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The first thing to notice about the Grado GS1000i is the extreme levels of comfort offered by the design. The headphones don't actually make contact with the ear, as they are pushed away from the skull and skin by the foam pads. It is also important to say that these headphones ‘leak' a great deal of the sound, everyone in the room will be able to tell what you are listening to.
Grado say that the response is as flat as possible, and I would confirm that this is the case. Initially I was pleasantly surprised to hear improvements over the older Grado GS1000's, a long term headphone which have seen thousands of hours use in my house. Initially the GS1000i's sounded harsh, but this is a common trait of Grado phones, and they take several hundred hours of listening time to fully bed in. I was even hearing changes with my older GS1000's after 6 months use.
For those of you who like a headphone with a lot of volume capability, these will not disappoint. I was turning the volume down in pain, long before I reached the limits of the drivers.
After a few months of burning the headphones in, I decided to make some early assessments of the sound quality. This was after around 350 hours of playback time.
Playing the Austrian Harmonia Mundi recording of Schubert Nacht und Traume with Matthias Goerne and Alexander Schmalcz highlighted the astounding dynamic range of these headphones. Matthias Goerne's voice was highlighted with bombastic depth and with such clarity that I was almost checking to see if he had walked into the room.
Linn Records Frederic Chopin Sonatas Opp.35 and 58, Barcarolle in F Sharp major, and Sonata No. 3 in B minor were delivered in such an intense manner that it was hard to believe that I was actually listening to headphones. This recording is a testament to Linn Records mastering technique, because I could even pick out pianist Artur Pizarro's breathing in the quieter passages. The headphones injected very little colour, if any, yet were able to let the passages breathe in such a musical manner that the emotions of the various passages were easily conveyed. It was actually impossible to stop listening to this disc, so over an hour later I moved onto the next of my ‘test' discs.
Moving from the classical genre to modern jazz, we gave All or Nothing At All a play from the Diana Krall Love Scenes album released in 1997. The opening salvo of plucked double bass notes from Christian McBride initially caught me by surprise as the depth and focusing was better than any other rendition of this track to date. Even surpassing my experiences with the Sennheiser HD800 headphones and RS1's. Diana Krall's sultry, breathless voice was perfectly reproduced and by closing my eyes I was transported to a cigar smoke filled, softly lit jazz club in America.
The Grado Gs1000i does reveal problems with a recording and then multiples them ten fold. Many older recordings would exhibit flat dynamics and hissy background noise, but it will vary from recording to recording. With this specific configuration however, we have no treble or tone controls to help ‘mask' any weaknesses, hearing exactly how a track was recorded. There is no compensation, no false enhancements, just pure imaging and feedback from this equipment, warts and all.
Listening to well recorded folk and acoustic pop music would be exhilarating however, with musicans perfectly placed within the sound stage. Vocals are rich, and full bodied with a silky smooth top end and no indication of sibilance. Once I experienced such pin point precision with soundstaging it really was hard to go back to anything else. A group of singers, such as the Medieval Babes, or All Angels were so accurately positioned that I felt I was standing within touching distance in all directions.
Neil Young's Harvest Moon is an excellent recording and the Grado GS1000i's reproduced this perfectly, even surpassing the quality delivered by my Dali Grand Coupe speakers connected to a Krell Amplifier. His distinctive voice was rendered with subtle dialect and a hint of frailty which makes Neil Young such an appealing artist. His aggressive guitar from early years was communicated with passion and accuracy.
Throughout all our testing, the astounding levels of transparency and dynamic resolution with endless levels of detail really do need to be heard to be believed. Music is delivered with perfect fluidity and a lack of colouration.
Led Zeppelin's back catalogue was accurately reproduced, and while there was a certain amount of background hiss from the analogue recordings, the classic dynamic of Page and Plant's interplay transported me back to when I was a kid. We can debate the technical pros and cons of various designs, but if a set of headphones can bring out an unfettered feeling of nostalgia then it doesn't really matter.
As a matter of curiousity, I removed the headphones from the Graham Slee Headphone amplifier and plugged them directly into an older amplifier and CD player I have in the house. Most of the dynamic range and soundstaging was lost in a single blow. If you are interested in these headphones, be aware that buying them to use with a cheap hi-fi system is not going to miraculously cure your listening experience. They simply need high quality partnering equipment to approach their best output quality.
