Quote from: SanjiWatsuki on July 09, 2012, 06:33:33 PM

I wonder how perceptions like the Alessandros being more neutral crop up in the first place.

Same hype as with any semi-custom Grados. No minor tweak will take away the basic signature of the John Grados, you'd have to basically redesign the whole housing or the driver. After listening up and down the line I'd say that it's worth it to only recommend the SR80, the incremental changes in the RS series (& up) aren't worth it.

That's always been my advice when it comes to Grado. I am lucky enough to have a Grado dealer in town, so I was able to listen to the entire SR line up. I wasn't too impressed. I had always expected to hear more of a difference as I went up the line.

Advertised as being made for musicians or some crap. Combine that with hype/tin eared headfi'ers and there you go.

Yep. That seems to be the most plausible explanation -- the marketing of Alessandro as being more studio/neutral creates expectations that get propagated through collective subjective impressions. Differences (if any) between Alessandro and Grado are subtle enough to concede to expectation bias.

With that said, the MS-1 always seemed less bright to me than the SR60 or SR225 as well, so go figure I'll admit I'm susceptible to biases though.

Normalizing for average treble output / aligning the treble curves as much as possible:

Bass of MS-1 /w bowls > SR80i w/ bowls.
Bass of MS-1 /w bowls > SR225 w/ bowls.
Bass of MS-1 /w bowls = HF2 w/ bowls
Bass of MS-1 /w bowls = RS1 w/ bowls
Bass of MS-1 /w bowls = SR80i with comfies

The treble of each above is unique of course.

This is probably why people say the MS-1 is more neutral. It's basically a slightly more wonky HF-2 without the wood/alum cups. It all comes down the pads the bass masking the effects of the treble.

Will you be getting the MS1i in the future, purrin? Or do you think that there's virtually no difference between the two?