Review
Head Fi here-The Sounds- One thing I noticed immediately was the presence of ‘headstage,’ unlike many dynamic headphones Staxs sounded very three dimensional. I felt as if the singers/musicians are sitting right in front of me, accompanies by orchestra that surrounds me. SRS-4040 sounded very detail (right term?), it has plenty of bass, well-defined trebles, and superb mid-ranges. I agree with Vertigo_1’s review of his Stax, Staxs are “extremely fast and transient.” I think I know what Vertigo_1 was talking about, the sounds literally ‘jumped’ out of the earspeakers; they are lively and energetic. Instruments do not blend or ‘merge’ with one another. I can hear the beginning and ending of an instrument, because of this characteristic, everything seems to speed up a notch (without losing any detail). I heard sounds that weren’t there before; it was a very unique and fantastical experience. However, I was a little disappointed with the bass, while it has plenty of it, it’s not as clear as I had hoped. If you look at its FR Response chart, it flickers a bit between 5Khz to 20 Khz. I left the CD player running overnight (my friend would’ve killed me if he found out). Next morning when I got up, I immediately went back to it. It sounded a little ‘warmer’ than previous night, everything seem to blend in a little bit better, but not to a point where every sound is clogging together. The most dramatic change is the fact that basses now sound much deeper, not mention clear. I was thrilled by the change. The Staxs are very unforgiving to bad recordings, or CDs with a lot of synthetic sounds/efx. It was very apparent with Britney Spears ‘Oops I did it again’ (Don’t ask me why, I can assure you I didn’t came up with the idea); it sounds murky and dark. The headstage collapsed the moment I hit the ‘play’ button. Ms. Spears’ raspy, girlish voice didn’t help either; I apologized if I offended anyone, she sounded as if she singing through a vocal enhancer (maybe she did). After much listening, I found that SRS-4040 is at its best with strings, or instruments that situates in the mid-to-high frequency, for example, ‘Princess Mononoke Hime’ and ‘Falcom Neo Classic’ (accompanied by London Symphony). Every sound were reproduced flawlessly, the trebles were extended to its extreme, incredibly fast and clear. By this time, the headstage had expanded into a small to medium hall, the acoustic is incredible. |
