Audeze CRBN - Electrostatic Headphone - Official Thread

Some people describe this qualities as a kind of ‘ethereal’ character, but that’s also somewhat tied to the upper treble boost that many estats seem to have. I think the negative associations I’ve given to this quality is that it has a kind of ‘flatness’ or lack of grip/body to it, but this is something that also isn’t a ubiquitous complaint.

At the moment I don’t feel confident I can make any definitive statement on that given that I’ve only used one energizer. I should have a better read on that by next week though.

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Just to include a bit more explanation here in the thread, as Eskamobob1 wrote, ear gain = amplification of sound produced by the very shape of a human ear:

We see from the graph that sound from a speaker that measures flat in the normal way is boosted by the shape of the human ear in those frequencies that have a short enough wavelength to be effected by the relatively small size of an ear.

Equally important is that the signal boost we see in the green line is what the auditory nerves send to our brains. But our brains extract the extra detail information from the signal, then feed a perceived flat line response to our conscious awareness. So we never actually hear the signal boost that measuring devices show to be there. Psychoacoustics in action, grin.

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Appreciate the explanation. Great to learn something new…

Victor B.

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Welcome to the forum and thank you for adding a tremendous visual aid to the discussion.

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More on the acoustics side vs the ‘psych’ part, but yes, the brain does do the work of normalizing it. I like to think of it similar to how the image projected onto the back of our eyes is upside down, but we see it right side up because it’s ‘corrected’ by the brain. In a headphone measurement taken at the ear drum (most measurements), it’s as if we’re examining the ‘pre-corrected’ image.

The other interesting part to this is that because we each have individual ears with unique ear gain, that also means we have unique normalization going on.

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I don’t have a feel for how much digression on a side topic of a thread is reasonable. I’ll just follow other people’s lead.

“Pyschoacoustics in action” was referring just to the sentence two sentences prior, starting with “But our brains extract the extra detail information from the signal”. Since that normalization is happening entirely in the brain, I feel comfortable tagging it as psychoacoustic.

Nice!

Agree. I think of a machine learning system starting from scratch with a goal mandate and a large data store to work its way through. This would happen at or before birth and would update as our ears grow larger. The underlying algorithm for ear gain correction could have been largely worked out by evolution millions of years previously, but it would still have to play out in each new individual’s brain.

We also see the auditory cortex at work as two conversing people move indoors from outdoors, then from one room to another. Yet neither person notices a timbral change in the other person’s voice – despite often drastically different room gain profiles. And yet, if we were to set up the same stereo speaker pair and electronics in each of these spaces, we’d go through one helluva struggle to get anything like the same sound at the listening position in each case.

But to bring this full circle, where is this super sophisticated processing when someone dons a CRBN after listening to a Shangri-la Jr. in the middle of a given track from Hotel California? LOL. I guess our brains know we want to hear the difference in rendering and responds accordingly.

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It’s a shame Audeze’s CRBN didn’t crop up while I was still in Seattle, as that would have made it fairly easy to put my BHSE and Carbon up to help evaluate.

As it is, I’d say “I’ll see for myself soon enough” … but given that Monday marks the 6 week point since ordering (and I doubt very much anything will change between now and then), and I’ve heard sod all about anything actually shipping , that might be tempting fate.

And then there’s this little gem …

It’d be quite ironic if that turned out to be the new Omega … and then it was actually available to customers before the CRBN actually starts shipping.

(Patience has never been my strong point on orders).

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Someone received delivery of their CRBN.

https://www.head-case.org/forums/topic/17318-audeze-crbn/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-864137

Edit: was actually a loaner set.

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Six weeks and change since placing an order for the CRBN.

Haven’t heard a word, directly, about why it is 50% longer than the minimum estimate so far. Which, to be fair, was a minimum estimate. Though it’s always nice when manufacturer’s don’t take 50%+ longer than said estimate to get product shipped (I very rarely order stuff that isn’t ready to ship for this very reason).

Third-party info suggests there were either chassis or yoke issues that caused a delay.

25 hours from now … the high-end electrostatic world could change significantly. If it was me, I’d have wanted my product in customer’s hands before that event …

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wonder if they just got that many more orders than expected or completely didn’t have their stuff together.

Agree, it’s a bad look to have that long a wait and no communication.

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I would agree with the 10 am 9/16 (Japanese time) of another electrostatic headphone announcement, I would have thought they would have had it out.

Well the infos available ( if you can read Japanese). All I can make out, other than the specifications, is 693,000 Yen…. Way out of my league.

The Stax website has an English version which explains the new design features of the 9000. To me this is just another iteration of my just acquired 009s with a 1k+ bump in price. I’m extremely happy with my 009s and can’t see the need for this ‘new’ flagship.

The English page is here.

Definitely buying a set, as soon as they are available. We’ll see from there which of my other electrostatics (SR-007 MK II, SR-009S and CRBN*) stay and which go.

*If they ship before I lose patience/interest - Audeze would do well to give some kind of status update.

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I took delivery of a SR-007 MK II and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was as though there was a -10db shelf from 1k out. I was in shock, still am, as to how it sounded. Even my LCD 3’s have more presence. I was looking for an accompaniment for my 009s but instead found an extreme outlier. Definitely not for me.

The new Stax SR-X9000 ships in October. The description from Stax says “Warm and Clear”. That’s almost an oxymoron to me. If they are warmer than my 009S then I would not be interested.

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Just a call from Audeze. They left message that first batch of production on Carbon was shipping today or Monday and I should receive mine mid week. I know you ordered before I did so I assume you should be getting the same or slightly earlier. Clearly said first production run. That is messed up.

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I gave them a call a bit earlier today to ask about status and was told the same thing.

I ordered in the first few minutes of the option to order going live (which happened to be a few minutes before it was announced that it was active), so hopefully I will be in the first batch. But they typically ship ground (there was no option for expedited shipping) … so it’ll probably take a full week to reach me once it does ship.

So I’ll work on the assumption it’ll be the week of the 27th mine will actually arrive.


With the release of the new Stax SR-X9000 (already put in an order), and units supposed to be shipping as of 10/8 (whether that’s just the data for Japanese dealers or applies to dealers world-wide I don’t know), the delay on the CRBN may prove to be a blessing in disguise …

As it may just work out that I’ll time to evaluate the SR-X9000 back-to-back with the CRBN while remaining within the 30 day return period on the CRBN.

I only plan* to keep two electrostatic cans, but I’ll have four, so I am very interested to see which stay and which go. Gut feel, based on not having heard either, is that the CRBN and the SR-X9000 will stay.

As it is, I find the SR-009S could use a little more low-end presence with some genres. Nothing that can’t be achieved with a little, gentle, EQ or convolution filters. I suspect that the 20% larger drivers will deliver that, unless the overall tuning has been shifted in other ways.

Going to be an exciting couple of weeks once these things start turning up …

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I did not realize the Stax were coming that quickly. Will have to get an order in for those as I can’t imagine that they will be anything but great based on my experience with the SR 009S. Good luck to us both on the shipping. They gave me a person to call at Audeze if the cans were not here by Thursday. Odd as hell.

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That is odd.

Particularly in light of the chap I spoke with saying I should feel free to give them another call if I hadn’t heard anything by mid-week …

I would tend to interpret that sort of this as meaning “we’re not that sure we’re shipping next week”.

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