Stax Nova Electrostatic Headphones

I spend more time mixing and mastering with headphones than with speakers. My preference is the Stax Nova Electrostatic headphones with tube driver amps. They are great for resolving fine detail, noise and distortion problems. They are very useful for verifying how tracks will translate across different systems but I have found that the Sennheiser HD-600 works well for this also.

Electrostatic headphones, like electrostatic speakers, work on a push-pull arrangement. When one of the stators is going up in voltage, the other stator must decrease in voltage so that the diaphragm can move due to the static charge. These two direct-drive electrostatic tube amplifier designs will drive any existing electrostatic headphones without step-up transformers. The first is AC-coupled. The second is fully DC-coupled from input to output. These amps can also drive electret headphones - which are just permanently biased electrostatics - as long as the voltage swings are not too high.

Stax Nova Electrostatic Headphones