General Asylum: Stax SR-Omega vs. SR-007(Omega2) Headphones by Arif

Hi,

Having tried a whole range of STAX headphones at home on loan from my dealer i bought a pair of the new Signature IIs.

In my system they do seem to sound a lot more relaxed than the old ones, although I am using them with the stax signature tube energiser.

Whereas the old ones were revealing/bright (on my friend's system) they sound very neutral connected to my Sony SCD777ES (used as both CDP and SACDP) and this is not known for having a particularly warm sound as a CDP.

In fact I've found that they have brought me the closest to a real musical performance that I've ever heard and I have heard some very expensive equipment (mainly through my friend who has money to burn!) although I have yet to hear the Omega IIs.

I also tried out the Stax Classic II System which combines the SR303 phones with a solid state amplifier and gets you about 95% of the way as the Signatures at half the price.

Compared to my old set up - Sennheiser HD-600s connected to Musical Fidelity X-cans1 and then 2 the Stax phones are in a different league.

Don't get me wrong the Sennheisers are excellent phones but once you sample the delights of the Stax its difficult to go back to "normal" designs.

By the way, I have heard the baby versions of the Sennheiser Orpheus which cost roughly the same as the Omega IIs and in my opinion they sounded worse (more coloured) than the Stax Signatures.

To be honest I didn't like their sound very much at all and if I had to choose between them and my old regular non-electrostatic Sennheiser set up, I would choose the latter.

I have, however, been informed by my wealthy friend that he has heard the top of the range Orpheus (at ~£10K) recently and that they sound very classy indeed. At the moment he's deciding whether to go for the Orpheus or save some money and buy the Omega IIs.(Don't you just hate him already?)

Arif.