gti's Full Review: Grado SR-60 Consumer Headphones
It is hard to imagine a world without music and listening to music at home can be a wonderful and relaxing activity that often brings good memories and wonderful thoughts. The Grado SR-60 headphones will give you this same feeling while on the move.
Their appearance and fit:
Grado headphones are retro styled "cans" that fit and cover most of the ear. The prestige series SR-60s come with foam pads covering the entire driver. Other more expensive prestige series headphones expose the center of the driver and use hard foam pads. The earpiece is adjustable both up and down and rotates 360 degrees for easy flat storage on a flat surface or in your briefcase. The wire from each driver is thick and conjoin together to form a thicker 6 feet long cord that ends with a ¼" adapter. Other more expensive prestige series above the SR-80 get the larger adapter indicating their optimal use with home components. The head strap is flexible metal and is covered with vinyl and must be stretched couple of times by hand to relax the headphones. This relieves some pressure off the listener's ears. When new and not stretched, the headphones quickly become uncomfortable. However, when stretched out or bent out, they become easy on the ears. They are not the most comfortable headphones but their sound is well worth it. Overall they look like studio headphones from the 60's. The construction is generally good, but one needs to be careful not to step on the cord, which can tug on the soldered and unprotected driver connection. If that happens, the headphones can be sent to Grado where they can be fixed. I am not sure about the cost of such repair. The SR-60 features dynamic transducer type driver operating in an open air non-resonant chamber with a 20 Hz to 20 KHz frequency response. The open-air design delivers better sound but this also means that people around you can hear your music even at low volumes.
The music:
Headphones will never be able (nothing is impossible) to give the 3 dimensional sound stage that good loudspeakers deliver, but for accurate and down to the detail listening at a private level, headphones are wonderful. The grado SR-60 deliver sounds to your ears as though you are listening to $10,000 loudspeakers. I used them with Sony's MZ-R90 (please read my review on this product) minidisc portable player and they sound incredibly full and accurate. This probably might be one of the best portable sound on the planet. Pink Floyd's "Echoes" gold Mobile Fidelity cd is fully exposed with the Grados, one can hear musical sounds not heard before with other headphones or even loudspeakers. Any thing from Latin Jazz (Paquito D'rivera) to classical music (Beethoven NO. 9) sounds detailed, full bodied with a wide dynamic range. One can even discover bad recordings from good recordings while listening to these Grados. The midrange and highs are just perfect and relaxed. Rene Fleming's opera voice is controlled and smooth. I found that bass is adequate, not as rich as the more expensive SR-80s, however, the bass can be enhanced depending on the portable source you are using. For $60 these headphones delivers the best sound. They are not tiring and are very musical. I recommend cutting the middle of the foams because I noticed that you can hear more details with a more open and less colored sound. I do not recommend using these headphones in airplanes because you would be hearing your music with the sound of the jet engines in the background. This will force you to raise the volume, which might damage your ears and will definatly bother your coach class buddies.
Summary:
The better the portable equipment the better the sound, especially the bass response. If you want better bass quality get the SR-80 which include the foams that expose the center of the driver. However, you will be spending about $40 more, is it worth it? It is all up to your ears. Enjoy the music everywhere you go!
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