"If you had access to a car like this,
would you take it back right away?
Neither would I."
--Matthew Broderick,
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Oh. My. God.
I just got these cans, haven't even burned them in yet and am hearing new details in music I've been listening to for 30 years. These are not my first Grados. I was sold on Joe Grado's open-air design with that $95 pair of SR-80s. Never had I heard such clarity from a pair of cheap headphones. Grado's emphasis on SOUND, not looks (All their phones look like cans of cat food) or COMFORT (They wear your head like a vise) - has made the Brooklyn mom-and-pop a modern-day enigma. The way business is done these days, the maker of the world's finest headgear should have been run out of business - run over by Japanese components and Chinese labor.
Not hardly.
Even Grado's idea of a disposable pair - the $49 iGrado - is vastly superior to any of its sub-Benjamin competition. The 40mm drivers provoke smirks from those used to quarter-sized squawkers, but again, it's all about priorities. If you just want to look cool (or if you want to look cool at all), there are vastly cheaper ways to hear that crap you bootlegged off Limewire. The iGrado is the midget of the Grado line but Grado sound - even at street level - is pretty stunning.
But these cans cost $700!
WELCOME TO THE TOP - OR AS CLOSE TO IT AS YOU'RE LIKELY TO GET
The RS-1's are the classic "top of the line" (Grado has since released the GS-1000s whose architecture and $1,000 price tag look like a response to the ill-fated AKG-1000). They're the headphones audiophiles and critics talk about with hushed reverence, when they're not raving like a giddy girl. Somewhere between the awards and the hype, I had to find out whether Grados could keep pushing the envelope on the frontiers of headphone sound.
Call me crazy (Everyone else does). Tell me they're just a pair of headphones. Tell me that nothing sounds like a $10,000 pair of Stax. Tell me that Sennheiser HD650 offers a more "laid back sound" - with vastly more comfortable headgear - for a couple hundred less. Tell me that Shure and Etymotic make some great inner-ear phones that are much more discreet, even if they don't offer the soundstage or clarity of the Grado.
I don't care. I'm in my forties, have just enough cash to hit the multiplex and my neighborhood Checkers with religious observance and spend my days teaching kids and writing screenplays that may never be sold. I bought my iPod and my headphones so I could work out without hearing m own grunts and groans. I don't care if people look at me and laugh. I'm already 70 pounds overweight and I've got a lovely little bald spot growing like a sunflower toward the light.
So, screw 'em. What are they going to do? Take away my birthday?
WHY GRADOS DON'T SUCK
Grado's RS-1's are the undiluted approach to Grado sound, substantially better than my $295 325i's - which blew my SR-80s away. All Grados use vented diaphrams and non-resonant air chambers, which gives them a trademark sound that makes even "decent" headphones sound muddy. (After listening to my first pair of Grados, I got my money back on my Bose In-Ear headphones and bluntly told BestBuy, "These blow.") The 325i's incorporated ultra-high purity long crystal (UHPLC) oxygen-free copper wire - both in the voice coil as well as in the connecting cord (The SR-125 has UHPLC in the coil while the SR-225 reportedly enlarges the soundstage by improving the rear metal screen and using drivers matched to a tenth of a decibel) - but its biggest difference is the air chamber. While the lower-end Grados use cheap plastic to house their drivers, the chamber on the 325i is made of aluminum.
Yes, those "cans" literally look like cans, albeit shiny ones, like a cross between a hub cap and a kegger. I'm not sure if aluminum air chambers have any sonic significance but the 325i is clearly the prince of Grado's Prestige Series. Its highs are higher and its bass is roomier. Still, I kept hearing about the "promised land" of the RS-1 - and like a junkie, I set about to satisfy my insatiable hunger for more.
But $700 for headphones?
HOW JOHN GRADO GOT MY MONEY
Limits on immunity forbid me to disclose who I had to kill to pay for these phones, but I don't mind saying, at the end of the day, I just don't feel all that repentant. Yeah, $700 is a lot for a set of cans but compared to what? Certainly not the five grand I'd have to shell out on audio equipment to make my house sound like my head. After years of looking at manufacturers like Sony with the same disdain one has for a high-priced harlot (Sony makes some decent phones but most of their stuff is crap) - it's such a relief to pull a Barry Scheck and scream, "There, Mr. Feng!!!"
The RS-1 houses its drivers in wooden chambers made from cured Mahogany. I don't know if that's a big factor in the sound of these phones or just a nod to cool looks but these cans - even out of the box - are magnificent. Like other Grados, they grip your head for dear life and give you that instant look of Frankenstein, the Bomber Pilot. But their sound is like porn for the ears. The Grado specs declare a frequency response of 12 - 30khz, with drivers matched to within five-hundredths of a decibel, though I've long since stopped relying on specs. If the numbers on the back of a package of headphones had the reliability of a stump speech, I'd have been satisfied with the high quality stock of plastic hanging from hooks at Walmart.
In this case, the proof is in the pudding. The bass is full and powerful, yet there's nothing muddy about the sound. It's so clear and crisp, it's the epitome of 3-D sound. It thrills me to hear all these hidden details. It's like finding a painting beneath a painting. I have about 2,000 tracks off of iTunes and I've spent the better part of the night rediscovering my music collection. I can hear Steve Martin walking around during his stand-up and even an off-mic slurp of water. I was surprised at how avante-gard the recording was on The Who's Pinball Wizard, where Townsend's acoustic picking starts in the left channel and then leaps to the right (with delectable subtlety, almost like an echo).
There are Easter Eggs all over my collection. On System of a Down's B.Y.O.B., John Dolmayan's drumwork on the stanzas before the setup to the laid-back chorus isn't just intense; it's ingeniously so. I've heard of high hats, drum rolls, cymbal crashes and the cliche-ridden pedal to the bass drum, but I had never realized Dolmayan was achieving tension by strategically doubling his rhythm through controlled rolls (Forgive me, I'm not a drummer). I just never heard that detail the way I did with the RS-1.
THOSE SNEAKY B@ST@RDS!
In his review of the RS-1 for SA Equipment, Dick Osher makes a telling observation:
"[H]eadphones bypass the route followed by an external sound source. Shadowing effects of the head and external ear produce Left-Right time delays and cross-talk differences that allow the auditory system to project an external soundfield .... missing in action during headphone listening with the result that sound is typically localized inside the head. The auditory system literally has no clues as to where the sound is coming from ...."
Osher then argues that Grado does better than most because "A feature common to all Grado headphones is the vented or open-air rear chamber...[which] plays a crucial role in expanding the perceived soundstage .... Some headphone makers have offered electronic boxes with a blend control to allow cross feeding of the L-R channels toward mono in order to reduce in-head localization. It would appear that the Grado designs use acoustic means to accomplish such a result ..."
I'm not an engineer, so I don't know if that's why Grados sound so good. I do think, however, Osher has hit the nail on the head. Where other manufacturers look for solutions through electronic fixes (Call it a Technology of Addition), Grado has the audacity to pull a John McCain. It goes the other way, with a Technology of Subtraction. The answer, at least to Joe's nephew and successor, John, is resonance, itself. Sound is essentially a phenomenon of vibration. The whole point of audio recording is to capture - and faithfully reproduce - the exact wave pattern of the original experience. All fancy tech aside, anything that either degrades or adds to the original pattern is the devil, itself.
When what you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The Grado Family will not go down in the annals of head-fi for their contributions to comfort or style (though both the aluminum and wooden air chambers look pretty cool). Like the Henry Ford of the headphone, Joe Grado gave consumers little choice in either color or shape. For most of the Grado line, you can have your cans in any color "as long as it's black." With the exception of the iGrado (which offers consumers BOTH colors: black AND white), neither Joe nor John care much about whether you like the look or feel of their phones. For $695, you get mahogany, but the clear focus of these phones is purity and the never-ending battle against resonance.
WHAT WOULD KUNG FU WEAR?
Despite their Brooklyn origins, these are the most Taoist of headphones. Considering almost everything about a headphone to be artificial, Grado phones strip away as much as they can in pursuit of sonic purity. The use of a low-mass polymer - engineered for the right combination bass, treble and midrange - makes these transducers more expensive, but more accurate. To be fair, there are audiophiles with extremely golden ears - who argue that there are other phones, like the Sennheiser HD650, that are more accurate in certain areas. They may be right. It's possible that Grado is pulling cards from the bottom of the deck - subtly coloring performance to highlight what we want to hear over what's actually there (the sonic equivalent of spicing up the meal). In Jackie Brown, Samuel L. Jackson warns a partner not to touch the settings on his car stereo because he has them "just like I want 'em." It's a reminder that people have different tastes and that no set of phones works best for every type of music.
But for me, there's no question in my mind: These are the finest headphones I have ever owned - or may ever own. I'm less impressed with the mahogany air chambers than with the idea that materials matter. There's a reason they make violins out of wood - certain woods - and not fiberglass. Because of their open-air design, these are not the kind of headphones that either block out the world or keep secrets about your listening preferences. But again, the issue - for the Grados - was which design would produce more resonance. The cushions are cheap and disposable, their only purpose being to present a transparent platform on which to press the drivers to the skull - and at just the right distance to match the soundstage envisioned by the drivers. The leather headband is nice but minimal -much like the headband, steel "antennae" rods and driver mounts. The drivers swivel on steel antennae and are mounted with simple, black, ninja-like pins that - like everything else not meant to reproduce original sound - are actually designed to stay the Hell out of the way.
Some cans like to scream, "Power!" Unfortunately, you can hear them screaming lots of things when they should be faithfully reproducing the original waveform pattern of the original recording. Just as often, they're only squawking a crude, general, inkblot version of something vaguely familiar. Even with a little coloring to make them sound warm, rich and sweet (Who doesn't like a little Italian seasoning?), the RS-1 is just a wonderful playground for those who hate audio junk. The Grado soundstage feels incredibly "live" - putting the listener right there on stage (not 12 rows back). The detail is out of this world. While the $700 price tag isn't for everyone, there are some of us for whom $700 is a small price to finally be taken "home" to a place we'd always dreamed of, only to be told, "You can't get there from here."
POSTSCRIPT
Grado's RS-1 comes in a padded box (cardboard). Mine came with an adapter to convert the gold-plated 1/4 plug to a 1/8 plug for iPods and other portable devices. It also came with a 15-foot extension cord and a y adapter. All three use the high-purity copper as the drivers and headphone cord. Grado sells a separate headphone amp (in AC and DC versions) - and I'm told a good amp is vital to getting the most out of any set of cans. That said, I found it hilarious that Grado is uniquely designed to run without the need of such an amp. An amped RS-1 may be even better (as would a musical collection that wasn't made up of compressed tracks of mp3 and mp4 - some of whose limitations are detected by phones this sensitive) but with Grado, it's not a virtual necessity, the way it is with high-end stuff from Sennheiser and AKG. That's one of the perks of buying headphones that are so acoustically driven.
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APPENDIX - STUFF I DIDN'T KNOW I DIDN'T KNOW
On Adam's Song by blink 182, the pizzicatto-like pick work sometimes takes on a percussive quality, like a mallet striking a wood block.
On Aerials, by System of a Down, the early bass work isn't just boing-boing-boing. If you listen closely, you can hear a fuzzy creakiness like that of a rusty bedspring. How did I not hear those wood-block strikes before?
Even with its overblown production that makes Journey's Frontiers album souns like it was recorded in a cave, you can hear a secondary percussion on After the Fall, something so subtle it gets eclipsed in the overlay.
On Neil Young's After the Gold Rush, there's a moment, right after the line, "Look at mother nature on the run in the 1970s," where an acoustical guitar strum invades this piano song. It's oddly - even hilariously - out of place, though at the time, somebody may have initially thought it dramatic before burying it in the mix. If you've only heard the track on the radio, you'll wonder, "What guitar strum?"
On After the Love Has Gone, by Earth, Wind & Fire, there's little synthesizer intro that comes alive, as does the brush-like cymbal work on the second verse.
In Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower, the recording turns out to be so much more ingenious, with a much more complex accompanying rhythm and different instruments used to add sonic surprises. This isn't just a recording. It's a musical buffet. The song we remember from the radio is just the opening act punctuated by "musical scenes" featuring different instruments and effects. Till I put on these Grado's I had never really heard this song, at least not 80% of it.
Is that a cello I hear in the opening salvo of Nirvana's All Apologies?
On Bob Dylan's All I Really Want to Do, there's a guitar flub, almost drowned out by Dylan's nasal howl (around 1:25).
The synthetic violins on Heart's All I Want To Do Is Make Love to You are fuller while keyboard and guitar accompaniment is more percussive. It's also easier to distinguish between different kinds of guitar work (faux-acoustic, plastic and gritty). There's also a cool, almost subliminal lattice work of ge-dun-dun-dun guitar work adding tension around 3:25.
On Led Zeppelin's All My Love - a seeming duet between massive synthesizer and gritty guitar licks (with pounding drums and booming bass), a little acoustic guitar sneaks out some 16 seconds into the track, like a kazoo at the Philharmonic.
On the Foo Fighter's single, Best of You, everybody knows about that blang-blang-blang guitar providing light accompaniment to Dave Grohl's plaintive vocals but underneath it is an acoustic click-click-click adding a cool bit of texture revealed by the Grados.
The RS-1i is the Masterpiece of the Grado collection, the Top-Of-The-Range product which oozes class both in looks and sound. Featuring handcrafted Ma...More at J&R Music and Computer World
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