Show us your headphones

Who’d have thought it, a cluster of Stax owners, they don’t seem to get much discussion generally.

Too busy listening to superb headphones

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Utopia and Elear, driven by a Focal Arche or a Lehmannaudio Linear SE.

Which one i use depends on the mood and music.

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30 year old Sony CD3000s, new SPL Phonitor 2

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Family listening :slightly_smiling_face:
Me - Meze Audio Empyreans
Daughter - Meze Audio Classic 99’s

Garbage via Qobuz

40 Likes

A match made in heaven. It’s like the SQ-N150 and HD-800 were made for each other.

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Love the look of the Luxman

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Then this is for you. The view from the listening chair while I’m wearing the headphones.


The HD-800 are a bit of yesterday’s hot cans. I’ve heard them on the end of a lot of things. A Chord Hugo. A high end Oppo, my own HL2/HCdr, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard them properly until I put them on this tube amp.

No headphone out stage. Just a redirect of the 10w tube power stage.

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Me 3

Stax 009S
Stax L300LE 80th Anniversary Edition
Mjolnir Carbon
Stax 353XBK 80th Anniversary Edition

Best
Gregg

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Love the look of these with old school VU meters. How does it sound?

I don’t have much comparative experience of headamps unfortunately to answer your question well

I bought it for double duty with headphones and as a preamp to active ATCs

It is aimed at the studio market; it seems to deliver the very neutral attenuation required for mixing and mastering

Crossfeed works subtly well to moderate that ‘in your head’ feeling, with lots of settings to play with here

I previously used my dCS Bartok direct to the actives; the Phonitor gives me an increase in transparency and detail esp at low volumes where there can be an impact on sound quality if using dac digital attenuation

It is fantastic value for money at about GBP1.2K new

and yes the VUs are cool too! :sunglasses:

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A veteran on the dCS forum who runs a Vivaldi stack speaks highly of the phonitor

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yes I bought on his recommendation

Nah, can’t sound THAT bad, surely ?

:sunglasses:

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I’m not a big headphone user, just a pair of Grado SR80’s for occasional desktop use for me.

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It looks very beautiful and special. The uniqueness comes from the meters and dial control as highlighted.

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I think there is more to it. Most amps have a discrete headphone amp stage. Because the unit is so lower power, it’s just a redirect. So you know those lovely EL84 tubes are working for the cans too. Not many integrated amps suddenly become 100% dedicated headphone amps when you insert the phones jack. It’s such an elegant solution.

I think Chord DACs do the same in reverse. Headphone amps that power sensitive speakers on redirect. Pretty rare approaches nonetheless.

I’m guessing most here would deem this a mad choice but I guess we’re living in mad times!

12 Likes

Gotta love biosphere though…

1 Like

Haven’t you just! Great spot