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
Utopia and Elear, driven by a Focal Arche or a Lehmannaudio Linear SE.
Which one i use depends on the mood and music.
Love the look of the Luxman
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.
Me 3
Stax 009S
Stax L300LE 80th Anniversary Edition
Mjolnir Carbon
Stax 353XBK 80th Anniversary Edition
Best
Gregg
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!
A veteran on the dCS forum who runs a Vivaldi stack speaks highly of the phonitor
yes I bought on his recommendation
Nah, can’t sound THAT bad, surely ?
It looks very beautiful and special. The uniqueness comes from the meters and dial control as highlighted.
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.
Gotta love biosphere though…
Haven’t you just! Great spot