STAX
Stax SR-X9000 Earspeakers
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lmost everyone in the highfidelity business agrees that for the finest fidelity, the best way to turn electrical waves into sound waves is electrostatically and this opinion is given no matter whether you ask about loudspeakers or about headphones. Yet despite this almost-universal agreement, almost all loudspeakers and headphones turn electrical waves into sound waves using magnetic, rather than electrostatic forces. The reasons are many but mostly they revolve around cost, complexity and regulations. It is not only expensive to build electrostatic products, but also very difficult (complex). It also involves many regulations, because electrostatic products operate at very high voltages, so governments put many hurdles in the way to ensure the safety of their citizens. Stax is one of the very few headphone manufacturers that is not only happy to deal with the costs, complexities and regulations, but excels at it. The company’s newest flagship model headphone, the SR-X9000, uses the most complex metalmesh electrostatic electrode system Stax has ever designed (MLER-3) and an ultrathin plastic film diaphragm whose area is 20 per cent greater than that of its previous flagship model. The Japanese company has, however, refrained from increasing its already-high polarizing voltage, so that remains at a still-massive 580 volts d.c. The requirement for high polarizing voltages means that Stax headphones don’t just plug into a standard headphone socket. They require a special ‘driver’, such as the Stax SRM-T8000 ($8,000) which uses a pair of small-signal 6922 valves in the input stage which then drive a Class-A solid-state output stage. The SRM T8000 has three analogue inputs — two unbalanced and one balanced — as well as twin outputs so that you could,
if you wish, connect a second pair of Stax headphones for a second listener. Other, lower-cost options are available when it comes to driver amplifiers, just as Stax also makes lower-priced electrostatic headphones. You should, however, do yourself a favour and listen to a pair of Stax SRX9000 ‘Earspeakers’ (Stax prefers the term ‘earspeakers’ rather than ‘headphones’) so you have a reference for the kind of sound quality you should expect. It’s not for nothing that fans of classical music are advised not to buy any headphones without first spending time under the spell of the detail and dynamics that are delivered by electrostatics, and the detail is certainly extraordinary.
Listen to Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic play Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ symphony and you can hear the flop of flute keys and turns of sheet music pages in the background. When Sound + Image Magazine reviewed the new SR-X9000s they said: “To hear the best-ever Stax earspeaker backed by the flagship driver was simply a transport to musical delight. The combo delivered transparency, detail and soundstaging to shame even pricecomparable dynamic designs, while the bass available was tight and real, never over-emphasised, and nearly always balanced enough to underpin even rock and modern artificial recordings, while given acoustic recordings they are simply unsurpassed.” Price: $9,500
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