Headphone Heights

How I dealt with the Grado harshness

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Alternative to Grados posted by DSG on March 26, 2013 at 13:04:28

I spent a few years experimenting with my 325I phones. No question the bass and mids are awesome.

But like you, I couldn't tolerate the harshness.

FINALLY, I found a solution.

1: can't use solid state amplification,must use valve amps. I also tried the mixed SS and tube integrateds but still just doesn't work to quell the harshness.

2: most tube headphone amps however cannot provide adequate current at 30 ohms. I burnt out two chinese all tube headphone amps driving the grados. the typical inexpensive (<$250) headphone integrated amp has output impedance around 200 ohms.

3: the solution I ended up with is to use a high end tube preamp PLUS a musical fidelity x10-v3 tube buffer between preamp and phones. The Grounded Grid tube preamp is lightning fast, incredible bandwith, and also very musical and sweet sounding. But it could not provide the current to drive the phones without the buffer.

Now I can hardly take the phones off my head- it's that good!

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