Home Headphones of the Year over $1000

HEADPHONES

Some say that once you’ve owned electrostatic headphones, you’ll never settle for less. We reckon that’s certainly true for this combination of $7750 Stax SR-009S earspeakers (as they call their headphones as a deliberate indicator of their quality) and $5900 SRM-700S ‘driver’ (headphone amplifier). You need the driver because you can’t plug the headphones into normal headphone sockets, because of the high voltages (around 600 volts) required to be sent through the cables to drive their electrostatic designs.

The SRM-700S’s enclosure is quite ‘oldschool’, with an anodised aluminium fascia and grey/black coated steel for the chassis, but the quality of the build is exceptional... particularly the fascia. There are two sockets for headphone connection, so you can listen with a Stax-equipped friend.

The SR-009S headphones have the company’s typically large earpieces, here around 105mm in diameter, necessarily spacious to accommodate the equally large electrostatic diaphragms, so they will enclose even the largest ears. The earpads are not synthetic material or ‘faux’ leather but real leather... first-grade sheepskin indeed.

As with all open electrostatic headphones, there’s as much volume coming from the outside of each earpiece as there is from the inside. But you won’t care about annoying people: you’ll be too busy being blown away by the sound quality inside the earspeakers. Bass drive from the SRM-700S was outstanding. Some electrostatics, even Stax’s previous SR-009, can be accused of lightness in overall ‘fullness’ of sound, but we could not say that of the new SR-009S as driven by the SRM-700S — it was full, firm, rich and taut, while high frequencies were so fluid and airy as to be truly ethereal, with simply no ‘edge’ to high-frequency sounds.

Together, of course, this combo costs more than $13k. But it is possible to buy a complete Stax headphone/driver system (the SRS-3100) for just $1400. It’s worth finding a dealer who can audition them, just to step into the electrostatic world of sound. But remember that warning — there’s no going back!

More info: www.audiomarketing.com.au