bufo333
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2008
- Posts
- 20
- Likes
- 10
Well I received my grado's about 4 weeks ago, and I have been using them with a number of sources, but before the review let me go into a little history.
i was into music CD's in the early 90's then with moving and life my collection got stored, lost sold. In the Mid 90's I got heavily into minidisc for its sound quality at the time. I am a consultant so I travel quite allot and for the time, it was awesome sound for portable music. after my minidisc systems gave up the ghost in 2000 I stayed out of really listening to much music because of business with life and more moving.
In 2004 things settled down again and I was given an iPod as a present. this was great for me as I sometimes spend 6 hours a day driving. I started purchasing about $900 a year from ITunes which sounded just fine on the crappy speakers of my work vehicles. I use an fm modulator to connect the iPods. Because I listen to music all day I didn't normally listen too much outside the car. I went from iPod 3g to 4g, to nano, to 5g, and now to classic.
About 2 months ago i started getting the itch to get back into audio hi-fi. So I started on a budget and purchased a pair of grado's sr225 model and also a cmoy with bass boost. At this point I started not liking the sound quality of my iPod. I noticed especially with the treble that the cymbals seemed flat and muted through the grado’s. And the music also seemed to be flat, with no separation of instruments. I also noticed that allot of the bass seemed muddy, and the treble like I said dull. Overall the quality really made me sick. Now all the music I was playing was iTunes drm purchased music as I have about $3000 worth of music.
I thought at first it must be this crappy iPod so I burned the Radiohead album In rainbows. Put it in my pioneer elite sound system, plugged the cmoy into the CD deck and plugged the Grados into them. The music still had all of the horrible sound characteristics of the ipod. So getting desperate I went online and downloaded a zipped folder of the Radiohead album as well as some other albums in FLAC. I burned the FLAC to an audio CD and put it in the pioneer elite and hit play.
All I can say is WOW very forward mids, amazing treble with a sharpness to the cymbals. I just could not believe the clarity of the mids and highs as well as decent bass for a headphone not really designed for booming bass. I just could not believe my ears. Amazing headphone sound great booming audio with an amazing clarity barely touch the amp, to get very loud sound. A clarity that I have not felt since my minidisc player. I think I will have to download all my albums in FLAC, convert them to apple lossless for the iPod and replace all that crap I purchased. I don’t know if this is legal, but I can’t live with crappy iTunes music any more. The worst part is I didn’t know what I was missing, I almost have to go back and relisten to all that music again!!!
Grado’s are top notch I listen to mostly rock/ blues/alt but mainly things with guitars
Now I am already making a list of other headphones to try for some of my other music. I think the reason apple does not provide good headphones with their iPod is because if people knew how bad the iTunes store music sounded they would never buy it.
PS,
The really amazing thing is I will be listening to music and hear stuff I have never heard before in the iTunes store version, like the sound of feint things in the background, the sounds of picks picking the guitar, the sound of extra strings vibrating on the guitar past the tuning screw when the string is plucked.
i was into music CD's in the early 90's then with moving and life my collection got stored, lost sold. In the Mid 90's I got heavily into minidisc for its sound quality at the time. I am a consultant so I travel quite allot and for the time, it was awesome sound for portable music. after my minidisc systems gave up the ghost in 2000 I stayed out of really listening to much music because of business with life and more moving.
In 2004 things settled down again and I was given an iPod as a present. this was great for me as I sometimes spend 6 hours a day driving. I started purchasing about $900 a year from ITunes which sounded just fine on the crappy speakers of my work vehicles. I use an fm modulator to connect the iPods. Because I listen to music all day I didn't normally listen too much outside the car. I went from iPod 3g to 4g, to nano, to 5g, and now to classic.
About 2 months ago i started getting the itch to get back into audio hi-fi. So I started on a budget and purchased a pair of grado's sr225 model and also a cmoy with bass boost. At this point I started not liking the sound quality of my iPod. I noticed especially with the treble that the cymbals seemed flat and muted through the grado’s. And the music also seemed to be flat, with no separation of instruments. I also noticed that allot of the bass seemed muddy, and the treble like I said dull. Overall the quality really made me sick. Now all the music I was playing was iTunes drm purchased music as I have about $3000 worth of music.
I thought at first it must be this crappy iPod so I burned the Radiohead album In rainbows. Put it in my pioneer elite sound system, plugged the cmoy into the CD deck and plugged the Grados into them. The music still had all of the horrible sound characteristics of the ipod. So getting desperate I went online and downloaded a zipped folder of the Radiohead album as well as some other albums in FLAC. I burned the FLAC to an audio CD and put it in the pioneer elite and hit play.
All I can say is WOW very forward mids, amazing treble with a sharpness to the cymbals. I just could not believe the clarity of the mids and highs as well as decent bass for a headphone not really designed for booming bass. I just could not believe my ears. Amazing headphone sound great booming audio with an amazing clarity barely touch the amp, to get very loud sound. A clarity that I have not felt since my minidisc player. I think I will have to download all my albums in FLAC, convert them to apple lossless for the iPod and replace all that crap I purchased. I don’t know if this is legal, but I can’t live with crappy iTunes music any more. The worst part is I didn’t know what I was missing, I almost have to go back and relisten to all that music again!!!
Grado’s are top notch I listen to mostly rock/ blues/alt but mainly things with guitars
Now I am already making a list of other headphones to try for some of my other music. I think the reason apple does not provide good headphones with their iPod is because if people knew how bad the iTunes store music sounded they would never buy it.
PS,
The really amazing thing is I will be listening to music and hear stuff I have never heard before in the iTunes store version, like the sound of feint things in the background, the sounds of picks picking the guitar, the sound of extra strings vibrating on the guitar past the tuning screw when the string is plucked.
.
