@Resolve I've always had a lot of respect for you specifically (I've been a subscriber since before you had any affiliation with Headphones.com), and still LOVE the Headphones.com content as whole because it
is informative,
fun, and I have never felt you were "shills"
for or
against any headphones, and certainly, never, ever felt that any views expressed on the channel were
in the least compromised by what was sold or not sold on Headphones.com.
In fact, I bought my Heddphone, Focal Clear and Radiance headphones all on Headphones.com and think Headphones.com is one of the best vendors whom I highly recommend.
That being said, the Headphones.com reviewer record on Grado headphones has always struck me as predicable and indicative of representing only one slice of the community.
That does not mean that if you love Grados, your taste or preference is somehow inferior.
That is clearly implied and even sometimes almost overtly expressed in multiple videos I've watched from Headphones.com channel on YouTube, though, when it comes to opinions about Grado's. The tone is even condescending at times, and it's across multiple reviewers, not just one. DMS may be the only one that I can recall ever having enough positive to say about any Grado to recommend one, among your group, in fact, and that's been mostly since the Hemp and the X-series.
It can be difficult to imagine the thing you love is so objectionable to someone else
Not difficult to imagine, or even necessary to
imagine at all, since it's rather explicitly and regularly stated as such rather consistently.
Honestly, it feels almost quite the opposite, that none of you can imagine that the thing that is so objectionable to you collectively can be
loved by many others, and again, it's usually implied strongly that something is wrong with our ears.
I think the truth is that some of us just have a
wider range of listening preferences. That I like my Grado SR-325i 50th anniversary edition which has an absurd bass rolloff and a very unique voicing doesn't mean that I don't appreciate for very very different reasons the more Harmanesque tuning of my Drop Aeon Closed X.
We regularly disagree with one another!
Honestly, not a lot, though, and almost not at all on Grado's -- you are all part of the roughly the same slice of headphone audiophilia which coalesces around basically the same set of headphones, and there's not a lot of real diversity, frankly, in your group. Steve Guttenberg, the "Audiophiliac", for example, loves Grado's, and is well respected at least by some in the community, but there aren't any types like him in your clan.
Again, though, I'm not questioning the integrity of any of you, quite to the contrary, I positively affirm it, as though I disagree with the general "groupthink" on Grado's among your reviewers, I am 100% convinced those are your genuine opinions, and they are pretty consistent, too.