chowkwan@aerospace.aero.org (07/25/90)
(OR Enid Lumley triumphant.) I recently bought a pair of Stax headphones and used my humble Sony C7ESD as direct input to the headphone amp. 1 metre of Audioquest Lapis (old style) was used as the interconnect. On Ronstadt's Howl like the Wind and Walters' Beethoven 6 the sound was disappointingly hashed and confused. Simply put, it sounded distorted. Similar results obtained when I interposed a VTL Deluxe preamp. The next day, I tried again using the interconnects that Stax provides. I had disdained these as cheap OEM stuff, unworthy of my attention. Lo and behold, the music cleared up. So maybe there's some magic to these OEM cords after all. But hold on. I had violated the first rule of experimentation and failed to keep all other variables constant. I had unplugged the Stax the night before to store safely out of the way of my kids' sticky fingers. When I re-plugged them in I used a different bank in my line conditioner (an Audio Advisor modified Tripplite). So when the CD player and the Stax are plugged into the same line conditioner bank, the sound is hashed and unpleasant. Plugging them into different banks lifted the veil. Replacing the OEM interconnects with the Lapis improved the sound still further. All pre-conceived notions about the relative worth of OEM and after-market wires fell back into place. So the moral is: top quality equipment is fantastically revealing (and I include the ears in the category of top quality stuff). I would never have believed that plugging components into the same power bank could cause problems. Yet the Stax revealed all. Records are great but as a practical matter I feel compelled to investigate tweaks that make CD sound enjoyable. One of the keys to date is to keep that power to the CD player pure. -- ray
bks%shiva.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Brian K. Shiratsuki) (07/26/90)
In article <5268@uwm.edu> chowkwan@aerospace.aero.org writes: >(OR Enid Lumley triumphant.) >I recently bought a pair of Stax headphones and used >my humble Sony C7ESD as direct input to the headphone amp... >[moving the headphone amp to a different line conditioner bank > from the cd player improved the sound significantly] since they were new headphones, is it possible that they needed some breaking in (ie, did you try going back to the original set up to see if the sound degraded)? also, i curious what your impressions were of the various stax headphones were. has anyone reading this group built an amplifier/bias supply capable of driving the stax lambda pro {,signature}? brian
lrb@rrivax.rri.uwo.ca (Lance R. Bailey) (07/27/90)
In article <5268@uwm.edu>, chowkwan@aerospace.aero.org writes... >So the moral is: top quality equipment is fantastically >revealing (and I include the ears in the category >of top quality stuff). I would never have believed that plugging >components into the same power bank could cause problems. >Yet the Stax revealed all. i ended up with TWO 15 circuit breakers going to the listening room. one goes to the power and logans, one to the pre and inputs. the wire i used is dryer cable (8 or 10 guage). at one time i had a (this is a phonetic spelling because i've never seen the name written) EENEAK line stabilizer and the difference was a much more open image. >Records are great but as a practical matter I feel compelled >to investigate tweaks that make CD sound enjoyable. >One of the keys to date is to keep that power to the CD player >pure. try a set of NAVCOM stabilzers under it. i put a pair under my power amp and havenet removed them since. _________________________________ Lance R. Bailey, Systems Manager | Robarts Research Institute email: lrb@rri.uwo.ca | Clinical Trials Resources Group vox: 519-663-3787 ext. 4108 | P.O. Box 5015, 100 Perth Dr. fax: 519-663-3789 | London, Canada N6A 5K8