- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
- Posts
- 5,408
- Likes
- 1,327
RS1 (semi-vintage: nice old style beautiful wood cups with the buttons)
Pads disintegrating - might be better this way. Pad crumbs all over my ears and face. A little shouty in the midrange. It's been a long long time since I've owned these (1998.) Did I say shouty in the midrange? Has similarities to AD2000, which sounds like a refined, delicate, pass the Grey-Poupon version of RS1. Good treble - no wierd spots unlike many other Grado models I've heard. Extremely open sound. Good at extraction of musical information. Clarity is a plus, but "blackground" kind of grey. Classic Grado articulate bass - I love that. Has it's charms. More midrangy than trebly - lower Grados can be just more trebly. The wood must do some funky stuff to hide the ringing that's more obvious in lesser models, or maybe the drivers more damped. Great match with the BA (and current tube compliment.) Still listening and having a fun time. Must be doing something right. Yeah, this headphones does extract real information, otherwise they'd be off my head now. I suspect their FR may be better than other headphones with this batch. The midrange glare is starting to get to me - it's ringing for sure. Wierd, not as much treble ringing heard - the cups have got to be doing something. Oh! My head is starting to hurts. I like the sound of these, but I'm not as young as I used to be. Hmmm, I would buy these at $500.Messed up looking plots coming up:
This one is an oddity. It sounds much better than it measures. It is far superior to the HF-2 and SR80i in terms of refinement. The 2kHz ridge is what's responsible for the shoutyness. The 5kHz ridge didn't bother me too much - it needs to take it's time to do that. It's possible I'm less sensitive to ringing at 5kHz than compared to 7kHz or 10kHz.
Very interesting compared to HF2. HF2 has more ringing at 9kHz (which I hear and don't like), but equal (L) or more (R) around 5kHz. HF2 lacks the honk-honk, but I liked the way this effect was implemented on the RS1 with the wood cups.