brighter sound trend. Stax expert Spritzer says the set I bought is from 1999 or 2000 and thinks this was the "golden age" of that particular model's production run--late enough that early glitches had been ironed out and early enough that later production/sonic tweaking problems had not yet occurred.

I'm actually somewhat embarrassed that it took me this long to buy these since at this point they are often referred to as "legendary" among the Stax cognoscenti and since I've purchased two later model Stax phones, the SR-009S and SR-X9000. Birgir/Spritzer has been talking about these SR-007 Mk1's for a long time. The now-557 page Stax thread on one forum I've been looking at lately, Head Case, goes back to at least 2006 and Spritzer has been a major contributor there all that time.

Sometimes all you need is a little push, this time, it was from Birgir.
EQ can help, but I agree it won't replace a proper tuning (or the one you like). I see many people advocating for using EQ, but I think it's better to start with gear that you like from the get-go.

 

[tmallin]

I totally agree that it's better to start with gear you like from the get-go, especially in terms of high-frequency balance. However, the speakers i've used lately (Dutch & Dutch 8c and now Sanders 10e hybrid electrostatics) have built-in equalization so the inherent frequency balance of the speakers is somewhat ambiguous. You can largely tune the balance of such speakers to taste.

As noted in post #59 above, I recently sold my Stax SR-X9000 headphones because I ended up agreeing that these were just inherently too bright. I have used the proceeds from that sale to acquire from Birgir/Spritzer a pair of Stax SR-007A Mk2.9 headphones. He described these as:

"This is a set of Stax SR-007A Mk2.9’s in very good condition, very close to mint. These are a few years old and I prefer them to the brand new sets made today, especially after I performed the port mod on them. Truly one of the best headphones in the world and far better than the other models Stax makes these days, 009, 009S or the misguided X9000.
This set comes with the original box and flight case and really looks close to new."

Comparing them to the SR-007 Mk 1, Birgir/Spritzer said:

"The Mk2.9’s are a bit more open in the top end and more lively than the Mk1’s. They are also more robust as Stax finally made the cable entry make sense. I do like the Mk2.9’s a lot, they are a nice step up from those who think the Mk1’s are a bit closed in sounding and a bit dark."

I find Birgir/Spritzer's comments to be very accurate. Yes, these SR-007A Mk2.9's are a bit livelier than the SR-007 Mk1. But they are both well within the range of very natural sound. I do not find the Mk1 to be "a bit closed in sounding and a bit dark" Thus, to me, both of these are far more natural sounding than the current Stax flagship, SR-X9000.

 

[PYP]

For a good while now, since I further simplified my main stereo room system to eliminate the Benchmark DAC3 HGC and Benchmark HPA4 headphone amp, I have not used headphones in that system, limiting my headphone listening to my computer desk system used primarily for video streaming.

Recently, however, I have added back headphone listening capability to my stereo room system. While I still don't have a means of using my best headphones, the Stax SR009S, in that system, I have now arranged things so that I can use either my Apple AirPods Max or NAD Viso HP-50 in my stereo room system.

Since the Apple AirPods Max are ordinarily connected via Bluetooth, to listen via these headphones in that system I simply turn on the Bluetooth capability of my M-1-based iPad Pro (2021)'s system controller and pair the headphones with the iPad. Since the Bluetooth connection seems limited to a 24 bit, 48 kHz sampling rate, this may impair the sonic quality heard from High Resolution program material a bit, but my D&D 8c speakers impose a similar "limitation" since the DACs in those speakers are intentionally set up by the manufacturer to operate at 24/48, both to allow the chosen DACs to operate more precisely and to avoid energizing the 27 kHz peak in the response of the tweeter of the speakers.

I acquired a second pair of the NAD Viso HP-50 headphones to use in the stereo room system so I don't have to move my first pair back and forth between the computer system and the stereo room system. To use the even better NAD Viso HP-50 headphones in my stereo room, I needed an adaptor to fit the wired NAD headphones to the USB-C jack which is the only wired output on the iPad Pro. While iMac computers still have stereo mini jacks for driving ordinary wired headphones, there is no stereo mini jack on recent iPads or iPhones.

Fortunately, Apple and others make a simple, one-piece USB-C to stereo mini jack adaptor. See this link. The standard 4-foot-long cord of the NAD phones, which terminates in a stereo mini-plug fits right into the stereo mini-jack of this adaptor and the male USB-C end of the adaptor fits into the USB-C jack of the iPad Pro.

One way to listen to streamed material through headphones in this system involved enabling the iPad Pro to be a Roon end point device. To do this and avoid simultaneously driving the speakers, I first simply disable my Lumin X1 as an end point device through Roon's controls; go to Roon's Menu > Settings > Audio, then click on the gear icon next to the Lumin X1 and select Disable. Then I enable the Apple iPad Pro as a Roon end point. In the Roon set up of the iPad Pro, I enable the MQA Core Decoder to make sure that my Roon Nucleus+ does the core decoding of any MQA programs before sending them to the iPad through my home network. I set the iPad Pro to "Renderer only" for this set up since iPads have no inherent MQA decoding capability.

When I go back to speaker listening, I then re-Enable the Lumin X1 as a Roon end point and Disable the iPad Pro. You don't have to do that, but I like to keep the system set-up as unambiguous as possible.

Alternatively, I can listen by headphones in my stereo room by simply streaming directly from apps on the iPad Pro, bypassing Roon, the Nucleus+, and of course the Lumin X1. I have apps for most of my usual streaming sources on the iPad Pro: various internet radio stations and aggregating services, Safari, YouTube, Internet Concert Archive, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, SiriusXM, etc. While I cannot access my own CD-derived music files this way, most of those programs are available as streaming files through Tidal or Qobuz, albeit in FLAC rather than WAV format. I also obviously can't avail myself of the superior Roon GUI this way.

Do you use an LPS for your Xfinity gateway? I've searched a bit and cannot find anyone who has tried. Thank you.

 

[tmallin]

No, I use the stock switching power supply for my Xfinity Advanced Gateway. The power supply is 12 volt, 5.5 amps, which is beyond the amperage capability of the Farad Super3 LPS units I've been using elsewhere. Also, space is limited where I have the Gateway installed. I don't want to move the Gateway since it gives strong Wi-Fi coverage for my entire home and yard at that location and is conveniently located to a coax connection from the external Xfinity cable as well as the ethernet connection to my audio room. New ethernet connections are difficult and expensive to run in my 1904 plaster-wall construction home.

 

[vert]

Motorola MG8702 is a good choice for Xfinity gateway.

Sounds better than Arris and can be powered by a wide range of linear power supplies.