CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Headphone Measurements => Topic started by: thefoundMIDrange on December 02, 2012, 11:22:08 PM
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I know not many are into grado sound signatures around here, for good reason, they don't measure or sound fantastic. But if we can go back and consider grado to be joe grado era, is anyone interested in investigating the role of cups and driver interaction when considered in the grado style phone. Namely, the typical grado/magnum driver and simple cup with no damping material. I have some interesting ideas as to how we can get closer to the old joe sound using wood cups and at much less cost and have some measurements to back up the theories. But it would take some interested forumites here and some back and forth discussion to flesh out the possibilities. I feel there is untapped potential in that style of phone that has been lying there dormant while john grado took the ship and sailed it in a different direction. We can steer it back on course. Any pirates willing to board ship?
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the idea is that the driver should be held in a fairly resonant free state but that the cup resonating is paradoxically how this is achieved. The cup is tuned through mass, wall thickness, length, shape and finish treatment to accept the spent vibrations from the driver, sending them away from the driver itself in a quick manner so that the driver can function in a more stable environment compared to a realatively high mass cup that is more sonically dead and non resonant in which case the vibratins created at the driver location tend to feed back on itself leaving the driver in a less desirable position to do its thing. This is my experience with trying various cups and the more delicate cups always sound nicer and seem to measure nicer in all aspects. Better than any standard rs or ps grado. More fine tuning could be done with particular frequencies using cup geometry if needed as I 've already found the most synergystic woods .......
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If one wanted to prove that cup choice (wood choice, cup design, wall thickness etc.) had any positive effect on the 2k shout etc., one would have to measure a specific driver in a traditional cup and the exact same driver in the newly designed cup. With all the other variables kept the same. Otherwise everything would be just speculation and subjective impressions.
Yet, manufacturers generally put much too little effort, it seems to me, into cup and pad design as well as damping. Cheap production and making remittance is one side of the problem, the customers' acceptance of mediocre products at ridiculous prices in their quest for the 'magic' sound the other.
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I'm definitely in ! :wheel:
I think progress made by John Grado is more about ergonomics than sound quality. People complained about comfort, Grado came up with the L-cushion, people still complained about comfort, Grado came up with G-cushion --> Small cups looked weird with foam pads twice their size, Grado enlarged their cups.
The HP 1000 is still their best headphone in my opinion, though I haven't tried the GS and PS1000 yet. I expect them to be pretty comfortable.