[buffalowings]

Quote:

 
Cmon BW - can we take the motor vehicle discussion to another forum, please ? Better yet, to a drag strip, where 9 second 'street' cars would shut you all down. The quarter mile got a lot sillier the day TCP/IP was invented.
 
 

oh, I was thinking of peddle powering my way to victory...
 

 

[desktophifi]

Quote:

 
Cmon BW - can we take the motor vehicle discussion to another forum, please ? Better yet, to a drag strip, where 9 second 'street' cars would shut you all down. The quarter mile got a lot sillier the day TCP/IP was invented.

 
Yeah.. this is not Motor-fi, lol
 
lets get back into hp's. 
 

 

[supersleuth]

About the bowl pads: the way to keep their advantages in clarity and soundstage, while losing the upper-midrange glare, is simply to wear them quite far forward on your ears. The frequency response snaps into very nice balance with just a pleasant hint of detail-enhancing brightness, imaging is improved, and as a bonus I even find them more comfortable because they don't compress the outer edges of my ears. Worn this way I feel the sound of my SR80s is hard to beat at anywhere near the price.

 

[Danthrax]

Honestly this thread is pointless. If you think Grado has lost their reputation you must be blind. Look around the forums and it's pretty clear that people still like Grado and you are just being pretentious. Threads like this are pointless all headphone companies change like AKG a lot of people think the older models are better the Sextet etc. It's the same thing with Grado a minority that are voicing their opinion to try to somehow make people that bought and enjoy their current Grados feel bad because they don't have ones that were made 10 years ago before they cared about hi-fi. And remember opinions are like a******s everyone has one and some smell worse than others.

 

[estreeter]

Danthrax, whilst I agree with many of your points, it may be time for a Bex and a good lie down. There will always be Grado naysayers, but they arent worth an increase in our collective heartbeat rate, much less blood pressure.

 

[rhythmdevils]

It's not simply a matter of better or worse..

The newer models that John made, with the bowl pads are about coloring the signal in a fun and pleasing way (if you like the color, which I do not)
The older models that Joe made were about the fidelity or purity of the signal- neutrality and transparency.

So one is not better for everyone, it depends on what you want out of audio gear. Old vs new grados represent polar opposite philosophies and approaches to what headphones should accomplish. And while I prefer the approach of the older Grados, the fact is that the newer approach (whether it was the sound change, or some other change in marketing or elsewhere that John made) saved the company from going out of business.

I think it's likely that it was marketing changes that saved the company moreso than the sound changes, because I don't think people really knew about the Joe Grado phones. As someone else said, he was ahead of his time and likely didn't know how to market or advertise his products to communicate to people what they were about. But whatever it was, people bought a lot more of John's phones than Joe's. But marketing aside, if the HP1000 was still in production, a lot of people would prefer the RS1. People used to be a lot more vocal on this forum about thinking that the HP1000 sounded boring, but now they have a legendary status like the K1000, which seems to make some like them who wouldn't otherwise. So it's really just a matter of preference and what you want.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Well maybe the problem is that Joe took the Grado style drivers to the peak of performance pushing the limit of the design. And any attempt to change upon that, which any successful company does, just came up short because Joe reached a level of perfection that that pushed the physical limits of the drivers. You also have to consider that maybe the chemicals used in the previous coatings are no longer available or could have possibly been banned from production in the U.S. Just some thoughts.

Umm, no.
 

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

As long as "we're" posting silly stuff, what is the current Porche equivalent of the SR-60i and what Porche is over 20X (PS1000) that price?  
 
People, you are not making sense.

Entry level Boxter, entry level Caymen, entry level Cayenne.
 

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

About the bowl pads: the way to keep their advantages in clarity and soundstage, while losing the upper-midrange glare, is simply to wear them quite far forward on your ears. The frequency response snaps into very nice balance with just a pleasant hint of detail-enhancing brightness, imaging is improved, and as a bonus I even find them more comfortable because they don't compress the outer edges of my ears. Worn this way I feel the sound of my SR80s is hard to beat at anywhere near the price.

The frequency balance is upset because the distance between the ear and the driver is changed by the bowl pads.  Joe understood this, I'm not sure the new Grado does.
 

 

[JxK]

Quote:

About the bowl pads: the way to keep their advantages in clarity and soundstage, while losing the upper-midrange glare, is simply to wear them quite far forward on your ears. The frequency response snaps into very nice balance with just a pleasant hint of detail-enhancing brightness, imaging is improved, and as a bonus I even find them more comfortable because they don't compress the outer edges of my ears. Worn this way I feel the sound of my SR80s is hard to beat at anywhere near the price.

Something even simpler is to simply flip the bowl pads around and wear them backwards. The opening becomes a little narrower, and the bottoms of the bowls (which now go on your ears) are firmer, resulting in a little more bass impact as well as cutting down slightly on brightness. Soundstage and airiness are unaffected. It's a quick and easy mod, though the comfort does take a slight hit. Nonetheless, if you give them a little time you quickly adjust. From there, I just add a lowshelf of +5db @ 100Hz (exactly where grados start to sharply rolloff the bass). This means the grados actually have a physical kick in the low end, and end up sounding considerably better overall. Try it. It's probably the easiest mod in existence for grados.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Danthrax, have you spent any time with a HP-1000?

The reason I value my pair is because they're deliciously neutral. I'm big on neutral. I've collected headphones and speakers that are neutral. If the RS-1 was neutral and the HP-1000 was colored, I'd still have the RS-1 and would have sold the HP-1000. I don't care if something is in production or not. Most of the time, I listen to a HD-800. I love the sound signature and it is very comfortable. I also love being able to recommend it because it is in production. I try not to make much of the out of production headphones because some of them are hard to come by. I'd rather recommend headphones that are easy to find - I want other people to enjoy having a great pair of headphones, too.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Honestly this thread is pointless. If you think Grado has lost their reputation you must be blind. Look around the forums and it's pretty clear that people still like Grado and you are just being pretentious. Threads like this are pointless all headphone companies change like AKG a lot of people think the older models are better the Sextet etc. It's the same thing with Grado a minority that are voicing their opinion to try to somehow make people that bought and enjoy their current Grados feel bad because they don't have ones that were made 10 years ago before they cared about hi-fi. And remember opinions are like a******s everyone has one and some smell worse than others.

crackers
 

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

It's not simply a matter of better or worse..

The newer models that John made, with the bowl pads are about coloring the signal in a fun and pleasing way (if you like the color, which I do not)
The older models that Joe made were about the fidelity or purity of the signal- neutrality and transparency.

So one is not better for everyone, it depends on what you want out of audio gear. Old vs new grados represent polar opposite philosophies and approaches to what headphones should accomplish. And while I prefer the approach of the older Grados, the fact is that the newer approach (whether it was the sound change, or some other change in marketing or elsewhere that John made) saved the company from going out of business.

I think it's likely that it was marketing changes that saved the company moreso than the sound changes, because I don't think people really knew about the Joe Grado phones. As someone else said, he was ahead of his time and likely didn't know how to market or advertise his products to communicate to people what they were about. But whatever it was, people bought a lot more of John's phones than Joe's. But marketing aside, if the HP1000 was still in production, a lot of people would prefer the RS1. People used to be a lot more vocal on this forum about thinking that the HP1000 sounded boring, but now they have a legendary status like the K1000, which seems to make some like them who wouldn't otherwise. So it's really just a matter of preference and what you want.

There's a lot of truth to what you say.  Good points!
 
 

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Danthrax, have you spent any time with a HP-1000?

The reason I value my pair is because they're deliciously neutral. I'm big on neutral. I've collected headphones and speakers that are neutral. If the RS-1 was neutral and the HP-1000 was colored, I'd still have the RS-1 and would have sold the HP-1000. I don't care if something is in production or not. Most of the time, I listen to a HD-800. I love the sound signature and it is very comfortable. I also love being able to recommend it because it is in production. I try not to make much of the out of production headphones because some of them are hard to come by. I'd rather recommend headphones that are easy to find - I want other people to enjoy having a great pair of headphones, too.

 

 
 

 

[supersleuth]

Quote:

The frequency balance is upset because the distance between the ear and the driver is changed by the bowl pads.  Joe understood this, I'm not sure the new Grado does.
 

No, worn the way I described (and I really do mean forward, with a good bit of the back parts of the ears left uncovered) the frequency balance is surprisingly neutral. In reply to the reversed-bowl suggestion, I certainly wouldn't want them any bassier (but then I don't like bass-heavy cans).