The Grado GS-1000 is an audiophile headphone.
For various reasons a majority of the comments posted on the various forums have been critical or dismissive of this remarkable achievement of John Grado.
Because I think it is the best audiophile headphone made I decided I couldn't sit back and be silent anymore.
So what is the audiophile experience?
An audiophile system attempts to recreate the recorded event as close to its original sound as possible. This requires a very refined source, a clean power source, excellent amplifier, cables and speakers (headphone) . Obviously this is quite expensive. So it's not for everyone.
Should everyone aim to have an audiophile system?
Not necessarily. There are several reasons why faithful reproduction of the musical content may not even be desireable. If most of the recorded music a person likes to listen to is not recorded in a natural accoustic (the instruments are individually miked without reference to each other), or is recorded with indifferent quality equipment, then faithfully reproducing the music can be quite disappointing.
This isn't to criticise people who listen to music that has been recorded this way. The ONLY criteria for assembling an audio system is that it provides an enjoyable experience for the listener. Along with these considerations, money constraints require a judicious selection of components to give the best experience at a particular price point. Some components are specifically designed to provide “euphonic distortion” which makes non-audiophile recordings more listenable.
The Grado GS-1000 is expensive because it is made to very exacting standards and in very small quantities to satisfy a small group of audiophile headphone listeners. I will try to give an impression of what the experience is like.
I primarily listen to classical music. Out of all classical recording most are recorded to deliver a performance as if it had been recorded with just two microphones which gives the most realistic accoustical experience. The reason 2 mics will give a realistic experience is that when the performers make noise with their instruments or voices the sound doesn't just go directly to the mic but also travels to all the walls, floor and ceiling and then that noise bounces around and some of it eventually arrives at the mic also. There are many thousands of reflections. An audiophile system tries to faithfully reproduce all of these ambient reflected sounds as well as the direct sounds. The result is a sense of the space in which the performance occurred.
A choral work recorded in a cathedral is a good example of this. If I listen to such a work on cheap phones then you only get a hazy idea that the performance was in a big space. With the Grado GS1000 the sense of space is amazing. Everyone who has heard my system comments that the soundstage is huge. This is because the ambient detail is faithfully reproduced.
Another corallary feature of the GS1000 is that when only a few performers are recorded, the sound of each performer is palpably three dimensional. The voice, for instance, stands in it's own space but is surrounded by space defined by the reflections of the voice.
The timbre of the phones is also excellent. The GS1000 does have a slight treble spike and an accentuated bass which can be handled by listening at a somewhat lower volume. Due to the “loudness” effect this causes the listener to preceive the frequency response as being flat. Since the phone provide so much detail this would be quite satisfactory for most listeners. I listen on a computer audio system and can use an equalizer in Foobar2000 to fix these slight peaks.
The overall sound is full bodied and realistic. Compared to my VMPS speakers which are a hybrid design with ribbon tweater, planar midrange, and dynamic woofer, the sound is surprisingly comparable. Good speakers deliver a more realistic three-dimensional image but don't usually provide such a microscopic look into the soundstage as headphones can.
I'm extraordinarily pleased with the Grado headphones which were preceded by Beyerdynamic DT990s, Sennheiser HD600, and then Sony SA5000 headphones.
