Building new relationships…

My previously described foray back into headphones has not only seen me rekindling some old relationships, but also building some new ones…

Firstly, I started browsing the state of the headphone market. I don’t think I’ve done that for six or seven years at least. Quite a few things have changed in that time and prices have shot up but the biggest change to me is probably that Head-Fi suddenly feels like a mature and mainstream part of the audio market – an important difference from how I remember it ten-plus years ago.

Technology-wise, planar magnetic headphones seem to be almost the default choice among premium headphones which is interesting. Another change is that there is much more variety in the market in terms of manufacturers. One of these that quickly caught my eye is Sivga/Sendy Audio. Sivga is a Chinese manufacturer of dynamic and planar magnetic headphones and Sendy Audio is their premium brand. The top-of-the-line planar model is called the Peacock and they caught my eye very quickly. Long story short – I bought a pair.

These are not cheap (even if I got them at a slight discount), but I had the opportunity to hold/wear them and have a brief listen before committing to a purchase. I have to say that sound-wise they were interesting, but what really won me over is the comfort – and then of course the build quality which is simply outstanding. On the first point: I’ve had other headphones that sound really good, but if they are not comfortable then they simply end up being left in the box (I’m looking at you Beyerdynamic T1!). On the second point: Quality-wise these are among the most well-made pieces of equipment I can remember owning. The only plastic I can find on them is in the connectors, and unlike many other high-end products from Asia nobody has felt the need to cover the wood in 20 layers of high-gloss lacquer to make them look “premium” – something my Scandinavian design taste finds deeply objectionable.

Another “new” relationship is with the Marsh Headphone amp by Richard N. Marsh. This is not a new amp design as such because it was presented more than ten years ago in now-defunct magazine Linear Audio, but obviously it’s a bit new to me. The RNM-amp is basically a Diamond-buffer with a tweaked output stage and because I am a bit lazy at times, that made me look in my PCB archive for previous Diamond-buffer designs to “recycle”. I very quickly realized that the AMB Alpha20/JISBOS design is pretty much the same thing, so redoing the PCB turned out to be much less work than expected as I already had a good starting point.

Last but certainly not least, I have also successfully bought and received a new Stax SRD-7 transformer box for my conversion project. Originally, I just wanted to add the Pro-level bias board, but after reading some more information I found that there may be ways to get more sound quality out of the basic Stax design. I’d already planned on getting rid of the thermistors on the original board, but eventually I ended up creating a complete “filter” PCB based on the circuit described here.

I haven’t tested this yet (a bit scared of the high voltages involved), so I am waiting for a small mechanical mounting bracket – and some more time – which will hopefully allow me to confirm that it is working so I can proceed with the rebuild 🙂