Great review! My curiosity has been piqued for months. I ordered today. I have to admit that the driving thought for me with these is "different".
I am addicted to variety and these sound like they will be very different.

Now I just hope that I will love them or at the very least, like them a lot.

@Trinkle my very first impression I had it hooked up to my PS5 because that’s what was already set up in front of me, with Creative G5 as DAC and a line out to my Cavalli Liquid Carbon as amp. I hadn’t noticed the G5’s EQ was on and it had a pretty colored V-shaped boost on, obviously the result was exaggerated but it seemed like the OAE1 handled it fine.

@Shane D It’s hard to think about what somebody else won’t like when I do like something… I have to think about things people didn’t like about similar parts in other headphones, like the upper mids in the HD 650, but it’s still blended into the mix of many freqs & instruments playing at once when listening to music instead of sine sweeps. Still, an HD 650 + more bass + more focused soundstage & imaging to rival an HD 800S sounds like a pretty good recipe for a large swathe of people.

@Evshrug the graphs show that the OAE-1 has more dips than both the 650 in the 4K - 8K region. Do you feel that ? Does it seem less detailed than both 650 & 800 ?

Ordered. Thank you

@Trinkle I don't feel like it's less detailed. It's really detailed! Sometimes it does seem like male vocals are less forward than female ones. I didn't notice much till 2am tonight though, so my fatigue may be a factor. I also didn't notice till I saw the graph... interesting.

How much?

The pre-order price is $349.00 at Drop.

really good review, I appreciate when people take time to write about more than just music. wish I could give this one a spin!

Was it weird to use spoilers to organize and expand the different sections?

Kind of. I thought of them as bullet points though.

not a fan of open backs, but these look beautiful and designed well.

To me, these sound VERY interesting.

Even though I've really been into Head-Fi for about 4yrs, I've seen more than enough gushing over the HD 6XX / 650. There was things that interested me about them, like the legendary (for where it's sits in the market at a minimum) soundstage, but also the repairability built into it too.

But this grell, this seems to just interest me more right from the start. I like the little touches like the headband adjustment, we'll have to wait and see on any possible hotspot issues with it though.

But the thing it looks like it will do well is help you just enjoy the music, and what are you doing here if that isn't your ultimate goal?

@SeanHasAPairOfDuals I personally felt the AKGs did soundstage/headstage better than the Sennheiser’s at this price point… but the grell sounds clearly better to me in that aspect.

The HD 6XX (I have a 650) is indeed venerable and well loved… I used to visit a discord server where every “what headphones should I buy?” question was answered with HD 650, first batch if possible (mine is a later silver mesh baffle model). I have more to say about that headphone (and the HD 660S, which I ended up using more) when I edit in some comparisons, but like I said in my conclusion the grell has more of a “Wow!” factor for me while still being fun for long sessions.

When I pick headphones apart, I enjoy them less, but when I let go of the analysis and just let music/games/movies play, the fun comes back!

"Extrem geringe Toleranzen für Frequenzgang, Links-Rechts-Abweichung und Verzerrung"
Grell advertises extremely low tolerances in unit variation for the special edition (I think). Since you seem to have contact to the team, could you ask them if they could specifiy those tolerances? I know some of Sennheisers and Moondrops tolerances and I find this data interesting.

@maegnificant I think I won’t hear back from Axel for awhile now that the High End show is over… I think the trade shows take a lot out of him

That said, the tight tolerances might show up on the individual measurement data delivered with the Signature series. I don’t know German with any reliability beyond Google Translate (which often makes mistakes or chooses a word that loses the nuance of the original), but if those tight tolerances specifically were applied to tight driver matching, that has direct impact on how good the soundstage would be, and the lower yield and higher manufacturing cost would be on the level of flagship headphones from other manufacturers. Chasing low tolerances is what made $1k and up headphones happen, or the $500 launch of the 2003 HD 650 adjusts with inflation to about $850 today (inflation seems to be different depending on product category, for example computers vs houses) and I think the OAE1 is a more advanced design than that.

Alright, thanks!

I look forward to hearing it. Been waiting a long time for this one.

Expected selling price?, maybe I missed it.

Thanks for taking the time to right this informative review, Evshrug. Much appreciated.