Is Stax headphone still in business

I'll offer an unsolicited comment, so take it FWIW. I have an old pair of Stax SR-80 electret headphones which I liked a lot. The earpads deteriorated over time, and I decided to buy new headphones, soI bought the Sennheiser HD600's (which I recently sold and upgraded to the 650's).

Just for fun, I recently replaced the earpads on the Stax 'phones and fired them up for the first time in about 10 years. Glad I didn't spend a lot of money fixing them, because I think my new Sennheiser HD650's are a much superior headphone in almost all respects.

For a more comprehensive response to questions regarding cans you may also want to try HeadFi, although answers above are clearly to the point. They have a good list of links and resources there as well.

Marco

It's a bit unfair to compare SR-80, Stax's lowest end model long since out of production, to Sennheiser HD650's.

Stax hasn't made a self-charged electret model headphone in a long time. Electret headphones have internal charge. This usually requires physically thicker diaphram, resulting in less extended response, and the often the charge dissipates over time anyway, losing dynamic range.

Plus the SR-80's had a transformer type stepup box. All Stax's sold now have tube or transistor based stepup devices.

I picked up a pair of SR-80's on ebay around 2005 for about $50. Current top Stax package goes for $4650.

I picked up a pair of SR-80's on ebay around 2005 for about $50. Current top Stax package goes for $4650.

The current flagship from Stax is the SR009 which goes for $5200 for just the headphones. It requires a dedicated headphone amp which can run upwards of an additional $2-5K for the better ones available.

@Jax, there's no need to spend more than 2k on a headamp for a stax. I've auditioned amps on the 1k price range with them, and i was pleased.