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My first headphone experience was an unpleasant one: the clunky black headphones in my high school language lab whose sound quality was only slightly better than a telephone receiver. There was no way to adjust the position of the earpieces to avoid discomfort, and the stiff plastic covering the semirigid foam cushioning inevitably left my ears hurting after the requisite hour spent in the lab. For years afterwards I would involuntarily wince and cover my ears whenever I heard anyone speaking Japanese. Headphones ceased to be a factor in my life until my college years when my friend Paul Bolm bragged about a pair of Koss headphones he'd gotten for his Walkman. "Listen to the bass," he said. It was a revelation of near-religious magnitude. The headphones made the inexpensive cassette player transcend its pedestrian origins and enter the realm of Real Audio Equipment. The bass was impressive given the small size of the 'phones, only slightly larger than the ones that had come with the Walkman. The music seemed to originate from inside my head rather than an external source. I was hooked. From then on, I refused to settle for the cheap headphones that came with portable audio equipment. I started out with Sennheisers and occasionally used Sonys, often spending as much or more on the 'phones then I did on the cassette or CD player. I felt a smug sense of superiority when I ventured out into the world, looking at the poor, ill-informed masses using their standard-issue headphones and thinking: "If they only knew what they were missing..." I thought that way right up until the day I came to work and saw a co-worker listening to a portable DAT machine with a pair of clunky-looking headphones that were vaguely reminiscent of the vile language-lab 'phones of a decade and a half earlier. I am ashamed to say that I...well...mocked him. "Good God, man, if you're going to spend the money on DAT, the least you can do is buy a serious pair of headphones for it!" I was about to return to my cubicle to show him what a real pair of headphones sounded like when he started laughing. Actually LAUGHING! "Try them," he said, handing them over. "These are the best headphones you'll ever hear." I put them on, mentally preparing a speech about how they might sound better than the ones that came with his DATman, but a pair of REALLY good 'phones...I stopped. I needed to listen to the music. The bass was nothing short of amazing. The highs had a crystalline quality without any harshness. The music had an open, spaciousness I'd never heard before.
The headphones were Grado SR60s. I went out and purchased a pair right after work. That was last year, and I've never looked back. Since then I've learned that Grado headphones are prized among audiophiles for their outstanding accuracy and low price. I've learned that Grado Labs is a small company in Brooklyn, founded by a dedicated audiophile. Grado makes other headphones, but the SR60s, and the slightly more expensive SR80s, are among the best audio bargains available. Since I've had them, I've used my SR60s to listen to all types o music. Acoustic guitars have a mellow clarity that never fails to amaze, and pianos have a presence that gives me chills. The cymbals in rock and the fat bass in techno have all the sizzle and punch you could ask for, saxophones squeal and honk like they're in the same room. Use a pair with your portable CD player and you'll find out how much of the music you were missing. The SR60s aren't much to look at, some people (but fortunately, not me) find them slightly uncomfortable, and the 3-meter cord can be a little unwieldy for portable audio, but I doubt you'll find a better pair of headphones without spending a small fortune. Do yourself a favor, check them out. - Andrew Sasaki [2/6/98]
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