hot diggitty, more lists.
grado sr-60: thick chocolate-y sound with excessive mid and lower bass warmth in a diffused presentation. extremely forgiving, with cheaper cd players the end result is completely colored but strangely enjoyable. a foot tapper, head bobber's headphone, great for grooving, beat based material, or "background" listening. i have no reservations at all with their portability, my favorite cans for on the go listening. in my experience adding an amplifier isn't a significant change in overall quality.
grado sr-125: think sr-60 trying harder. top end is a tad more extended in perceived response if not sweeter, tizzy and smeared inner detail, in many cases the nuances of the musicians are lost. vocals have a throaty quality, overall the sound is disjointed and jumbled. liked the cha47 as an amp.
grado sr-225: nice little home headphone that performs well with a lot of what i listen to. i like its effect on electric guitars, not audiophile level of reproduction by any stretch, but interesting to me nonetheless. resolves complicated passages better than the other grados i've used, i think its a great all around headphone. give them something with a beat and they'll sing, ask them to do anything subtle in scale and they give up. performs very well with the cha47 altoids and anthem 6922/ss headphone jack.
grado rs-2: surprisingly i think it sounds fantastic straight out of a headphone jack without an external amplifier. the only pair of grados i've used that sounded okay with the mg head dt, but still better with the cha47; i tried every tube set i had with my anthem and they still don't jive. i don't think it compares to the rest of the product line and is simply way past the peak of price/perfomance ratio. the pads took like 20 hours (not kidding) to conform to the shape of my ears, reasonably comfortable but need a five minute break for every hour of listening. decent depth, sometimes excellent tone, thats about it. at their best at extremely low playback volume, where their tipped extremes carry more balance and they still have some coherency, turn the volume up and the sound turns into mud. i've thrown at least 100 music titles at these things and maybe 6 were really good. biggest selling point is that they look cool and kinda retro.
senheiser hd580 - not sure how the msrp thing applies here, since there's no way anyone would pay $350 in the current market. to my ears, the top end lacks some sparkle and realism, double bass sounds exagerated, and there's a suckout with some strings in the midrange. other than that, they resolve information startingly well, have been responsive to changes upstream, and are excellent with vinyl.
i'm very impressed with the 580's ability to dig out detail, provide authority on dynamic swings, and the lack of smearing on notes. however, they took a lot to open up in my system and i just don't feel that they provide a believable soundstage compared to speakers (nor so any headphones i've used). regardless i think that the current market price makes them the best bargain in audio. definitely flawed, but livably so.
i've amplified them with a cha47, modded anthem preamp, mg head dt w/wing mod, cary slp-2002, cary sei300, and cary sli-80.
thanks for giving it a shot duncan,
carlo.
