THAT STAX SOUND!
ELECTROSTATIC EARSPEAKERS & DRIVERS
It’s often said that once you’ve owned a pair of electrostatic headphones, you’ll never go back to conventional designs. Japan-based Stax builds only this type of headphone, and has been doing so since 1959 — and it prefers the term ‘earspeakers’, considering them as essentially miniature electrostatic speakers.
Why do these desgns elicit such pride in ownership? Listen to a pair and you’ll know instantly. Electrostatic designs are faster, cleaner-sounding, better balanced and offer a more enveloping sound field than any other headphone type.
There are certainly considerations to take into account with electrostatic earspeakers like this. They look different, and their electrostatic membranes are also quite fragile, so you have to be more careful with them than with conventional dynamic headphones in terms of handling.
They also need to be connected to a unique type of amplifier (called a ‘driver’) before they will work at all. You can’t just plug them into the headphone output of a conventional audio component, or into a portable device, and that means they’re generally restricted to home use (although not entirely; see overleaf).
They look different because of the way they work. In an electrostatic speaker the vibrating diaphragm is moved by
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