Kii Three of Headphones - Slate VSX

Digitaldruglord · October 10, 2020, 7:49pm

Hello:

I’m an audio engineer that make high-res content and also a Roon audiophile. I’m on a Kii Three system with an Aurelic Aries G1.

A new headphone product was released last week that has been a bit of surprise to the audio production community and has been selling out across the world… the reason why I’m posting this in the Roon community is because this product delivers an Audiophile room that equates to the best headphone listening experience I’ve ever had… I own quite a few headphones and amps including Sennheiser HD 650, 660, 800, 820 and the HDVD 820.

I picked up a Dragonfly Colbalt and a second pair of VSX (on back order) for my Roon reference listening.

The difference with the VSX headphone from others are 2 things:

They’ve built it with a beryllium driver which offers a high-end performance in the mids and highs.
They’ve developed a patent pending bass mechanism that pushes the bass (air) around the beryllium driver and uses the ear pads themselves as a subwoofer-like apparatus…

So you get an extremely clear performance with bass (no matter how thick it gets) that is siloed in performance and everything is driven the cleanest I’ve ever heard a headphone perform. The Audiophile room they’ve captured carries through the depth-of-field experience, similar to what I experience on my Kii Threes, Focals, and KEF speaker systems.

I’m making other Roon users aware of this new product… they’re in high demand in the pro audio community and they may be back ordered until November etc…

Hope everyone is well: https://stevenslateaudio.com/vsx

Because this is a pro audio product, it’s delivered as a VST/AU plugin, so to use this product with Roon, an application like this must be purchased as well: https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2020/08/05/soundsource-5-is-sound-control-reimagined/

Aaron_Garrett · October 11, 2020, 4:22pm

Thanks. I’m going to give them a try. Is there any online documentation on how to set up the plugin via Sound Source with Roon (I’m not a pro audio person)!

Digitaldruglord · October 11, 2020, 4:29pm

@Aaron_Garrett Hello: as a Roon user (with its extensive settings), I think you’ll easily pick up on how SoundSource works… Here’s a screen shot of my SoundSource setup on Roon with the VSX Audiophile room:

*They modeled a DynAudio Munro C4 room here. It’s expected that they will be offering other rooms for this system in the future as well.

You’ll select Roon with the tab “Add Favorite” and SoundSource will keep Roon in the pull down list.

Also, here is an article they have about inserting plugins: https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=SoundSource-Additional-Third-Party-Audio-Units

Digitaldruglord · October 12, 2020, 11:48am

Here’s a white paper from the company behind the technology: http://scaevatech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Scaeva-InSitu-Sound-v4.1-1.pdf

Aaron_Garrett · October 14, 2020, 2:11am

I got them today and they sound pretty cool. The bass in particular has a lot of authority.

Digitaldruglord · October 14, 2020, 2:28am

I’ve been pointing VSX users to the Kii Three Tidal playlist to save, I’m sure most Roon users already have this: https://tidal.com/playlist/768432eb-b8ba-4a1d-b90a-a4c9a9ba8d85

A really insane “extreme” bass handling demo (Audiophile room full depth) for VSX is this: https://tidal.com/track/106538989

I have 2 more units coming tomorrow… I’m going full VSX at all my leisure listening areas of the house.

Aaron_Garrett · October 15, 2020, 1:00pm

I really like them. I have a Grimm system and the bass is pretty hard to top. But these headphones in conjunction with the plugin make me forget I’m listening to headphones which is very high praise at any price – but particularly this price. There’s no gaping hole in the middle of the soundstage, they sound very natural, and as mentioned the bass is very present and dynamic. Thanks for suggesting them.