It wasn't until I got serious about headphones, aided by the conquest of digital music, that I had any appreciation of just how widely divergent artists and records were in terms of tonal balance. Some studio recordings are just a hair away from garage-band quality. Some are just the opposite, with crystalline highs. You try to find a headphone with a tonal balance that fits as many artists and styles as possible, but it's a pipe dream. My GS1000 hated sugary recordings. My HF-2 hates muddy tracks. It's weird because just when you listen to a track and wonder if what you have is too much of a good thing, the next track will show such a difference in tonal balance, and you end up appreciating what you have.
The great thing about flats is their capacity to hold onto that leaking bass so well that everything becomes dynamic. Everything - from trumpet blasts to acoustic guitar strums - just has more texture. There's bass, which is something we all celebrate, but then there's something else - something that brings me back to Grados again and again. It's that dynamic quality where you feel more than just percussive bass. Even instruments in the upper register can have a percussive quality. I love the gurgle of a sax, the buzz of a trumpet, the resonance of a violin bow being drawn across the string, as well as that breathy quality of a flute or the complexity behind the honking of a clarinet. Unfiltered, Grados capture the subtler dynamics of a lot of instruments you don't normally associate with bass.
