Don’t be because you shouldn’t trust my ears. To me my Stax setup is my 2nd favorite losing only to the SR1a.
The best way for me to describe the SR1a is, “a 009S with significantly better bass and accuracy/realism”
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A couple more hours with the McIntosh MA252 … look … it’s a lovely piece, if somewhat betrayed with its lack of Vu-meters (cost-concious-marketdroids-pay-attention … CLEARLY you do not grok the brand) …
… but it can’t keep up with the SR1a and a SINGLE Vidar … (clip … clipitty … clip … clip … )
… and that’s just embarrassing.
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McIntosh isn’t investing where they need to these days. The amps I’ve tried are overrated and frankly you could do much better at every price point they offer.
@Thomas_kong If you want to invest in the same amount as the Mjolnir audio Carbon on the SR1a, it’s the SR1a’s all the way, the 009s doesn’t scale as far or as readily. That’s a fine Estat amp but Spritzer, regardless of how much he seems to indicate to the contrary, does not have access to the same level of components or fabrication as top-tier speaker amp builders.
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Indeed.
The MHA-100 and MHA-150 were both … well … slack when it came to headphones. I can see if it you’re using lively speakers too … but with even vaguely demanding cans … it was (Largely-Deaf) ORFAS territory …
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I second this 101%. The SR1a scales up a lot better and gives you the ability to adjust the sound (soundstage, imaging, bass and treble response) depending on how you place them on your head and how closed/open the baffles are relative to your ears. You can’t get that with the 009S regardless of the amp you use.
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During my simply too short of time with listening to the SR1a (@Torq graciously allowed me to listen to his setup) I actually was blown away by these without EQ, it was later determined the EQ was off and I tried them with a bump in the lows, and it sounded amazing still. But the non-eq session won me over…I’m still trying to figure out how to justify the cost to the wife lol…especially since I just purchased the Verite and Aeolus…and two EC ZDT Jrs lol one to destroy with my lack of electronics and soldering skill the other because I figured I would destroy the other lol…but damn it they will be mine! Lol
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I’m looking forward to whoever picks this up to pair with the SR1a 
I noticed that their amp gain is exceptionally high – 40db. Still a bit puzzling because if they can pull around 4A current, it’s nearly the clipping limit of SR1a. Maybe their protection circuit is so conservative that it works too early?
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Eh. I’m not even inclined to be that charitable.
You get an extremely mediocre headphone jack that’s outclassed by some portable amps that I know of, and a set of taps that are readily worse than a vidar, and sell the whole package for North of $3,000. That’s just silly if you ask me.
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…
I’ve heard a couple of their units … and that resulted in me not evening being willing to put them on my old “Life after Yggdrasil” thread …
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It may well be overly conservative. The tubes were flashing orange (or, I guess, more correctly, the green LEDs were switching off and leaving the natural glow of the tubes visible) before audible distortion crept in … and at far lower levels that I would have expected.
It’s a shame really … if they’d put VU-meters on the thing, I’d probably have made up an excuse to keep one in the house.
I understand that SR1a has tighter bass than 009S.
But I am not sure whether SR1a has refined mid range as latter.
I expect to get delivery of Stax on July 9th.
Probably I will give Stax and Carbon amp more than one month to tune the sound using different power cable and interconnect.
After fully tuning 009S, I will order SR1a to compare with 009S.
Since I have excellent 2 channel system with powerful bass up to 20hz, refined midrange out of headphone is more important to me.
In the meantime I would like to collect information how to get the best sound of SR1a .
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Could’ve been the hybrid design. It also seems that their integrated amps suffer a bit. I’ve been lusting over the MC2152. That thing is gorgeous.
Happy 4th everyone! It’s a sad day here because I just fried the Vidar and the s800 is in protection mode due to a short circuit caused by not being careful enough when changing my speaker cables. I was A/B testing both amps and felt comfortable enough to change the speaker cables on the SR1a interface box without switching the amps off. I got distracted by the wife during the change out process and I accidentally had the banana plugs touching each other which led to a short circuit in both amps. The magic smoke came out of the Vidar and the s800 has been in protection mode since then. This was a rookie mistake that I felt like sharing for future “speaker-unexperienced” SR1a owners.
Got to send both units for repair.
That’s extremely unfortunate!
Especially killing BOTH amps at the same time. That might be a first.
I assume you’ve tried switching off and completely disconnecting the s800 (including from the AC supply), leaving it that way for 5 minutes, and then powering it back up?
The s800 won’t come out of protection mode on it’s own (unless it’s thermal protection that tripped, but that’s not what would happen here).
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Indeed, extremely unfortunate and potentially expensive.
The Vidar is completely down and the s800 is still in protection mode even after being completely disconnected for a while and there’s a burning smell near the transformer area. The smoke from the Vidar was also coming from the transformer area.
I fried both amps because I was messing with all 4 speaker cables (8 banana plugs) at the same time, plugging ON/OFF the interface box.
this is a terrifying thing… so take away…get one amp, and don’t A/B if I get the SR1a down the road =( and always power down when/if swapping amps or anything with power going through it…
I think I partially fragged my EC ZDT Jr because of something like this… I wasn’t paying attention after testing it and forgot to unplug it before starting up some more modding and luckily only got a small “bzzz” on the hand and not a full fledged shock… I was grounded and wearing rubber boots, as I do when messing with electricity… =(
It is crazy how quickly things can go bust when messing with electricity…
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Too bad to hear it. But looking at bright side – it seems nobody physically damaged. Hope your amps fixed anyway by getting proper services.
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I haven’t pulled the trigger on the top of the line STAX yet, but it was my old SR-5Ns that made me listen to Martin Logans. And the Martin Logans made me listen to Quads.
I don’t know where I will end up with speakers when I finally do upgrade. Possibly some good electrostatics, maybe Magnepan, but the size and sound of Wilson Audio is also very tempting.
Around your head or on the floor. The journey is the same.