grado upgrade

[admin_exported]

well i have a pair of the fine grado sr60 headphones and i am looking to upgrade to a new pair of cans, but i am stuck with all the recomendations. hopefully the good people on this forum can help the budget i have is about 120 pound. and i listen to alot of modern day chart music, rap, and hip hop. here is the list i have in mind

grado sr80is cans

super lux hd668b cans

grado sr125is cans

also any recomendations from you ppl are welcome

thanks people

 

[idc]

With £120 your 'upgrade' is going to be more of a change. Of the ones you have listed the SR125s are IMO the best, but the difference is not going to be huge at all. So you could go closed backed and detailed (as opposed to open and dynamic) with something like the AKG K271 MkII or you could go retro and get some Bang & Olufsen Form 1 headphones. The latter is a bit of a left field choice, but the fun is in the research. Flavour of the month at the moment is the Audio Technica ath M50 closed backed headphone, so you could consider that as well. The all rounder would be the Sennheiser HD 595. Lastly, would noise reduction headphones be of any use to you?

The environment you listen in should have a big impact on what headphone you buy.

 

[Anonymous]

well i listen to the headphones in my room at night time, so i would consider the noise reduction cans if the detail is going to be noticeable. i have the upgrade bug striving for more detail i want some new can that will give me the wow feeling of the sr60s i got a few years back

thanks again

 

[idc]

I would check out the AKG range. But, and it is a big but, AKG tends to be a grower rather than a wower. People often go on about AKGs take a long time to burn in and attribute that to the headphones. But it is more of a case of getting used to the sound, since the alck of bass oomph means at first they can sound a bit dull. Instead of bass oomph you get loads of bass detail, allied to crisp treble.

 

[smuggs]

i have that you need to touch £250 to get a lot better than them grado 60/80's you have i think you have a good pair. i would guess that if you sell you 60's and get the 125's that should improve a few areas but maybe parts of the music you cant hear so like idc said it may be a waste of time and better keeping them and going for another brand and then you may get the nice problem that some music sounds better on one and some sounds better on the other

 

[Anonymous]

thanks people think im going to go with your advice and change brands, not heard a lot about akg's so can you recomend a few models to me............... ?

thanks again

 

[SpiceWeasel]

Out of interest what equipment do you use when listening to your phones, what are your phones plugged into? Depending on your kit you might get a better improvement with a proper headphone amp or a combined dac/headphone amp.

I have the SR80i Grados which were originally plugged straight into my pc's headphone socket. I have a decent sound card in my pc (Creative X-Fi) and the Grados sounded pretty good but a bit restrained. I then tried my phones on my dads Marantz amp and the phones sounded better, more detailed and clearer than using my pc's headphone socket. My dad has a pair of the older SR60 phones and I was a bit shocked when my new SR80i's didn't sound anywhere near as good via my pc.

So my pc setup was really holding back the true performance of my SR80i's, I was advised on here to look for a proper dac/headphone amp and after lots of questions and a fair bit of research ended up buying this little box of goodness. My headphones now sound fantastic with a huge increase in sound quality over my old pc setup. My phones sounded good via the Marantz but sound even better via the little box of tricks.

I bought the Fubar at the beginning of the year when it was on special offer for around £120 ish, I think there are a few options with your budget especially if you consider second hand. idc is our resident headphone expert so he might be able to advise something suitable within budget.

 

[Anonymous]

well spice weasel, i do use the headphones through my laptop for ease of use instead of keep changing cds all the time. im not sure what sound card i have, its just the one that came with it. so do you think i should get a new sound card and then try the grados again .......... ? and if so you got any recomendations ?

thanks

 

[Blackdawn]

No I wouldn't try changing the sound card in your laptop. The best way to go would be to get a DAC/Headphone amp solution. e.g. Firestone's Fubar's or Beresford's range. There are others makes to chose from. You would then use the USB input/SPDIF to the DAC and plug the headphones into the output.

 

[Anonymous]

nice one black dawn i have checked some dac's out and have come across this one http://www.richersounds.com/product/cd-players-recorders-dacs-cassette-decks/cambridge-audio/dacmagic/camb-dacmagic-08-blk what do you think ?

thanks

 

[idc]

You would be better off with the Firestone Fubar or Beresford as they combine DAC with headphone amp. I should have asked about your source. A bog standard sound card IME is not the best as it is noisy and robs the headphones of detail and dynamics.

 

[Anonymous]

i have found the firestone fubar 3 on amazon for 239 dollars, is this a good deal .....?. so when i do get this dac, i just plug it into my laptop and then into my amp for normal use through ( the speakers ) and when using the headphones straight into the dac ?.

the size of the dac is tiny lol

thanks once again fellow forumers

 

[Blackdawn]

The Fubar 3 Mk2 is 229 Euros on their site today. It should sound better than your standard card in the laptop but I'm not sure how much better. Yes you can plug the Fubar 3 Mk2 into a normal Intergrated HiFi amp using the line level outputs but you can't alter the vol. You would just use a USB cable and connect your laptop into the USB in of the Fubar 3. Then if you want to use the headphones you'll just plug those into the Fubar's headphone amp output.

 

[DavieCee]

This is interesting to me from a personal point of view.

I have the Grado 80's and they sound completely different, ie better, when plugged into my amp than when in my iphone or laptop so I would recommend some kind of amplification to drive the headphones.

The question I have is for when playing my downloaded music at home I simpy use the headphone socket connected to my amp.

I thought this would be sufficient but I get the impression from this thread that I would be far better off with a DAC in between the laptop & amp instead of relying on the soundcard in my Macbook Pro. Will the DAC give that much improvement?

 

[Anonymous]

In short yes. I use active speakers with built in dac and music via laptop sounds great.

 

[Anonymous]

hi mark, not sure where youre at currently with upgrading but i would have chosen the SR125's. I have a pair and love them. I tried upgrading from them to the 225's but felt it a backward step, even the SR325i's didnt persuade me to ditch the 125's. I had to get some RS2's before i felt i had really moved forward. In my opinion the SR125's represent the best value Grado cans. I still own mine albeit they are hooked up to my PC now as my RS2's are taking pride of place on my rack.