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- Feb 21, 2003
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I've been (re)discovering my love of Grado headphones, and headphones in general, and I thought it might be interesting to do the sort of comparison I've read from others so many times here since I have a few pairs from the Prestige Series now, acquired across a couple of decades or so.
But first, to establish my credentials... or rather my complete lack of them because I don't know what the $!#% I'm talking about. I don't think I could call myself an "audiophile" unless it's with air quotes and clown makeup. I'm a wannabe headphone enthusiast firmly rooted in what I guess would be the lower mid-range, price-wise. Think less Ferrari and more Honda Accord. The most expensive ones I've ever purchased were probably all around $200 each (on sale if they typically went for more than that): Etymotic ER4P IEMs, Monster Turbine Pro Copper IEMs, Sennheiser HD 580, and, most recently, Grado SR225e. All of the above except the Grados, which are new, are no longer functioning, unfortunately, at least not in both ears. And I've had plenty of cheaper ones, including the Grado SR60 and SR125.
I also have hearing loss... though nothing to do with headphone listening, as far as I know. Seems to be just age and genetics. That also colors my perceptions of audio, and I thought others with similar issues might be interested in my perspective. (I know I was looking around for information like that when I discovered my own hearing loss, so personally I can't wait to hear what I have to say. Assuming I can hear it at all.)
I first got into headphones in a more serious way with my purchase of a Grado SR125 around 1999. I loved them. Not long after that I bought my first amp -- a HeadRoom Little with the "More Power" power supply upgrade -- and I added the Sennheiser HD 580 to the mix. A few years after that I met my wife and, with the lack of isolation in my bedroom, I sort of fell out of over/on-ear headphones, and I was listening less overall. (Hey, priorities!) Over the years, between having a family and other things that occupy one's attention, I had fewer opportunities to listen to music and mostly listened in the car while pretending it wasn't like taking dictation in a wind tunnel.
If I had still been using headphones with regularity, maybe I would've noticed my gradual hearing loss... but I doubt it. As it is, it took my constantly asking my wife to repeat herself to drive home the fact that I needed a hearing test. It turns out I have "moderate" hearing loss around 3-4 Khz, and not a whole lot better in the surrounding frequencies. Looking at the graph, my hearing starts dropping sharply around 1.5 Khz or so, bottoms out around 3-4 Khz, then starts climbing back up. I can hear voices fine in most cases, but my ears have decided that some consonants are optional unless people are facing me and speaking clearly... something my wife still regularly forgets, although she's much more tolerant of my asking her to repeat herself now. The first step is admitting your husband has a problem.
I was pretty devastated to learn about my ears, but I got hearing aids, and, while they're annoying as $!@%, they've definitely improved my life. The funny part is that, when I'm not wearing them, I still can't really tell that I have hearing loss most of the time. I'm just used to the world sounding the way it does to me. Any loss is most noticeable when I remove the hearing aids: It sounds a bit like the proverbial veil has been dropped over life's speakers... and it's not a thick veil. It's also more noticeable when it's raining out; my family will hear the rain hitting the ground well before I notice it (well, unless I'm outside... I mean I can still tell when I'm getting wet just as fast as they can, and you'd better believe that's on my résumé).
Oh, and my ability to image is dramatically reduced. I think my wife noticed that before I did. When we first met I used to be able to pinpoint sounds with high accuracy. Nowadays a ventriloquist wouldn't have to throw their voice with me in the audience because I'd be unlikely to know the difference. Not that I'd be in the audience anyway because I don't want to be stabbed by a ventriloquist's dummy. Seriously, those things are evil.
I'd mostly forgotten what it was like to use over/on-ear headphones. I hadn't done it much in years. I was listening to IEMs sometimes, most recently with a MEE Audio model that I found MEEdiocre (yeah, I can't believe I just wrote that hack joke, either). I played around with equalization to try to compensate for my hearing loss with various IEMs, but I hated the results. Then the obvious occurred to me: Over/on-ear headphones could do something IEMs couldn't: allow me to use my hearing aids with my headphones. Duh.
So I re-entered the headphone audio world. I started with a Schiit Audio Modi/Magni 3+ stack (I had previously used the first version of the Fulla and been happy with it, and I'm beyond happy with the Schiit I've bought since) paired with beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO (250 Ohm) headphones. I chose those for the closed back since it meant I could listen next to my wife without us disturbing each other too much. And I really enjoy that setup. (I wrote about this in the Schiit Happens thread, originally starting with a Sennheiser HD 569, which I also liked.) That's when I happily realized my gamble paid off. I could still hear details I was worried I wouldn't, and I could still enjoy listening to music in headphones generally. Hobby reacquired! (Wallet re-emptied!)
Interestingly, the difference with and without hearing aids is less dramatic than I thought it would be. While I think they do make everything a bit "airier," I find that I still hear pretty much everything I expect to hear without them. I'm not sure why that is, but I figure it's likely due to one or both of two things: Maybe my hearing loss is not linear (e.g., once a 3 KHz sound reaches a certain volume threshold, it sounds as loud to me as it does to most people rather than always being 60 dB quieter), or maybe my brain is just filling things in for me. I guess it doesn't matter much in the end. (Side note: My wife experiences that phenomenon with her vision. She says the things her brain fills in for her when she's not wearing her glasses look better than the reality when she has them on. I guess I'm just glad she's willing to prefer reality while driving.)
Around this time I got involved with a work project that involved a lot of writing, and I decided to bring a set of headphones with my Fulla to work. I still had my old Grado SR125, but after all these years, one driver was out, and the other sometimes sounded a bit crackly. I don't know how that happened, but it's not like I was keeping them in the Ark of the Covenant or other Approved Headphone Storage (TM). I confess I almost threw them out because I thought they were goners. Fortunately my wife caught me and suggested that I look into getting them repaired. (This is why being married is good, folks! Spouses can curb your idiocy.) Grado Labs was happy to fix them for a very reasonable fee, so I sent them off. In the meantime, I also had an old set of SR60 headphones I'd purchased for my mother 15 or 20 years ago. I inherited them when she passed, but I hadn't used them much up to this point.
Next thing I know, I'm going through Led Zeppelin's back catalog and having a great time listening to the SR60 at work. They were just so fun. I'd forgotten how fun they were. Then COVID-19 hit and we got the "work from home" orders. I figured the time to get my SR125 back was likely extended out by months, and while I was waiting I couldn't resist picking up the SR225e I'd been thinking about for ages.
Part of my thinking about purchasing more Grado headphones had to do with my hearing loss. Around here it's no secret that Grado is known for having more forward upper-mids and treble, and given that my hearing loss is around those frequencies, I thought they were likely to be a great fit. And as I said, I was already finding the old SR60 to be great fun to listen to, and I remembered loving my old SR125.
Naturally, not long after buying the SR225e, my repaired SR125 showed up on my doorstep! I don't know how Grado Labs got them fixed in only 3-4 weeks during a pandemic, but they did it. (I certainly hope no one endangered themselves to do it! I was more than happy to wait.)
Now I'm a little unclear on exactly what my SR125 is anymore. By that I mean that I don't think it's the same as the old, stock model it used to be. I wish I'd taken pictures of it before sending it out, but I could swear they sent it back with a thicker cable. It's as thick as the one on the SR225e. And I have no idea if the drivers were replaced or just fixed. I'd be curious to know. Just be aware that when I write about my SR125, I'm writing about something that doesn't quite seem to be the original SR125, but probably isn't quite an SR125e, either. (Either way, it sounds great.)
I got the bug to buy additional pads, too, so I picked up an extra set of L pads; S pads to replace the old, worn ones on the SR60; and some Geekria pads that look more or less like S pads with a hole (sort of a pre-fab quarter mod, I guess). I know a lot of people recommend TTVJ pads, but I'm not quite ready to spend that much on pads yet!
I also decided I wanted to get a better DAC/amp for my workspace, so I picked up a Schiit Fulla 3 (noticeably better sounding than the original Fulla). For the purposes of this comparison, all my Grado listening is being done on the Fulla 3 with lossless files.
Again, a disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about. I barely have a grasp of a lot of the audio terms everyone here throws around. I think I have a pretty good idea of bright, warm, sharp, dark, absurd yet flaccid, etc., but I've never attempted in any serious way to use those terms in a write-up like this. I also have my hearing loss to contend with, and that undoubtedly colors my audio perceptions. And of course I have my own tastes. Take anything I say with a grain of salt the size of one of the Hawaiian Islands. Maybe not the biggest one, but, like, Maui.
Oh, and my comparisons were done mostly while wearing my hearing aids. As I said, I didn't notice a dramatic difference with them vs. without, but I found it interesting that there was a difference at all with the Grados since the hearing aids rest behind my ears and not within the cups.
All that said, the first thing I would say jumps out at me is that the differences between the three models are not dramatic. They're clearly all from the same family, sound-wise, and I could see anyone being happiest with any of the three based on their own tastes. I'm not even sure I have a favorite. I want to pick the SR225e, but that could just be a bit of placebo effect combined with the desire to justify the greater expense over the others. I really do love all three.
SR225e vs. SR125: The SR125 sounds a bit warmer to my ears. That warmth isn't dramatic, but it casts a sort of diffuse, pleasant "glow" over the low end, if that makes any sense. In comparison, the SR225e feels like it has slightly tighter bass but lacks that glow. I think that's part of what gives it a slightly airier sound. The mids and highs sounded very similar to me between these two models.
L pads vs. S pads: I would say that changing the pads probably made a bigger difference than changing headphone models, at least between SR125 and SR225e. I purchased a new set of L pads for my SR125 because that was the stock set when I bought them. These days I guess the SR125e comes with the S pads. I tried both S and L pads on all headphones, and my results were, I think, mostly consistent with the observations of others: The S pads bring a warmer sound overall, maybe a little too much so with the SR125, which already sounded warmer to me. The L pads seem to deliver slightly better clarity.
The Geekria pads were interesting, largely because their result was unexpected. I liked them the least on all three headphones, but if you're more of a bass head, you might like them. They were easily the warmest of the cushions I have, and they made me "feel" the bass the most. I went back and forth with Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" quite a bit, and the Geekrias on the SR125 made me notice the bass drum the most (with the SR60 being a close second, I think). That drum definitely had some impact. I felt it was also just a bit muddy, at least in comparison to the other pads, but some may consider that a good trade-off for "fun" factor. Also, the Geekria pads feel a bit flimsier than the Grado S pads. Given that the Geekria pads were slightly more expensive, this surprised me. I'm not sure about the role of the material in impacting the sound, but I think either the Geekria pads compress more and bring the drivers even closer to the ear than the S pads or they just have less material in them, and my feeling is that this contributes to an overall "boomier" sound on the low end. It wasn't bad, necessarily, but I'm not a bass head, and I definitely preferred the Grado pads (both sizes). On the SR225e, that bass drum was definitely more pronounced with the Geekria pads, too, but it felt tighter and less boomy, presumably because the SR225e started out less warm to begin with. I don't think it had quite the slam that it did on the the other models.
SR60: Compared to the other two, this model is a bit quieter at the same volume setting. Mids seem a little less forward compared to the other two. Just for the sake of comparison, I tried L pads on the SR60 vs. the SR225e -- I like controlling variables! -- and I would say the SR60 is a smidge warmer... possibly even warmer than the SR125. If anything, I'd say it sounds a little more V-shaped (again, this is very slight, and I mean it in a relative rather than absolute sense), but without so much of the diffuse "glow" I observed on the SR125. Its clarity is still pretty astonishing for entry-level headphones closing in on two decades old. With the Geekria pads, the SR60 is a bit too bassy for my tastes. Heavy percussion felt a bit too "thumpy" (that bass drum again). But again, that's just my taste. Some may love it.
Switching from the Geekria back to the L pads while listening to the 40th anniversary Superman soundtrack on the SR225e, I immediately noticed the return of resonance in the horns. That detail seemed to get somewhat lost in the "boominess" of the Geekrias. That really illustrated for me that the differences in pads were having a bigger impact than switching models because the same thing happened when I tried it with the SR60. For me the S pads still retained a lot of that resonance. This has me wondering if true "quarter mod" S pads would sound better than the Geekrias attempting to imitate them, but I opted to hold off on that test since I only have one set of S pads.
Interestingly, I think I'm feeling like the SR60 and SR125 are more similar in the lower frequencies (an effect of their smaller housings?), but the SR125 and SR225e are more similar in the mid-range and higher frequencies. But really, the differences between all three just aren't that big to me.
In all three I've picked out details of tracks I hadn't noticed before. Have you ever noticed that you can actually hear Robert Plant's lips part in "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"? I never had. Another good one: In the love theme from Star Wars Episode II, you can hear what sounds like something being kicked or hit as people shift in the orchestra a couple of times in a distant part of the room. On my beyerdynamics, as good as they are, those sounds are less distinct, like very quiet pops. (Listen closely to the right channel at about 00:20, and the left channel at about 00:23; for "Babe I'm Gonna Leave you, listen closely at about 00:17 and again at 00:27.)
A word about frequency response, my hearing, and the perceived brightness/harshness of Grado headphones: I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. My DT 770 PRO are definitely a bit more "relaxed" sounding. I don't think I'd go as far as calling them "laid back," but they're probably more so than any Grado I've heard. Both please me, but I think the jury is still out on how well the Grados complement my hearing. Despite my hearing loss, even I have moments when I think the SR225e, in particular, can sound a little harsh, at least with the L pads. I'm think I'm going to try listening in longer stretches with the S pads and see how I feel about them. I've always loved clarity, though, so that's a hard tradeoff for me to make.
So where do I go from here? Well, if it weren't for the pandemic, I'd say Disneyland. Otherwise I've no idea. Since my Sennheiser HD 580 died years ago, I've wanted to acquire the HD 600, or nowadays maybe the HD 6XX or 58X. (I tried the HD 660 S at my first mini-meet a couple months back and didn't like it.) As for Grado, I keep reading such good things about the RS2e that I'm interested in trying them at some point, but that would be a jump to a price bracket I've been reluctant to visit because I like being married.
One thing I do love about Grado, though: Getting them serviced certainly seems easy and reasonably priced. If I do move up to more expensive models, I'm not too worried about making them last.
If you actually made it to the end of this, well... that'll teach you.
But first, to establish my credentials... or rather my complete lack of them because I don't know what the $!#% I'm talking about. I don't think I could call myself an "audiophile" unless it's with air quotes and clown makeup. I'm a wannabe headphone enthusiast firmly rooted in what I guess would be the lower mid-range, price-wise. Think less Ferrari and more Honda Accord. The most expensive ones I've ever purchased were probably all around $200 each (on sale if they typically went for more than that): Etymotic ER4P IEMs, Monster Turbine Pro Copper IEMs, Sennheiser HD 580, and, most recently, Grado SR225e. All of the above except the Grados, which are new, are no longer functioning, unfortunately, at least not in both ears. And I've had plenty of cheaper ones, including the Grado SR60 and SR125.
I also have hearing loss... though nothing to do with headphone listening, as far as I know. Seems to be just age and genetics. That also colors my perceptions of audio, and I thought others with similar issues might be interested in my perspective. (I know I was looking around for information like that when I discovered my own hearing loss, so personally I can't wait to hear what I have to say. Assuming I can hear it at all.)
I first got into headphones in a more serious way with my purchase of a Grado SR125 around 1999. I loved them. Not long after that I bought my first amp -- a HeadRoom Little with the "More Power" power supply upgrade -- and I added the Sennheiser HD 580 to the mix. A few years after that I met my wife and, with the lack of isolation in my bedroom, I sort of fell out of over/on-ear headphones, and I was listening less overall. (Hey, priorities!) Over the years, between having a family and other things that occupy one's attention, I had fewer opportunities to listen to music and mostly listened in the car while pretending it wasn't like taking dictation in a wind tunnel.
If I had still been using headphones with regularity, maybe I would've noticed my gradual hearing loss... but I doubt it. As it is, it took my constantly asking my wife to repeat herself to drive home the fact that I needed a hearing test. It turns out I have "moderate" hearing loss around 3-4 Khz, and not a whole lot better in the surrounding frequencies. Looking at the graph, my hearing starts dropping sharply around 1.5 Khz or so, bottoms out around 3-4 Khz, then starts climbing back up. I can hear voices fine in most cases, but my ears have decided that some consonants are optional unless people are facing me and speaking clearly... something my wife still regularly forgets, although she's much more tolerant of my asking her to repeat herself now. The first step is admitting your husband has a problem.
I was pretty devastated to learn about my ears, but I got hearing aids, and, while they're annoying as $!@%, they've definitely improved my life. The funny part is that, when I'm not wearing them, I still can't really tell that I have hearing loss most of the time. I'm just used to the world sounding the way it does to me. Any loss is most noticeable when I remove the hearing aids: It sounds a bit like the proverbial veil has been dropped over life's speakers... and it's not a thick veil. It's also more noticeable when it's raining out; my family will hear the rain hitting the ground well before I notice it (well, unless I'm outside... I mean I can still tell when I'm getting wet just as fast as they can, and you'd better believe that's on my résumé).
Oh, and my ability to image is dramatically reduced. I think my wife noticed that before I did. When we first met I used to be able to pinpoint sounds with high accuracy. Nowadays a ventriloquist wouldn't have to throw their voice with me in the audience because I'd be unlikely to know the difference. Not that I'd be in the audience anyway because I don't want to be stabbed by a ventriloquist's dummy. Seriously, those things are evil.
I'd mostly forgotten what it was like to use over/on-ear headphones. I hadn't done it much in years. I was listening to IEMs sometimes, most recently with a MEE Audio model that I found MEEdiocre (yeah, I can't believe I just wrote that hack joke, either). I played around with equalization to try to compensate for my hearing loss with various IEMs, but I hated the results. Then the obvious occurred to me: Over/on-ear headphones could do something IEMs couldn't: allow me to use my hearing aids with my headphones. Duh.
So I re-entered the headphone audio world. I started with a Schiit Audio Modi/Magni 3+ stack (I had previously used the first version of the Fulla and been happy with it, and I'm beyond happy with the Schiit I've bought since) paired with beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO (250 Ohm) headphones. I chose those for the closed back since it meant I could listen next to my wife without us disturbing each other too much. And I really enjoy that setup. (I wrote about this in the Schiit Happens thread, originally starting with a Sennheiser HD 569, which I also liked.) That's when I happily realized my gamble paid off. I could still hear details I was worried I wouldn't, and I could still enjoy listening to music in headphones generally. Hobby reacquired! (Wallet re-emptied!)
Interestingly, the difference with and without hearing aids is less dramatic than I thought it would be. While I think they do make everything a bit "airier," I find that I still hear pretty much everything I expect to hear without them. I'm not sure why that is, but I figure it's likely due to one or both of two things: Maybe my hearing loss is not linear (e.g., once a 3 KHz sound reaches a certain volume threshold, it sounds as loud to me as it does to most people rather than always being 60 dB quieter), or maybe my brain is just filling things in for me. I guess it doesn't matter much in the end. (Side note: My wife experiences that phenomenon with her vision. She says the things her brain fills in for her when she's not wearing her glasses look better than the reality when she has them on. I guess I'm just glad she's willing to prefer reality while driving.)
Around this time I got involved with a work project that involved a lot of writing, and I decided to bring a set of headphones with my Fulla to work. I still had my old Grado SR125, but after all these years, one driver was out, and the other sometimes sounded a bit crackly. I don't know how that happened, but it's not like I was keeping them in the Ark of the Covenant or other Approved Headphone Storage (TM). I confess I almost threw them out because I thought they were goners. Fortunately my wife caught me and suggested that I look into getting them repaired. (This is why being married is good, folks! Spouses can curb your idiocy.) Grado Labs was happy to fix them for a very reasonable fee, so I sent them off. In the meantime, I also had an old set of SR60 headphones I'd purchased for my mother 15 or 20 years ago. I inherited them when she passed, but I hadn't used them much up to this point.
Next thing I know, I'm going through Led Zeppelin's back catalog and having a great time listening to the SR60 at work. They were just so fun. I'd forgotten how fun they were. Then COVID-19 hit and we got the "work from home" orders. I figured the time to get my SR125 back was likely extended out by months, and while I was waiting I couldn't resist picking up the SR225e I'd been thinking about for ages.
Part of my thinking about purchasing more Grado headphones had to do with my hearing loss. Around here it's no secret that Grado is known for having more forward upper-mids and treble, and given that my hearing loss is around those frequencies, I thought they were likely to be a great fit. And as I said, I was already finding the old SR60 to be great fun to listen to, and I remembered loving my old SR125.
Naturally, not long after buying the SR225e, my repaired SR125 showed up on my doorstep! I don't know how Grado Labs got them fixed in only 3-4 weeks during a pandemic, but they did it. (I certainly hope no one endangered themselves to do it! I was more than happy to wait.)
Now I'm a little unclear on exactly what my SR125 is anymore. By that I mean that I don't think it's the same as the old, stock model it used to be. I wish I'd taken pictures of it before sending it out, but I could swear they sent it back with a thicker cable. It's as thick as the one on the SR225e. And I have no idea if the drivers were replaced or just fixed. I'd be curious to know. Just be aware that when I write about my SR125, I'm writing about something that doesn't quite seem to be the original SR125, but probably isn't quite an SR125e, either. (Either way, it sounds great.)
I got the bug to buy additional pads, too, so I picked up an extra set of L pads; S pads to replace the old, worn ones on the SR60; and some Geekria pads that look more or less like S pads with a hole (sort of a pre-fab quarter mod, I guess). I know a lot of people recommend TTVJ pads, but I'm not quite ready to spend that much on pads yet!
I also decided I wanted to get a better DAC/amp for my workspace, so I picked up a Schiit Fulla 3 (noticeably better sounding than the original Fulla). For the purposes of this comparison, all my Grado listening is being done on the Fulla 3 with lossless files.
Again, a disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about. I barely have a grasp of a lot of the audio terms everyone here throws around. I think I have a pretty good idea of bright, warm, sharp, dark, absurd yet flaccid, etc., but I've never attempted in any serious way to use those terms in a write-up like this. I also have my hearing loss to contend with, and that undoubtedly colors my audio perceptions. And of course I have my own tastes. Take anything I say with a grain of salt the size of one of the Hawaiian Islands. Maybe not the biggest one, but, like, Maui.
Oh, and my comparisons were done mostly while wearing my hearing aids. As I said, I didn't notice a dramatic difference with them vs. without, but I found it interesting that there was a difference at all with the Grados since the hearing aids rest behind my ears and not within the cups.
All that said, the first thing I would say jumps out at me is that the differences between the three models are not dramatic. They're clearly all from the same family, sound-wise, and I could see anyone being happiest with any of the three based on their own tastes. I'm not even sure I have a favorite. I want to pick the SR225e, but that could just be a bit of placebo effect combined with the desire to justify the greater expense over the others. I really do love all three.
SR225e vs. SR125: The SR125 sounds a bit warmer to my ears. That warmth isn't dramatic, but it casts a sort of diffuse, pleasant "glow" over the low end, if that makes any sense. In comparison, the SR225e feels like it has slightly tighter bass but lacks that glow. I think that's part of what gives it a slightly airier sound. The mids and highs sounded very similar to me between these two models.
L pads vs. S pads: I would say that changing the pads probably made a bigger difference than changing headphone models, at least between SR125 and SR225e. I purchased a new set of L pads for my SR125 because that was the stock set when I bought them. These days I guess the SR125e comes with the S pads. I tried both S and L pads on all headphones, and my results were, I think, mostly consistent with the observations of others: The S pads bring a warmer sound overall, maybe a little too much so with the SR125, which already sounded warmer to me. The L pads seem to deliver slightly better clarity.
The Geekria pads were interesting, largely because their result was unexpected. I liked them the least on all three headphones, but if you're more of a bass head, you might like them. They were easily the warmest of the cushions I have, and they made me "feel" the bass the most. I went back and forth with Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" quite a bit, and the Geekrias on the SR125 made me notice the bass drum the most (with the SR60 being a close second, I think). That drum definitely had some impact. I felt it was also just a bit muddy, at least in comparison to the other pads, but some may consider that a good trade-off for "fun" factor. Also, the Geekria pads feel a bit flimsier than the Grado S pads. Given that the Geekria pads were slightly more expensive, this surprised me. I'm not sure about the role of the material in impacting the sound, but I think either the Geekria pads compress more and bring the drivers even closer to the ear than the S pads or they just have less material in them, and my feeling is that this contributes to an overall "boomier" sound on the low end. It wasn't bad, necessarily, but I'm not a bass head, and I definitely preferred the Grado pads (both sizes). On the SR225e, that bass drum was definitely more pronounced with the Geekria pads, too, but it felt tighter and less boomy, presumably because the SR225e started out less warm to begin with. I don't think it had quite the slam that it did on the the other models.
SR60: Compared to the other two, this model is a bit quieter at the same volume setting. Mids seem a little less forward compared to the other two. Just for the sake of comparison, I tried L pads on the SR60 vs. the SR225e -- I like controlling variables! -- and I would say the SR60 is a smidge warmer... possibly even warmer than the SR125. If anything, I'd say it sounds a little more V-shaped (again, this is very slight, and I mean it in a relative rather than absolute sense), but without so much of the diffuse "glow" I observed on the SR125. Its clarity is still pretty astonishing for entry-level headphones closing in on two decades old. With the Geekria pads, the SR60 is a bit too bassy for my tastes. Heavy percussion felt a bit too "thumpy" (that bass drum again). But again, that's just my taste. Some may love it.
Switching from the Geekria back to the L pads while listening to the 40th anniversary Superman soundtrack on the SR225e, I immediately noticed the return of resonance in the horns. That detail seemed to get somewhat lost in the "boominess" of the Geekrias. That really illustrated for me that the differences in pads were having a bigger impact than switching models because the same thing happened when I tried it with the SR60. For me the S pads still retained a lot of that resonance. This has me wondering if true "quarter mod" S pads would sound better than the Geekrias attempting to imitate them, but I opted to hold off on that test since I only have one set of S pads.
Interestingly, I think I'm feeling like the SR60 and SR125 are more similar in the lower frequencies (an effect of their smaller housings?), but the SR125 and SR225e are more similar in the mid-range and higher frequencies. But really, the differences between all three just aren't that big to me.
In all three I've picked out details of tracks I hadn't noticed before. Have you ever noticed that you can actually hear Robert Plant's lips part in "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"? I never had. Another good one: In the love theme from Star Wars Episode II, you can hear what sounds like something being kicked or hit as people shift in the orchestra a couple of times in a distant part of the room. On my beyerdynamics, as good as they are, those sounds are less distinct, like very quiet pops. (Listen closely to the right channel at about 00:20, and the left channel at about 00:23; for "Babe I'm Gonna Leave you, listen closely at about 00:17 and again at 00:27.)
A word about frequency response, my hearing, and the perceived brightness/harshness of Grado headphones: I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. My DT 770 PRO are definitely a bit more "relaxed" sounding. I don't think I'd go as far as calling them "laid back," but they're probably more so than any Grado I've heard. Both please me, but I think the jury is still out on how well the Grados complement my hearing. Despite my hearing loss, even I have moments when I think the SR225e, in particular, can sound a little harsh, at least with the L pads. I'm think I'm going to try listening in longer stretches with the S pads and see how I feel about them. I've always loved clarity, though, so that's a hard tradeoff for me to make.
So where do I go from here? Well, if it weren't for the pandemic, I'd say Disneyland. Otherwise I've no idea. Since my Sennheiser HD 580 died years ago, I've wanted to acquire the HD 600, or nowadays maybe the HD 6XX or 58X. (I tried the HD 660 S at my first mini-meet a couple months back and didn't like it.) As for Grado, I keep reading such good things about the RS2e that I'm interested in trying them at some point, but that would be a jump to a price bracket I've been reluctant to visit because I like being married.
One thing I do love about Grado, though: Getting them serviced certainly seems easy and reasonably priced. If I do move up to more expensive models, I'm not too worried about making them last.
If you actually made it to the end of this, well... that'll teach you.
