Are there speakers after Stax?

Kirk,

Sound Lab does make some great-sounding electrostats, but they are quite large and expensive. They are a possibility, but I'll have to wait and see how large my new listening room will be.

I bought electrostatic STAX 30 years ago, I don't remember the model. They has their own solid state amplifier. I had them for about 20 years. The GOOD: superb sensitivity and sweet sound. Can play as loud as you can stand. The Opposite of good: Makes your ears sweat (until the plastic coating fell off of the ear peices), the wire is like a leash, other noises comes through the back of the earphone, the sound stage was like a rainbow over one's head not in front, and no base. I think that because there is no base they sound overly bright. A trick to getting base is to play the speaker and listen to the headphone at the same time. I did not use them much after I got Maggies since the Maggies had surperb sensitivity.

I was recently thinking of purchasing another pair (to cure room reflection) but after doing some research, I concluded that many of the above problems have not been solved.

How would you address some of the problems? I arranged some mini-monitors close to my easy chair, like earphones to overcome room reflections. Try it. I thought the image would still be infront, it wasn't. So I moved the speakers slightly forward of the chair. I could not trick my ears. The sound stage remained between the speakers. Everdently, there was still enough room reflection for the ears to gauge the distance to the speakers. I walked around the room listen to the reflection. I no longer believe in transparent speakers, only strong room reflection. (You might have sumised that I like transparent type speakers with Maggies and Ohm Walsh 4+). It would be interesting to try to design an arbor or speakers that you sit in. The arbor would do some phase trickery that would make you think it was surround sound. The base would be below the chair seat to provide not only sound but feel. I do not know if this could also be the solution to surround sound problem, room reflection. (The only impressionable surround sound I heard was in a large commerical movie theater.)

I'm the happy owner of SRM1/SR5 (SS) combo that realy tells simple truth that there is no such speaker as STAX. I can just only imagin what it could soud with the tube drive unit.

Plato

One of my Sound Lab customers was using full-sized (80" tall by 35" wide) Millennium-1's in a 12-by-12 foot room. At a listening distance of six feet or so, that's almost like listening to a giant pair of electrostatic headphones, isn't it??

Plato, I think the Sound Labs will probably come closer than any speaker to approaching the articulation of the Stax's, because they use the thinnest diaphragm of any electrostat (to the best of my knowledge). That being said, those Stax headphones are unbelieveably articulate.

As far as room size goes, 12 by 12 is a wee bit on the, ah, cozy side - but Sound Labs can work well in an unusually very wide variety of rooms because their voicing is less dependent on fine-tuning the relative contribution of the room's acoustics. This is because they generate a tonally correct reverberant field, which is something of a rarity among loudspeakers, but very common among live, unamplified musical instruments.

Yeah the Sound Labs are pricey, but from time to time I have used/demo models available. Check with me when your piggy bank recovers from the move and (I presume) Stax purchase!

Best wishes,

Duke

PS - By the way, are you the real Plato? If so, I really like something you said a long time ago: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle". I try to live by that.

I've been spending a lot of time with my Stax Omega II system of late (which uses the Stax 007t amp). I find this setup to be significantly better than the 4040 system which I have heard but not owned, especially in terms of it's uber amazing bass extension. The Omega II system is a big jump in cost for the 4040 and perhaps not worth it if you don't do a lot of headphone listening.

Another recommendation, which in some ways sounds even better than Stax, would be the AKG K-1000 earspeakers. These are, quite literally, electrostat speakers hanging from, but not touching, your ears! You want to talk about detail, oh my God! Because they are earspeakers and not really headphones, they throw a soundstage that cannot be touched by any "true" headphone. In fact, they connect to amps like regular speakers do (i.e., not through the headphone jack). Some people have actually added a subwoofer to their K-1000 setup!

The K-1000's retial for $700 but can sometimes be found in the used market for around $400 (although rarely). They're hard to drive so you would need either a good headphone amp (such as an Audio Valve RKV Mk II) or possibly an older receiver. There are many threads about the K-1000's at www.head-fi.org that discuss what amps/receivers do a good job driving them.

Suffice it to say the K-1000's are an experience unto themseves, and will open your eyes, drop your jaw, and make your head shake in disbelief in much the same way your Stax system has done.