哦米伽&T2

念苍僧 · 发表于 2007-2-8 12:01:25

KELL原来贴过一个更详细点的

winny · 发表于 2007-2-8 12:25:20

A REVIEW OF STAX SR-OMEGA AND SR-007 (OMEGA2)
原文很长，摘录吧
I have owned various Stax headphones for 10 years now. I owned the SR-Sigma for 6 months, then the SR-Lambda Signature for 2 years, the SR-Omega for 5 years, and 2 months ago I bought the SR-007(Omega2). During this 10-year period, I have also owned headphones from other companies: Koss ESP950 electrostatic and Sennheisser HD600. I have auditioned but not owned the Sennheiser Orpheus.

一段关于koss950
After 2 years I decided that the love-hate relationship had to stop, so I sold the Lambda Signature. I bought the Koss ESP950 (also electrostatic) which was great for pop music, especially when I partnered it with an Audio Note DAC2 digital-analogue converter. The Koss reduced the treble, emphasised the upper bass and lower-mids, while the Audio Note highlighted the mids, so the two of them together made a colored combination that interacts with the colorations of pop recordings to produce a compellingly funky rhythmic drive. When I had the Koss/Audio Note, I somehow stopped listening to accurately-recorded jazz and classical CDs. I don’t know why, I just did. With the Koss/Audio Note I listened to pop only, and I would sometimes dance by myself in my room to the latest catchy tunes (I can be so shallow). When I sold the colored Audionote DAC and bought the neutral Muse Model2 I stopped listening to the Koss, because suddenly it sounded less funky. For people who listen to a lot of pop music over headphones, I strongly recommend the Koss ESP950/Audio Note DAC2 partnership

The Omega was clear, but clear in a more relaxed way than the Lambda Signature was.
The Omega was more forgiving of bad recordings than the unforgiving Lambda Signature. I could reasonably enjoy about 60% of my CDs over the Omegas,
However, I still wasn’t enjoying 100% of my CDs, but instead I was playing, and enjoying no doubt, the same ‘purist’ CDs over and over again—the type of recordings where a minimal number of microphones were used. These same minimally-miked CDs—over and over again. At first I thought it was because top-rate headphones needed top-rate recordings. Only when I owned the Omega2 did I realise why the Omega1 made me behave in this strange manner.
The Omega1 cannot create sounds coming from the front, nor can any other headphone I know of. But what the Omega1 can do is to portray a much larger ‘headstage’ than your normal headphone.
The Omega1 has a unique tonal balance, by deliberate design. It has a unique midrange coloration.
When I listened to minimally-miked recordings over the Omega1, I always imagined that the recording process took place in certain reverberant environments.
Because of its midrange emphasis, the Omega1’s ‘headstage’ sounds ‘hot’ and ‘live’
What I DO know is that there is a price to pay when a headphone acquires a larger ‘headstage’. Is bigger necessarily better? My answer is no, for now at least, based on the headphones currently available. The Omega1 achieves its larger ‘headstage’ at the expense of tonal accuracy and pin-pointed image focus, which was obvious to me only when I compared it to the Omega2

winny · 发表于 2007-2-8 13:19:09

Enter SR-007 (Omega2)
in the past, Stax engineers have been seeking this goal of subtly creating out-of-the-head soundstages. With the new Omega2 I get the feeling that Stax engineers have finally accepted the fact that headphones inevitably create images inside the head and there is no need to introduce subtle and not-so-subtle frequency imbalances to try to get these images away from the head.
The trouble with ‘voicing’ a headphone to create a subtle out-of-the-head ‘headstage’ is that the headphone’s focus inevitably becomes compromised. The out-of-the-head ‘soundstage’ ends up becoming a ‘smear’, washing off the pin-pointed focus of voices and instruments. This is excactly the weakness of the Omega1: its lack of pin-pointed focus compared to the Omega2.
The Omega2’s ‘headstage’ is quite small, similar to the average headphone, even on recordings with a lot of reverberation. There is no more ‘shimmering watercolor-like washes’ coming from outside the head that the Omega1 was capable of, on the appropriate material. But what fantastic images the Omega2 creates within this small ‘headstage’!
The Omega2 has a higher resolution power than the Omega1.
The bass of the Omega2 is heavy,
The Omega2 is more relaxed-sounding than the Omega1,
With the Omega2 a lower volume setting is sufficient to make the music come alive
The Omega2 does not suffer from ‘hotness’ in any segment of the frequency spectrum. It is tonally neutral
With the Omega2 it is easier to perceive differences in components and cables than with the Omega1

CONCLUSION:

The history of Stax headphones is a progression towards more and more relaxed-sounding headphones, with a new flagship model every 6 years or so, culminating presently in the truly astonishing Omega2. It may simply be a change in numerical designation (Omega1 to Omega2 or SR-007 to be more precise), but the Omega2 is quite different from the Omega1. The Omega1 aimed to have a larger ‘headstage’ and succeeded brilliantly, but paid the price for it. The Omega2, with its much smaller ‘headstage’, is the more precise headphone. The Omega2 is a convincing argument for the distortion- and coloration-free headphone that does not try to create out-of-the-head images—that difficult task being better left to new digital methods like Dolby Headphone or Sensaura Virtual Ear or other new variants that seek to alter the imaging characteristics of headphones through digital processes.

Is the Omega2 for everyone? If you are a newcomer audiophile there will be a small re-education process before you understand what it does and what it can do. In exposing yourself to the Omega2 you will slowly unlearn preferences for certain colorations that you have become accustomed to (give yourself a few weeks to unlearn old habits). If you are a matured or jaded audiophile you will be amazed by its effortlessly transparent neutrality. If you are a high-end component designer might I strongly suggest that the Omega2 become a compulsory part of your arsenal of reference tools?