STEREOPHILE
Vol.17 No.6

GRADO
SR60 HEADPHONES

What the hell is going on with headphones these days?!
By: Corey Greenberg
I mean, the past couple years have seen the whole headphone trip suddenly break on through to the other side after decades of numbingly bad sound. Yeah, the high-dollar Stax electrostatics had always been there if you really wanted some quality headphones, but even they had their problems with coloration and treble steeliness. Other than that, though, it was a real teenage wasteland, with Koss, AKG, Sony and Sennheiser all battling it out to see who could produce a less mediocre pair of headphones than the rest of the pack. If you wanted comfort, you choose Sennheiser. Bass, Koss. "Studio sound," AKG. Me, I was a headphone slut--I played around with all these brands, trying to find a pair I could live with, But nothing I heard was cool enough to warrant a long-term commitment.

Then suddenly, a couple of years ago, Joe Grado came out of left field with headphones that totally rewrote the book. I'd sworn off 'phones by that point, but all it took was a quick listen to those neww Grados and I had to have 'em. They were so clean, so clear, so detailed--so right. I bought the $495 HP 2s without even thinking twice, they freaked me out so bad. Now I use them all the time as my Ultimate Rez Rig--if I can't hear it with the Grados, it ain't be.

OK, so that's the High-End. But what about the low end, where me and my friends eat our government cheese and wait for the high tech to trickle down to our demograph? Sure, now you can buy $300 dynamic headphones that kill yesterday's $2000 electrostats, but the under-$100 market is still Dungville with a capital D. There's around 14,000 different models ranging from el cheapo earpuds that buzz like bees to Walkman-style squawkers to big puffy-cushioned "Digital Ready U-Bet" jobs at the top of the lines. All of these suck, and suck hard--I recently spent several days going around to various Dung Huts that sell these headphones alongside Bose speakers, microwave ovens, and Dirt devils, and when it was over I just wanted to lower myself into a tub of Noxzema and be left alone for a couple of months. Forget radiation testing on humans--I'll happily mainline any glowing syringe Uncle Sam cares to try out on me so long as he doesn't clap a pair of Satanic cheap-ass dungphones on my head while he's cooking my wooks.

And it's not just us Mud People who want ggod cheap cans, either. Even the well-healed audiophile doesn't wanna take his muy expensivo headphones along when he travels, even if they do annihilate the cheap-ass set that came with his portable CD player or Walkman. Besides which, the cool-mam Grados seem to be a pretty tough load for the portable gear I've tried them with--The Grados need quite a bit more in the way of speaker-driving juice before they sing than those little open-air giveaway 'phones, and the typical anemic output stages in portable CD and cassette players just just can't drive them to decent levels with any kind of quality. The $20 cheapest-possible Sony Walkman I bought at Target for po'-boy travel tunes burped like a fat baby when I tried driving the HP-2s with it, so I just stuck with the dungphones that came with the player when traveling and left the Grados at home. And every time I'd fly somewhere, I'd sit there with these awful 'phones quacking in my ears thinking, "OK, we lift off, I yell my demands and wave the gun. No--First I wave the gun, then I tell the pilot to fly to Cypress. Man I wish Joe Grado would do a great cheap headphone I could drive with this Walkman! I'd pay, oh, $69 clams for something like that if it was out there. Wave, then yell. Wave, yell. Soon I shall be with my brothers in the struggle again."

Joe Grado's got legendary ears--did he hear my plea?
GRADO SR60The new $69 SR60 is the cheapest model in Grado's new Prestige series of affordable headphones based on the same technology featured in the $595 HP-1 and the $495 HP-2 Signature series. Joes's nephew Johm explained to me that the Grado Mojo can basically be boiled down to one essential goal: the elimination of resonance. In devoloping the He-Man Grados, every part was specially designed and treated to reduce resonances so the dynamic speaker driver could operate from a perfectly rigid structure--Grado claims this is why they have such great resolution and freedom from coloration. You get a bit more resonance as you go down the Grado line, John says, and you lose a bit more detail and transparency, but the family resemblance between the top-of-the-line HP-1 and the el cheapo SR60 remains strong. With the SR60, Grado specifically targeted the Walkman-style headphones that come with portable CD and cassette players-- the littlest Grado has been given a higher sensitivity and an easier load than the Signature Series models to allow for better performance from the current-limited headphone circuits in most portable gear.

The SR60 looks like an HP-2 made of black plastic, with a vinyl headband instead of the HP-2's leather one. The dynamic speaker driver appears similar to the one used in the Signature Series 'phones. As with the expensive Grado's, the SR60s are adjustable to fit even the most peanut-shaped head. I found them fairly comfortable--not the most forget-U-have-them-on cans I've ever worn, but certainly not as tiresome as the He-Man Grados can be after an extended session. The foam earpads are made of the same material as the Signature Series pads, so they don't do the "Seal-A-Meal" sweat number on your ears like the closed 'phones do. The SR60's driver voice-ciol and headphone cable are made from "standard" copper wire, as opposed to the "Ultra High Purity Long Crystal" copper used in the more expensive models. As a nice touch, the SR60s come terminated with a gold 1/8" miniplug to fit portable CD and cassette players--no more having to use those Radio Shack adaptors to mate audiophile headphones with portable gear. A standard 1/4" gold phone-plug adaptor is included that snaps firmly onm and stays there for use with landlubber hi-fi.

SYSTEM

I plugged the Grados into a HeadRoom Supreme headphone amplifier, which itself was plugged into the Tape Out jacks of either an Audible Illusions Modulus 3 preamp or my own buffered passive preamp. LPs were played on a Well-Tempered Turntable fitted with a Naim ARO tonearm and Sumiko Blue Point Special or Transfiguration MC cartridges, while CDs were played on a Theta Data II transport Linque'd to Theta's Gen.III processor. Eight-tracks were heard via this bitchin' Wollensak 8050A 8T deck I found in great shape at Goodwill for 13 bucks. All these pokies was strung together with Kimber KCAG and PBJ interconnects, and everything with a tail was plugged into a Power Wedge 116 AC line conditioner.

SOUND

Man oh man do I wish these cheap Grados were around when I bought the HP 2s! I'm not saying that the SR60s are as good as the He-Man Grado cans, but they get you about 85% of the way there, and for a fraction of the price. These things kill the dungphones, even the high-dollar ones that come in the lavish plastic boxes at your local Sound Whorehouse. And if you're still using those cheap-ass throwaway headphones that came with your portable CD or cassette player, you won't believe how much better your music will sound when you first plug these $69 Grados in. Even though on an obsolute scale that $20 Walkman I got is a truly lousy product, it was capable of much better sound quality than the crappy headphones that came with it. If the SR60s could make a $20 Walkman listenable, think what they could do for your $200 portable CD player.

The SR60 definitely sounds like a Grado--smooth, clear midrange, gobs of detail, killer bass, and silky-smooth highs that let you listen to music for hours without the fatigue of many far more expensive 'phones. Compared to the HP 2, the SR60 is more forward in the midrange, with a brighter overall balance that lacks the extreme smoothness of the $495 Grado. This made for a livelier, more upfront sound than the more refined and neutral HP 2: These two headphones were clearly from the same family, but the cheaper SR60 definitely had a slightly less hearthrough quality through the range than the almost characterless HP 2. Vocals were a bit rougher and less precisely defined than through the HP 2s, and mixes that tended toward brightness--like Kim Wilson's Tigerman CD--were just a little more raucous with the cheap Grados.

I need to put this into perspective. Compared to anything I've heard out there under $200 or so, these $69 Grados sound like the Voice O'God. They may give up some ground to their big brothers, but they handily plunder anything even remotely near their price. In fact, I'd choose these $69 Grados over any of the Stax electrostats I've heard--to my earas, they sound more natural and less colored through the midrange. If I was monitoring a recording, I'd feel perfectly comfortable using the Sr60s; while I haven't heard a Stax yet, I wouldn't second-guess in terms of what I was hearing vs what I thought was actually making it to tape.

And wait till you hear these cheap Grados on some music that's got real bass! This may actually be their strong suit. Although direct comparison with the more evenly balanced HP 2s gave a the SR60s the impression that they were a little lean in the low end, the SR60s have an amazing bass range--tight and articulate.
The clarity and power of these budget Grados is just totally unheard of in this price range--HeadRoom's Tyll Hertsens came up behind me at the Stereophile party this past WCES and plopped a pair of haeadphones on my head that were cranking Primus's Pork Soda; I stood there grooving to Les Claypool's bizarro bass lines wondering what new super headphone Tyll was hipping me to. They were SR60s, driven by a HeadRoom and a portable CD player.

"Can you %#*$ BELIEVE these cheap Grados?!?!"

Tyll screamed at me.
So what don't you get from the cheap Grados that you do from the HP 2s and other He-Man cans? The SR60s lack the ultimate HF smoothness and freedom from midrange coloration of the expensive headphones. With the HP 2s driven by the HeadRoom Supreme, it was easy to hear way the hell back into the farthest reaches of the recording, all the way below the noise floor--even the slightest bit of mike preamp hiss or studio background noise was laid bare to hear without even so much as a squint. The SR60s have excellent resolution, but they were clearly bettered by the HP 2s--the difference in low-level detail retrieval between the HeadRoom's Process circuit and bypass listening were much more apparent with the HP 2s, for example.
Anyway, the point is that low-level stuff like this is what you don't get so much of with the SR60s when compared to the He-Man 'phones. The budget Grados have higher resolution than almost any high-end loudspeaker on the market, but if you want the ultimate in detail, you need to pony up the dough for the Signatures.

As far as driving requirements go, the SR60 was much more tolerant of what it was plugged into than the HP 2. In addition to being more sensitive, the budget Grado 'phones must present an easier load--I could drive them to really loud levels with even the $20 Walkman, and the same unit couldn't deal with the HP 2s at all without really fuzzing out of course, driving them with something like the HeadRoom amplifier gave much cleaner sound with bass that the Walkman's headphone outputs don't even hint at, but I got more than acceptable results with the SR60s plugged straight into the headphone outouts of CD and tape players.

CONCLUSION

I've really been on a roll lately with giant-killin' Real World hi-fi. After a pretty disappointing year spent wading through the mid-fi morass trying to find some really musical gear that me and my friends could afford, I'm finally starting to field some outstanding budget products. Now I can add the $69 Grado SR60 headphones to the list. Way better than that honky crap supplied with portable CD and cassette players, the budget Grados stand comparison with audiophile headphones costing many times their price.
I really wish the SR60 had been around when I impulse-bought the $495 HP 2--it may not be quite as refined, but the niethwer am I. For what I want out of a pair of headphones, the SR60 at $69 would've been what I took home. Way recommended!