When Accuracy Matters

I come to this review as a musician of 10 years with some professional recording experience.

I was looking for headphones for practicing in my apartment. The headphone I currently own (AKG K-300's) I bought years ago and bought them because they were the 'bassiest sounding' ones the local music store had. Immediately after buying them, I started creating thin sounding mixes at home. Those headphones weren't accurate, when I thought there was enough bass it was really the headphones making me think that.

Then I bought a headphone amp (so I can plug a guitar & cd player in and play along without disturbing my neighbors). Again the bassy headphones worked against me. The sound was muddy and after a while I would get frustrated, get a headache, and stop.

Thus began my quest for a quality pair of headphones. I wanted something flat (i.e. doesn't unnaturally emphasize or mask the bass, mids or treble). Something with a good bass response (i.e. could reproduce the lower frequencies). Something comfortable, and something under $100.

I did some research, and every review (I read dozens) of the Grado headphones said they were awesome. The only negative review compared them to the AKG K300's, so I suspect this guy didn't know what he was talking about. The professional reviews compared it favorably to headphones costing 2-4 times as much.

Well 3 out of 4 ain't bad. They're not comfortable, but they're cheap and they sound GREAT. The store I bought these at had a rack of Sennheisers plugged into a central CD player. The Grado was the only other set of headphones on the rack. It was easy to compare these headphones to the Sennheisers.

Next to the Grado's, all of the Sennheisers sounded flawed. That's right. These were too bass-y, those didn't have any highs, those had weird mids, etc. The Grado headphones were accurate and clear.

In our bass-boost adicted culture it's hard to adjust to realistic sounding music, which is, I suspect why the Bose Wave Radio gets such a bad rap, though I haven't heard one personally. See, Bass Boost makes any system sound better and hides flaws.

When I got back to the office, I A/B'd these with a pair of Sony headphones I always thought sounded pretty good. After a few minutes I didn't want to listen to the Sony's anymore. I would've rather listened to silence than hear that distorted view of the music. They boosted the bass unnaturally, cut off the hights, and the mids sounded just plain weird.

When I got them home and started listening through my CD collection I was blown away by the clarity. My whole collection sounds better.

What is that noise in Stairway to Heaven? It sounds like John Paul Jones releasing a pedal on his organ. Did you know the computer in Paranoid Android (by Radiohead) talks throughout the song? Did you hear those horn hits in the first chorus of Save Me (by Aretha Franklin). What about that guy talking? They thought they turned them off, but the must have blead through. I heard all these little things.

The real kicker was when I went back and listened to some stuff I had recorded at a professional studio. For the first time ever it sounded like it sounded in the studio.

When you're mixing or mastering a song, you mix it on professional studio monitors in a room that's been specially treated so it doesn't emphasize any frequencies over others. Then you take that mix out to your car or walkman to see how it stands up to being played on a crappy system.

These headphones let you hear what the artists heard as they were mixing their songs. If you love music, or if you have to hear accurately because you're mixing or analyzing music, these are probably the most accurate headphones in this price range.

If you're making the adjustment from a system that hypes the bass (and your walkman or stereo might even if these headphones don't), keep a few things in mind.

First, your system isn't accurate. Sure lots of bass sounds good (I'm a bass player, I should know), but it isn't accurate. If "boomin bass" is important to you, you might consider skipping these headphones, or plugging them into a system with a bass boost.

Second there's a phenonena called the Fletcher-Munsen Curve. Basically, we don't hear accurately. The quieter music is, the harder it is for us to hear the bass. the louder the music the more bass we hear. That means that if you're listening to music quietly you won't hear the bass as clearly as you do the mids and treble. This would go for live music as well, so this isn't a weird recorded music thing.

That means if you're comparing these headphones to a bassier pair, you might think the others are more accurate if you're listening at low volumes. They're not. For proof and a demonstration of this, turn your Radio or TV all the way down until you can barely hear it. What part of the music do you hear? Probably the vocals, snare drum, cymbals, and maybe keyboards and guitar. Odds are you can't hear the bass or kick drum at all. Some forms of techo and heavy metal, and some stereos may not behave this way, but trust me, this is the way the ear behaves.

Some people say these headphones are uncomfortable. Well, I would agree with them. The foam padding isn't enough to prevent the hard plastic from touching your ears, and they're a little tight (but you can carefully unbend them). I put them a little forward on my ears and that makes them more comfortable, but enough people have complained about this that I would expect Grado to look at this.