[nfandi]

What is special about the Star 8 cable? I am asking as amateur who knows nothing about how cables might effect sound so forgive me if this is basic information.

Star 8 is impedance-matched with the ribbon drivers to give the correct frequency response, use most any other cable and you will get high-frequency roll-off. But don’t believe anything I say ‘cos I’m a total technical numpty.

 

[jlbrach]

Just anecdotally, and under CanJam conditions: I didn't think the Magna/Immanis sounded dramatically different driven off the VM-1a vs. the iFi iCan Pro. Even if the differences would have been more significant under ideal listening conditions, what I was hearing off the iCan was already sufficient for me to easily rank Magna/Immanis as the best of show (with the possible exception of the Sennheiser HE-1, which was auditioned in a private room, and is unobtanium for most anyway). FWIW.

the Ifi is a pretty good amp...I heard the ifi at canjam and used to own it in the past....

 

[jlbrach]

Speaking for my own comments, my praise of the JotR was in the context of the two new headphones which I believe it is more successful with vs. the "stridency" of the SR1a. The Jot R is especially harsh with the convolution filters IMO, and when I use it instead of heating up my office with the VM1a, I use the built in baffle compensation which is more mellow than the filters. But with the Magna and Immanis, the JotR sounds really very good IMO.

you are a lucky guy, think of how much money you can save

 

[Aleksandar R.]

What is special about the Star 8 cable? I am asking as amateur who knows nothing about how cables might effect sound so forgive me if this is basic information.

The whole story:

A True-ribbon driver is almost a dead-short connection, it has only about 0.02-0.05 Ohms.
To be able to connect that to an amp without blowing it, you need to raise that to some impedance that amps can use, say 32 Ohms.
You use a transformer for that.
Transformer has a fixed transformation ratio and will multiply whatever impedance is at its secondary by a specific number.
With the best known method for reducing parasitic inductance, it has ~1uH of parasitic inductance in the secondary.
A headphone cable connects the transformer with the ribbon driver. It needs to have a certain, usable length, say 6ft.
At 6ft, with the best known but still practical method for reducing parasitic inductance of a cable at that length, we can reach down to 0.4uH.
Combined with the transformer's 1uH, that gives us the total of 1.4uH of parasitic inductance in the circuit.
To get a 30kHz of bandwidth with that inductance, the cable must have a resistance of 0.263 Ohms.
If it would have half as much resistance, like many headphone cables these days, the bandwidth would be 15kHz.
So, the chosen resistance for both cables we offer is ~ 0.25 Ohms.
Together with ribbon driver, that comes to be between 0.27 and 0.3 Ohms.
The transformer ratio is chosen to convert that to 32 (or 8) Ohms.

So, the cable that goes from Transformer Interface to ribbon headphones should have 0.25 Ohms and up to 0.8uH for the amp to see 32 Ohms at the transformer primary and that bandwidth doesn't drop to less than 25kHz.

Any cable manufacturer can make that if they wanted to. I have published those technical requirements before.
I don't know if anyone have met the requirements, or if they care, as they haven't published cable data.

STAR-8 and Satis are designed for a set of required specs and to my knowledge, we are the only ones that offer it with exact specs.
With STAR-8 we do annealing cycles of it after twisting, to make it sound good and smooth, yet detailed. This is related to mechanical behavior of wires under high currents in close vicinity to one another and how they attract and repel each other and if they will resonate if allowed to move...
Also, I never pleat wires of two channels together, so our cables don't have crosstalk. That clears up the midrange a lot.

So, it's a product of the necessity of driving the ribbons with normal headphone amps.
It belongs to a transformer-cable-ribbon system that is not free to play with, if you want to keep the specified impedance that the amps sees and high enough extension of highs.

 

[moha97]

The whole story:

A True-ribbon driver is almost a dead-short connection, it has only about 0.02-0.05 Ohms.
To be able to connect that to an amp without blowing it, you need to raise that to some impedance that amps can use, say 32 Ohms.
You use a transformer for that.
Transformer has a fixed transformation ratio and will multiply whatever impedance is at its secondary by a specific number.
With the best known method for reducing parasitic inductance, it has ~1uH of parasitic inductance in the secondary.
A headphone cable connects the transformer with the ribbon driver. It needs to have a certain, usable length, say 6ft.
At 6ft, with the best known but still practical method for reducing parasitic inductance of a cable at that length, we can reach down to 0.4uH.
Combined with the transformer's 1uH, that gives us the total of 1.4uH of parasitic inductance in the circuit.
To get a 30kHz of bandwidth with that inductance, the cable must have a resistance of 0.263 Ohms.
If it would have half as much resistance, like many headphone cables these days, the bandwidth would be 15kHz.
So, the chosen resistance for both cables we offer is ~ 0.25 Ohms.
Together with ribbon driver, that comes to be between 0.27 and 0.3 Ohms.
The transformer ratio is chosen to convert that to 32 (or 8) Ohms.

So, the cable that goes from Transformer Interface to ribbon headphones should have 0.25 Ohms and up to 0.8uH for the amp to see 32 Ohms at the transformer primary and that bandwidth doesn't drop to less than 25kHz.

Any cable manufacturer can make that if they wanted to. I have published those technical requirements before.
I don't know if anyone have met the requirements, or if they care, as they haven't published cable data.

STAR-8 and Satis are designed for a set of required specs and to my knowledge, we are the only ones that offer it with exact specs.
With STAR-8 we do annealing cycles of it after twisting, to make it sound good and smooth, yet detailed. This is related to mechanical behavior of wires under high currents in close vicinity to one another and how they attract and repel each other and if they will resonate if allowed to move...
Also, I never pleat wires of two channels together, so our cables don't have crosstalk. That clears up the midrange a lot.

So, it's a product of the necessity of driving the ribbons with normal headphone amps.
It belongs to a transformer-cable-ribbon system that is not free to play with, if you want to keep the specified impedance that the amps sees and high enough extension of highs.

Wow! Thanks for the great explanation. I am even more impressed with everything that has gone in to this now then I was before. I will continue to patiently wait for my audio nirvana to arrive.

 

[Aleksandar R.]

Wow! Thanks for the great explanation. I am even more impressed with everything that has gone in to this now then I was before. I will continue to patiently wait for my audio nirvana to arrive.

Yeah, it's not just about how a cable affects sound, it's also about needing exact resistance and the lowest possible length so the HF roll-off is not audible.
Only after making choices on how the system should be specified, I got to explore how to get the best sound within given constraints.

In comparison, it's so easy to do a cable for 50 Ohm headphones at the end. You don't care about resistance, so you can make it thick-to-impress, you don't care about inductance, as with 50 Ohms and the worst possible inductance, you get 1MHz of bandwidth...
You don't even care much about crosstalk as you're not passing 5 Amps with 95dB 50 Ohm headphones...Really, there's nothing in the specs that you need to adhere to. You just get to play with the sound and go anywhere you want to, as the cable is 1/500th of the resistance of headphones.

With ribbons, the cable has 10x more resistance than the driver that terminates it, and transformer has only 0.01 Ohms impedance as a source (including the converted amp's output impedance) and things get really hairy in that case.
In the whole secondary circuit of the transformer, there is no 50 Ohms to save you by overwhelming the parasitics, so there is no arbitrary choice of wire diameter, insulator thickness, length/resistance, pleating or twisting to satisfy the latest fashion...You need to know how to accurately measure the cable inductance and you find and choose the best solutions for the problem at hand. Then, you realize that it sounds like cr.p and you try to find what the heck is wrong there...

Basically, with 0.02-0.05 Ohms of termination and 0.010 at the source, the cable is its own worst enemy and everything rides on it's behavior. Sound-wise and specs-wise, so it's not a trivial matter. Then a clueless guy that is a local cable guru comes along and tells me, "Lets'try this, I just made it, it sounds great on my Grado's" and I suffer through the "trial" and after it becomes clear that it completely misses the mark, I try to explain him the basics of filtering and why we are hearing dark and veiled sound but 6dB louder than STAR-8...the consequence is that only after the third trial he starts to believe me that 0.02 Ohms is not the same as 50 and that a 32 Ohms transformer is not always a 32 Ohms transformer.
That's because of complete lack of experience with dead-short termination as well as forgotten knowledge that was replaced by faith or some such thing that gurus adhere to.

So beware of guru talk, ask for specs and once that's covered, hear how it sounds like.
If it's 6dB louder, then 32 Ohms at the front of the transformer became 8 Ohms, so watch your amp.
Invariably, if it's 6dB louder, it sounds "warmer" and "fuller", as the HF drop started at 8kHz with 6dB per octave...

 

[ApertureSilence]

Folks seem to really like the Silver Dragon for the SR1 and C1A. Do you know if that cable is made to your specs?

 

[Aleksandar R.]

Folks seem to really like the Silver Dragon for the SR1 and C1A. Do you know if that cable is made to your specs?

At 5ft and 24 gauge silver, it's almost exactly what the transformers need, so resistance is OK.
Twisted pair of that size and thin Teflon will have about 1-1.2uH at that length, which will slightly soften the highs.
Pretty much inconsequential in tone balance, but sounding really "smooth" and pleasant on top.

Never heard it, but I guess it's not one of those "bright" Silver sounding cables when used with SR and CA on a TI Interface.
Thumbs up!

 

[yellowblue]

Never heard it, but I guess it's not one of those "bright" Silver sounding cables when used with SR and CA on a TI Interface.
Thumbs up!

Thumbs up - even for the use with Immanis?

 

[gammi]

we hear things differently I guess, to me there is literally zero comparison...the jotr does the job but it is harsh and aggressive...the VM is head and shoulders better but great for you you can save a ton of money

If the Jot R is more aggressive sounding then yeah, it makes sense that it would sound appealing at a show where that extra aggression would help the sound come through over the crowd. I'm still thinking about what I heard on my first listen with the Magna and Jot R and wow, that Infected Mushroom track was a great choice for my first test, it blew me away right off the bat with that bass impact unlike anything I can recall hearing before.

 

[jlbrach]

the jotr sounds fantastic with the different RAAL HP's UNTIL you hear better options which is the way it is with all equipment

 

[gammi]

the jotr sounds fantastic with the different RAAL HP's UNTIL you hear better options which is the way it is with all equipment

Well I did hear it on the VM1 right after that and didn't find it to standout as better. But again, show conditions and all that may have favored the Jot's more heavy handed approach.

 

[yyzSB]

I am trying to quickly find a proper cable for the XLR1 headphone output of the Holo Serene preamp so that I can test out the new RAAL 1995 Magnis and Immanis that I am getting to my home this week. I only found out yesterday that the phones will be coming my way.

I have the RAAL VM-1a tube headphone amp | Schitt Mjolnir V3 preamp/headphone amp | Schitt Aegir amp | Benchmark AHB2 | PeachTree GAN1 amp to all try with the 2 new phones. I would also like to try the Holo Serene preamp directly with the phones. The Serene is connected to the Aegir amp via RCA so I will hear some of the preamp. However, I am also looking to hear the Serene naked on these phones.

Anyone with a Holo Serene know what cable to use? The Serene is a slightly warmer sounding Benchmark HPA4 on my 2-channel. I have the Benchmark LA4 preamp in my Livingroom system (same as HPA4 minus headphone amp).

I have contacted Tim at https://www.kitsunehifi.com/product/holo-audio-serene-preamp/ , but no response yet. So, I thought I would ask the headphone experts on here.

 

[nfandi]

Well I did hear it on the VM1 right after that and didn't find it to standout as better. But again, show conditions and all that may have favored the Jot's more heavy handed approach.

Your experience is echoed in MokhaMark’s ‘review’ from last weekend where he clearly stated that the obvious superiority of the VM-1a compared to the JotR when using the SR-1a is almost completely gone when using Magna and Immanis. This was his conclusion when listening for several hours in the peace and quiet of his own home. I think it is wrong for anybody to disagree with his statement unless they have heard the same combinations of amps and phones also in the peace and quiet of a good listening environment.

 

[nfandi]

I am trying to quickly find a proper cable for the XLR1 headphone output of the Holo Serene preamp so that I can test out the new RAAL 1995 Magnis and Immanis that I am getting to my home this week. I only found out yesterday that the phones will be coming my way.

I have the RAAL VM-1a tube headphone amp | Schitt Mjolnir V3 preamp/headphone amp | Schitt Aegir amp | Benchmark AHB2 | PeachTree GAN1 amp to all try with the 2 new phones. I would also like to try the Holo Serene preamp directly with the phones. The Serene is connected to the Aegir amp via RCA so I will hear some of the preamp. However, I am also looking to hear the Serene naked on these phones.

Anyone with a Holo Serene know what cable to use? The Serene is a slightly warmer sounding Benchmark HPA4 on my 2-channel. I have the Benchmark LA4 preamp in my Livingroom system (same as HPA4 minus headphone amp).

I have contacted Tim at https://www.kitsunehifi.com/product/holo-audio-serene-preamp/ , but no response yet. So, I thought I would ask the headphone experts on here.

yyz, when you say you are looking to hear the serene “naked” on these phones I’m presuming you mean you will use the new interface?