Grado RS1x Headphone Review

Superleggera NYC

by Ed Selley
Hi-Fi Review

21

Highly Recommended
Grado RS1x Headphone Review
MSRP: £799.00
9
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

Grado RS1x Headphone Review

The RS1x is still a Grado and that means that a certain quirkiness is intrinsic to the design. There's less than before though and this has been achieved without affecting what makes these headphones great. This is a superb home headphone.

Pros

  • Astonishingly transparent and immersive performance
  • Very easy to drive
  • Well made

Cons

  • Still not that comfortable
  • High noise leakage
  • Limited accessories

Introduction - What Is the Grado RS1x?

The Grado RS1x is an open back, over ear headphone… but it has the word ‘Grado’ on it so you probably knew that already. Grado is one of a few companies active across the wider audio industry which doesn’t really have the slightest interest in what its notional competition is up to. The company builds products that do what it feels is important and it doesn't change its methods with any great sense of urgency. This can lull you into a false appreciation of what the company does however because Grado has not stopped developing its headphones and phono cartridges; it simply chooses to do so within those methods.

This means that the RS1x is, as we shall cover, the same but different. It changes many aspects of how Grado has been developing headphones and is rather different to the models we have looked at before. This is all well and good but what does that ultimately mean for the customer? If you liked the Grado recipe up to this point, have those changes kept the fundamental virtues you found so appealing? Conversely, if you haven’t been a fully paid up fan, does the RS1x represent a starting point from which you might get on board? Can those two somewhat contradictory positions be reconciled? We had best find out.

Specification and Design

Grado RS1x

Writing the RS1x up is a far more appealing task than was the case with some Grado reviews I have written in the past. Sometimes, when I receive a press release, it is a veritable smorgasbord of information. If company A has improved the driver in its headphone, there will be a dense but quite quotable section on the engineering work undertaken. I might be treated to a graph and possibly some digestible science on the materials being employed. Sometimes, I even get some stirring quotes from the designer about how they like long walks on the beach and how they have devoted half their life to making a product that can play Enya and Metallica with equal proficiency. Grado by contrast would condense this information into a sentence, usually along the lines of ‘we have improved the driver.’ Part of me (not the part required to turn that into a review, I grant you but part of me) liked that rather secretive approach but, for the RS1x at least, Grado has been a little more forthcoming on what it has done.

The changes might be summarised best as ‘less headphone, more driver.’ The RS1x takes two different developments that Grado has been working on and combines them because they benefit one another. To make ‘less headphone’, the RS1xmakes use of Grado’s experience with wood and - quite literally - mixes it up. Grado does not use wood because it looks pleasing. The RS1x is quite literally made from the stuff. Where it differs from older designs is the type of woods used in its construction. Take away the foam pad on an enclosure (yes, don’t worry, we’ll come to those) and you can clearly see three different sections present.

These sections are Maple, Hemp and Cocobolo (the latter a South American hardwood that is exceptionally dense and has been used in the creation of musical instruments for many years). Grado combines them to take advantage of specific properties that all three woods have. Grado itself say that the maple front section does the bulk of the work but it’s the hemp section in the middle that is the largest. The Cocobolo only forms the rear of the housing but its density adds a fair bit to the overall mass. This process reduces the overall size of the housing without having any effect on the overall rigidity.

Grado RS1x

Inside these smaller housings is a larger driver. Grado calls it the X Series and, in a partial nod to tradition, is quite tight lipped about what the driver is made of but rather more effusive than usual about other aspects. The driver is 50mm across which means that it pretty much fills the enclosure. Grado has then embarked on boosting the magnetic circuit while reducing the effective mass. The benefits of doing this are two fold. Less moving mass improves response time and the ability of the driver to change direction while also reducing the all up weight of the headphone. Something that has been retained is that the drivers are ‘de-stressed’ and if you do a search for information about this, you’ll find some arguments, some informed (and less informed) guessing and… that’s about it.

The process by which these two enclosures have been turned into headphones has also been refined although, again, it has been done so without radically altering how Grado does things. A metal gimbal is attached to the wooden housing via a pair of mounts. These allow for a few degrees of movement on the vertical axis; not a huge amount but what I suspect is enough for most people. The gimbal then attaches to the headband via a single sliding pin. As I’ve noted before, this arrangement is by all accounts somewhat crude but it does work extremely well. Unlike a few designs, each housing can have its own height on the band selected completely independently of the other and the housing can rotate a full 360 degrees. The headband is still fairly thin but there is the faintest hint of padding to the underside.

Grado RS1x

When you combine this headband with the minimal foam pad on the enclosure itself, you would be forgiven for thinking that the result is not going to be remotely appealing to wear. We even have historical precedent for this here in the form of the GS-2000e which sounds magnificent… but has some clearly defined limits to how long most humans can stand to wear them for. The RS1x is not the same though. It weighs a fair bit less than the bigger models and the reduction in the size of the pad is offset nicely against this reduced mass. Is this now a supremely comfortable headphone? Probably not. Is it actively uncomfortable? No.

The reduction in size and mass has been achieved without the RS1x coming over as feeling cheap or insubstantial. The Grado will always feel different to many price equivalent rivals because it is so different in how it has been made in terms of the materials and construction but this has been achieved without you having to make too many sacrifices. It manages to feel both solid and rather special - much more ‘artisanal’ (yes, I don’t really like the word either but it is correct here) - and like it was built for you than something sleek and metallic.

Of course, this is still a Grado headphone so there are plenty of features that are somewhere between amusing and maddening. Grado has improved the cable of the RS1x, saying the new one is a durable 8 core connector. It is however still captive and at 68 inches long (1.72 metres) it is too much cable for nearfield desktop use and nowhere near long enough for using them in listening position where you would normally listen to speakers. There is no carry case or storage box beyond the packaging it comes in either. You should probably be at peace with this now but there’s still a peculiar dose of suffering for your art that comes with Grado ownership that will be an instant turn off for many people. Not specific to Grado but your friendly reminder that this is a completely open air driver implementation that has both no natural noise insulation of its own and biblical noise leakage applies too.

Grado RS1x

The RS1x takes two different developments that Grado has been working on and combines them because they benefit one another

How Was the RS1x Tested?

The Grado has done the bulk of its testing on a Chord Electronics Mojo2 and Poly combination running as a Roon Endpoint. Some additional testing has taken place connected to the Rega Elicit Mk5 and Exposure 3510 with a Chord Electronics Qutest as source in both cases - principally to test their headphone sockets but they both provided useful extra data on the Grado too. Material used has been FLAC, AIFF, DSD, Qobuz and Tidal.

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Performance

Grado RS1x

For all the changes and tweaks, I need you to be under no illusion that the core virtue of the RS1x is the same as its ancestors. As I type this review up, I am listening to Gobaith by Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita. The Chord Mojo2 and Poly combination are doing their work in an admirably transparent way but it is still the RS1x that holds your attention. It does so because, somewhat counter intuitively, it is not there. The reason why Grado persists in doing what it does is that the result is two drivers in free space, utterly free of mechanical transfer. It is a listening experience unlike almost anything else at the price and if you fall for it, very little else will do.

For the RS1xto pull this off requires a number of virtues to be tied together to create the whole effect. Tonally, the Grado is wonderfully natural. It handles voices and instruments in a manner that is gloriously unshowy but unfailingly believable. The tonal balance is pretty perfectly judged; I’d say that the Grado falls by the tiniest margin on the bright side of neutral but such is the quality of source equipment these days, even at very affordable points, this is not something that really manifests itself as an issue in listening.

The larger size of the driver helps too. There’s a temptation to view the Grado as a ‘small’ headphone with a commensurate bearing on how it sounds but that is not the case. Grado quotes a lower frequency figure of 12Hz (albeit with no roll off) and there is an effortless heft to how the RS1x goes about its business. The thumping electronic goodness of Kitty Solaris’ Supermoon has a force against the ear that feels right and gives the music that propulsive force that it needs to be convincing. No Grado headphone I can recall listening to has ever sounded slow or languid but the RS1x really is invigoratingly rapid. This rapidity doesn’t force slower or more considered music, it simply delivers everything with an absolute lack of overhang that makes going back to more conventional speakers feel somewhat leaden.

Grado RS1x

There’s also a three dimensionality to the performance that is hugely impressive. Even with no crossfeed induced digitally, either on the Chord or in Roon, the Grado pushes information in front of the listener in a way that is wholly beyond many other headphones. Listening to Led Zeppelin’s When the Levee Breaks on the Grado is an experience that is not locked to either side of your head and it works with that general sense of ‘not being there’ to ensure that, when you close your eyes, the effect is that of Led Zeppelin IV in all its glorious, Hi-Fi clichéd glory rather than a tale of the electronics playing it. This is - particularly if you have an unremastered version - something of a hot recording and it introduces the very slightest hint of an edge to the Grado via the Mojo 2 but in some ways, that edge is utterly faithful to the recording itself.

This is where the tests with the integrated amps come in. The presentation via the Rega is very much in keeping with the Chord but the Exposure’s slight sweetness across its midrange and treble really helps the Grado to sound sublime. The Grado by contrast then helps the Exposure too. This is because the RS1x is incredibly sensitive. Headphone amps that can feel slightly strained with some full sized headphones will have room to spare when used with the Grado (this does conversely mean that, when you have a powerful headphone amp like the one Rega has been fitting of late, volume adjustment really needs to be applied carefully by hand rather than relying on the remote - don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Tying all this together is the same effortless grasp of tempo and timing that Grado does so well. This is a head nodding, ‘just one more track’ style device that engages at an emotional level as well as a cerebral one. This is more than a simple means of music reproduction and, if you find yourself dialled into this way of working, very little else will. It’s helped by that extra comfort factor. This still would not be my choice for a headphone to wear all day, every day but, where the GS-2000e was effectively intolerable after two hours, its smaller sibling can be used for a fair bit longer than that without issue.

Grado RS1x

The reason why Grado persists in doing what it does is that the result is two drivers in free space, utterly free of mechanical transfer. It is a listening experience unlike almost anything else at the price and if you fall for it, very little else will do

Conclusion

Grado RS1x Headphone Review

What this adds up to is a headphone that, without compromising on the sheer ‘Gradoness’ (a word that, while not an official term, will mean a great deal to anyone familiar with the company) of the experience, is simpler to live with and use than any model I can recall testing. The RS1x still won’t have universal appeal; the open air nature of its design and some other Grado quirks see to that, but it is the model with the broadest appeal of those I have tested. The RS1x is still a Grado but it’s a Grado that will undoubtedly win new converts to the brand and it comes Highly Recommended as a result.

Highly Recommended

Scores

Build Quality

.
.
8

Ease of Use

.
.
8

Sensitivity

10

Design and usability

.
9

Sound Quality

.
9

Value For Money

.
9

Verdict

.
9
9
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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