0:00 hello again fellow audiophiles i am wave theory and this is going to be part two of my electrostatic headphones impressions and what differentiates this from part one is that now i have had more time with these and these are less initial impressions and slightly more fully fleshed out impressions about electrostatic headphones what they are and what they can do now i uh as i initially explained in my previous video i i talked about what electrostatic headphones are and a little bit about how they work so i will not rehash that here other than say i will put a link in the description under the video if you are have not seen that yet
0:45 and are curious about that so what have i learned beyond that initial thing here well in the initial video the thing that i probably need to change the most is i talked about how the timbre on these can be a little bit off like they don't strike me as as having as natural timbre as some of the planar magnetic headphones that i have heard or even some of the dynamic driver headphones that i have heard that approach these in price so again just real quick stacks sr009 you can still buy brand new in select locations for a little over 3 800 usd auto z carbon the name styled crbn which
1:31 you can buy for 4 500 usd and the stacks double 09 s which is the new double 009 um flagship of that the double 009 line anyway for 450 usd they're just uh just to contextualize those prices a little bit okay now the timbre at first they they came across to me as really dry uh in their sound and they didn't quite have that organic sound in the timbre that i particularly got from like a susvara not quite to the extent but like uh it was there some on the utopia just a
2:17 really nice organic kind of natural sounding timbre at first these didn't have that to me the odyssey carbon never really regained that the the double 009 it was closer than the carbon but still not quite there the one that with a little bit of either break in or just brain burning or combination of those i think it's a little bit of break-in that started to approach it was the double 09 s like the the timbre on this one it to to my memory at least it's not going to beat susvara it might be competitive with utopia but i think it gets right in the thick of the pack in terms of natural sounding timbre with the planar magnetic
3:02 headphones that i have heard that are in the 4 000 to 5 000 range now i realize the susvara lists for 6 000 but if you shop around you can get it for under 5k right um so i mean some of those other headphones in there like i mentioned that i've heard the susvara in the utopia but i've also heard the odyssey lcd5 the dan clark audio stealth the uh the abyss ab 1266 itc uh let's see what else is in there i've heard the abyss diana phi which is 4 000 um the meze elite okay and uh there was another fancy one not not 4500 what was it the ribbon one rao ral the sr1a
3:48 okay i've heard those two and this at least got in like the thick of that group at least middle of the pack in terms of timbre so it has given me hope that there are electrostats out there that can do really natural really wonderful timbre like a high-fimin susvara which i know isn't planar magnetic but i'd say that's to me is kind of the standard at the price point for that um but it gives me hope that there is a uh an electrostat out there that can that can do that i just haven't heard it yet hey um now the things that from my initial opinion that are the same is the is the electrostatic speed okay i talked about that too just the the detail retrieval
4:33 here is amazing across all three micro details are pulled out really well so i mean if you are a lover of resolution electrostats might be for you because they don't miss much okay they really uh pull out a lot and they they emphasize that detail retrieval a little bit more than most of the planars that i have heard like for example if you remember my susvara review and i will link to that below because um if you're looking at a headphone in this price range you should consider that one too like it just it was very resolving and ultra detailed but it was relaxed in that presentation and just sounded very
5:19 natural in the way it presented details these are a little bit more forward than that the planar that to me that sounds the the closest although i would say even a little bit more extreme would be those from abyss like abyss headphones are also super quick and super resolving but they are also very detailed forward they take that detail and they push it in your face they just say hey here i am i'm detailed here are all of the details the two stacks are a little more detail forward than the carbon is but they don't reach that abyss level in my opinion of two forwardness i still found them quite listenable and and pleasing in their detail presentation as a result but
6:06 the electrostatic speed idea is definitely still it is a real thing as can be seen from these three at least and to me it shows up mostly in the mid-range like room reverbs and and things like that like just mid-range details to me is where most of that that electrostatic speed shows up right um now these are not the punchiest or slammiest in the bass so i definitely have heard planars that hit harder in the bass so if that's something that you're interested in look at abyss again look at odyssey again or go with a dynamic driver like a focal like the utopia or
6:52 something in the price range because those all punch pretty hard the susvara can punch um up there harder than these when it needs to it's not as punchy all the time as like an abyss but it can do it to me here the carbon is the punchiest in the base of the three of these it is masked a little bit as i said in the review by its overall relaxed presentation and all of the other technicalities these two don't punch as hard but they have a more lively presentation overall um just generally speaking so it like it it the the punchiness isn't as masked um as it is with these so like you have
7:38 to me i had to listen for the punchiness on uh to get that here okay so just going back and looking at my other impressions like definitely agree with myself on what i said on the resolution i definitely agree with myself on what i said about electrostatic speed two-thirds agree with myself on the natural timbre i still think these two are behind this one at least with a little bit more listening time on it i started to notice that the timbre is there and again it gives me hope that electrostats can have really wonderful really natural timbre there probably is a model out there that would do that for me if i needed to now i'm going to bring out my hifiman he 1000 v2 planar magnetic headphone again
8:23 this is my personal own reference high-end headphone for the time being and the reason i'm getting this out is like um is this like comparison and just to think about like would i eventually want to get into the e-stat game have these convinced me that that is a direction that i need to go for my own listening enjoyment and i'm gonna have to say the answer is no now i know that there are a lot of east at fans out there that are going to be disappointed by my saying that i will say to you to you estab people i get it there is enough going on here particularly with that resolution and
9:10 the accuracy of the spatial presentation like the imaging and the separation on these are wonderful across the board like there's enough going on there and the double 009 s in particular has enough natural sounding timbre that i get it i understand why many will like what these do and want to go that direction even though my heck v2 here is not as resolving as any of these okay it doesn't pull out quite as much micro detail it's not quite as textured in the base all right even though it's not quite as resolving all that to me it punches a little bit harder in the base
9:57 still than these do it matches these i would say or at least comes very close to matching and again i've heard a lot of other higher end planars all that that can match these in terms of of how well they can image and separate but i to me the the staging was a little bit more consistently believable on this like this is an excellent sound stager which is one of the reasons that i really like it okay not just because it's a big sound stager but because just the the sound staging is just believable and natural sounding to me okay like these don't sound staged as consistently well as those like their their sound stage never really stands out in any
10:44 particular direction which some may think of is good but it also it kind of felt like a moving target to me sometimes and i didn't always know what to expect from it where i know what i'm going to get from a staging standpoint with this one again that's a preference thing i get distracted when the sound stage changes a little bit from track to track or album to album so i liked the like the consistency that the the heck v2 brings and the other planars that i have heard because i have not heard them change their staging with track and with material the way these do now is that a thing that i could get used to and that is just new maybe i will hold out that possibility um on the other hand like that for right now that moving target is a bit
11:31 it's a bit distracting to me all right then beyond that there is still just a wonderfully organic natural sound to these like this timbre these are still the the heck v2 is really still strong and timbre even though it it's only three thousand dollars and it's uh for brand new price right um to me it still does timbre better than than these and and that to me is the biggest biggest thing um is that even though i i said the stacks is in the thick of it in terms of natural timbre i to me it feels like a little bit too big of a risk right now seems like the odds of finding that natural timbre electrostatic headphone are lower
12:16 the odds of a planar or a dynamic driver headphone having good natural timbre to it are higher this is what it seems to me at the moment now electrostat fans may disagree with that and they'll let me know in the comments and that's fine because again i'm not trying to give electrostat fans grief i mean i i get where you guys are coming from i really do okay it's just not necessarily for me when i look at the big picture here and i think of okay yeah these are great with the detail retrieval you can still get similar levels of detail retrieval or at least equal levels of detail retrieval with a planar okay then also with a planar you get a wider
13:02 range of amp possibilities e-stats need a certain kind of amplifier and so the flexibility like we headphone people tend to have multiple sets of headphones you know and that's like so these have their strengths for some things but there are some times that i just want big thump and bass and so i reach for my fostex th 900 with the latin chambers on them so we you know we audio files we headphone people we tend to have collections of headphones all with different signatures so that we can mix and match to the kind of music we like these three have different signatures but they're not as markedly different
13:49 from each other as this is from my lawton or as this is from my focal radiance which is around somewhere or where or this is from the uh what else do i have over there the buyer dt 880 okay uh those kinds of things like there's not yet the variety here now again i've heard three electrostats i will probably be told in the comments and those comments will likely be accurate that you can find e-stats that have the variability in signature i don't read about the variability in signature from e-stat headphones as much as i read about the variabilities and signatures from dynamics and planars though now again i could be wrong i may have just been looking in the right in
14:35 the wrong places but it seems to me that e-stats are a little bit more similar to each other than planars are similar to each other or as dynamics are similar to each other so to me the e-stack game feels like you really have to know what you want and what you're looking for to get into it whereas if you're still exploring and learning the planar or the dynamic approach might make a little more sense you get a little bit more flexibility there are more amp options out there so you can you know put things together with a little bit more flexibility and explore that way you can keep more signatures on hand and at the ready um yeah to me it's just a more user-friendly
15:21 environment there okay now that said i still enjoyed the e-stats and i'm not saying i will never come back to them and that i won't check them out again um they just for me they're just not quite there they're not quite there they're just uh they're just missing that little bit of naturalness and convincing me that it's real to their sound that i have gotten from planars and and uh dynamics before all right an objection to that i will make this last point before i go here and objection to what i just said will likely be plain or excuse me e-stats are super
16:08 resolving they have really low distortion so they are just showing you what's in the recording whereas a planar or a dynamic and all that they are going to introduce a little bit more distortion maybe what i like is that distortion that is in there so maybe these are what it's supposed to sound like and those others are the ones that are a little bit colored okay that is uh that is an an argument that i can see some making let me just say that i grew up in a house where uh my mom played the piano and i would fall asleep many nights as a child listening to her play the piano in the next room that rewired my brain from most by the way which is why some i think
16:54 that i'm really into music and in sound quality the way that i am because just from a very young age i was you know falling asleep to mozart and bach and beethoven and all of that being played away on the piano anyway um i had that uh i had a sibling who was trained on saxophone self-taught piano self-taught cello okay um my dad played bass guitar so i just come from a musical house right i have been exposed to uh real instruments and real voices singing real choirs and all of that just since birth really i've just been immersed in music and in audio so
17:42 when i say natural timbre these like these don't sound like what i have just described they don't sound quite as like the real thing to me as planars have gotten as least as the best planars have gotten or as the best dynamics have gotten are there planars and dynamics that fall down on the timbre absolutely there are but when they hit it when they get it right they get it more right than these at least to my ear and that is just comparing to the sounds that i have heard in real life all right so that's it so yeah that's part two of my impressions and just some also general thoughts in context of e-stats and how they stack up
18:29 with the other really high-end gear that i have been loaned so um again mr sa11297 loaned all of these to me and the molnir carbon energizer amp that i used to listen to all of these so that i could check them out so give him a shout out down in the comments as well because he has really helped this channel so let him know that his efforts are appreciated down there because i sure appreciate his efforts right so um yeah thanks for watching thanks for going on this e-stat journey with me and until next time enjoy the music
