"I must say, though, that my impression of the Grados is the exact opposite of James63's. I find them rich and warm (though not syrupy or bloated), rather than "bright and forward," as James stated (perhaps we're listening to different models)."
Alright I generally try not to argue with people on the forums (it is childish and we all heard different) and I do not mean to disrespect you with my following statements but I don't know how else to put it.
With out dancing around the subject you are wrong about the tonal balance of the Grado SR80. I have owned about 10 different pairs of "high-end" headphones and the Grados are bright with no bass extension. It has been a while sense I have owned Grados but the models I believe I had were the RS-1 ($700ish) and MS-2i ($300ish).
I would guess you just lack the experience of hearing better headphones (nothing wrong with that) that are actually rich and warm. Below I have added a link to a graph that compares the Grado SR80 to a headphone that is "rich and warm" the Sennheizer HD650.
In the graph you can see that the SR80 is up 8db @ 10,000hz, 5db @ 4khz and the bass takes a nose dive at 60hz. The sound stage is also very forward (think horns here) is comparison to the 650 (which I also own). I ran both the Grados and the Senns off of a Benchmark DAC hooked up to a mac mini. Anyway the Grados sound like they measure to me.
http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=0&graphID
Alright I generally try not to argue with people on the forums (it is childish and we all heard different) and I do not mean to disrespect you with my following statements but I don't know how else to put it.
With out dancing around the subject you are wrong about the tonal balance of the Grado SR80. I have owned about 10 different pairs of "high-end" headphones and the Grados are bright with no bass extension. It has been a while sense I have owned Grados but the models I believe I had were the RS-1 ($700ish) and MS-2i ($300ish).
I would guess you just lack the experience of hearing better headphones (nothing wrong with that) that are actually rich and warm. Below I have added a link to a graph that compares the Grado SR80 to a headphone that is "rich and warm" the Sennheizer HD650.
In the graph you can see that the SR80 is up 8db @ 10,000hz, 5db @ 4khz and the bass takes a nose dive at 60hz. The sound stage is also very forward (think horns here) is comparison to the 650 (which I also own). I ran both the Grados and the Senns off of a Benchmark DAC hooked up to a mac mini. Anyway the Grados sound like they measure to me.
http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=0&graphID