[rontokyo]

Quote:

Originally posted by KShaft The r10s should be around 2k In Japan. If youre looking for something BETTER, rather than just different, you might be pressed to try the stax or r10s. I feel msp's are superior to rs-1s, but they are very close to rs-1s as they ARE moded rs-1s! The new senns with aftermarket cable might be interesting too. Senns have a wonderful synergy with the cary amps(it did with my 300sei any way). It really made them sound different. Lively yet still sweet. Full sounding with grado like bass. k.s.

Interesting comment re: the Senns/Cary synergy. I've felt, as has been suggested by another member, that the Senns would certainly be *different* and worth a listen. But I never really considered that they would be preferable to the RS-1s. But coupled with the Cary, yes, that combo *does* sound intriguing.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Sean H "Better" you ask? How about the Sennheiser HD600.

Quote:

Originally posted by stuartr If you are in Tokyo proper, make sure you go to Akihabara. There is an INSANE hi-fi store there. It's called "Dynamic Audio 5555" It's in katakana. It has 5 levels of equipt. that gets more and more expensive as you get higher in the store. The stax stuff is on level 1. The top floor was salarymen sitting in huge leather chairs in front of several hundred thousand dollars worth of hi-fi junk.

I love hearing about this kind of stuff. Bet there was some half-hidden nose candy floating around up there too...

(j/k... maybe)

 

[smokey]

Rontokyo,

What I was getting at was that by using the headphone output of the Cary SLI-80, the Grado HP-1000 (HP-1) headphone sounds very nice.

I was not implying that you need to use any other amplifier.

 

[markl]

rontokyo,
The Sony R10 is the finest dynamic headphone out there IMO (though I still haven't heard an HP series Grado, but I've heard all the rest). I have heard the RS-1, and I have to believe that coming from those cans, the R10 will be an eye-opening, maybe even a jaw-dropping experience. Although they are rated 40 ohm phones, they are serious power hogs. They might make a very intersting combo with the Cary. I briefly heard my R10s connected to 300SEI and it sounded pretty sweet (although it was an unfamiliar source and music).

The R10s never cease to impress me, I like them more all the time, as they have easily kept pace with further and further system upgrades. They are clear as a bell and very sensitive/transparent, you really get to hear upstream gear loud and clear.

FYI, here is my review from a while ago. http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showt...&threadid=5008


If you go Stax, you have to use their amp with it, so that would cancel out the Cary unless you'd use it for speakers as well.

Mark

 

[yidimsum]

Grado HP-1000s all the way. They give you neutrality and the sounds that come out sound the way music does in real life. R10s are nice but not even close to being worth the $. I think people who like Magnepan speakers like the R10 because it gives a very expansive soundstage - very good for orchestral music. However, the beef I have against Magnepans/R10s is that the soundstage sounds inaccurate - it is so wide that smaller scale music sounds like it is being performed in a large concert hall. Listening to Norah Jones, it sounds like she is performing in an empty Carnegie Hall, close miked. The inaccuracy gets to be very annoying and takes away from the enjoyment of the music. A pair of headphones/speakers should be able to do everything right (or at least try to versus blowing the sonic environment out of proportion).

 

[SteeleBlayde]

I would most heartily recommend either the Grado HP-1000 or the AKG K1000!


I wonder what the significance of "1000" is?

 

[stuartr]

Hi Ron,
If your Cary is the SLI 80, which I think you said, then it will power the AKG K1000s just fine. They don't go in the headphone slot, but right to the speaker outs. If you want to plug them into the headphone jack, you need to make or buy an aftermarket cable like the one from Stefan Audio Art. Do yourself a favor, unless you have ultra power hungry speakers, convert it to triode operation. You will still have 40 wpc, which is a bunch in a tube amp. I just did this for my conrad-johnson CAV-50, and the results were anything but subtle. I was amazed at how big a difference it made. As for the HP-1, (and HP-2 and HP-1000 (they are all basically the same thing)), they are a headphone, not an amp. They were made by Joe Grado the uncle of the guy who designed the RS-1's. Many people tend to like them more than the RS-1s. They are unbelieveably neutral, yet extremely involving. With the right setup, they are just astonishing. With either of these phones, I think you would be quite happy. Yet for the money, the used market for K1000s is excellent. For 400 bucks or less, you will have a phone that is dramatically different than the RS-1, and you will have an amp that is capable of driving them with alacrity.

BTW, I am actually not that familiar with Tokyo...I wandered into that store on a brief visit. This past summer I was living in Sapporo, but I have only been in Tokyo for about a week. Anyway, good luck!
P.S. The HD600s are good phones too!

 

[rontokyo]

Markl, SteeleBlayde, SteeleBlayde and sturatr and others: thanks very much for your comments. I'll try to reply to all of you in the same post. Re: the HP-1, I confused the discontinued headhpones with the current headphone amp. The HP-1s [or HP-1000s] sound *very* interesting and will do a search here in Tokyo and see if I can find a used pair to audition. Re: the AKG-K1000s, I now better understand how they are connected, which is no problem for me. And I will *definitely* give them a listen [I've seen them available here]. They sound so good, in fact, that I may just buy them sight unseen at the right price. The Senn HD-600s also sound like a possibility. The Sony R10s are a bit out of my price range new, but they *may* be found here at a decent price used. And I'd really like to listen to them.

Ironically, the Senn pads I ordered a while back [thanks to info here] just now arrived. *Much* for comfortable than the flats I've been using with the RS-1s [though as has been noted elsewhere, there is a slight loss of detail. I've yet to cut a hole in them which may correct some of that.] The RS-1s *are* a bid fatiguing, probably due to the fit more than anything else. I remember calling Grado about 10 years ago and spoke to the now-retired Joe [??] who convinced me to upgrade to the RS-1s from the RS-125s I was using at the time. Glad he did. When I asked him about the a-hem, *slight* lack of comfort to the 125s he said: "I can design a great-sounding headphone or a great-fitting headphone. I chose the former." I told him "I hear ya" or the like, but I've always wondered about that. The ultimate goal of any headphone designer would be to meet *both* requirements. I can't say whether or not that's an attainable goal or not. But that explains my current search.

A word of thanks to all of you for taking the time to write detailed posts--I've got several options now to consider--and better understand the pros and cons of each. The field has been narrowed considerably--a *good* thing. This is a wonderful site--thanks one and all.

 

[TravelLite]

Better than the Grado RS-1?

Why, it's a Grado RS-1 being fed from a nice digital multi-FX processor, of course!

TravelLite