Grado SR325is Headphone Review

With hybrid headphones all the rage, what happens if you choose something more bespoke?

by Ed Selley
Hi-Fi Review

4

Recommended
Grado SR325is Headphone Review
MSRP: £300.00

What is the Grado SR325is?

Sometimes it is perfectly logical to choose a product that performs well in a variety of situations- you would not want to make use of a pair of football boots as your sole item of footwear for example and neither would you go on a two week holiday only clutching a 250mm macro lens (or at least not unless you really like taking photos of insects instead of say, your family). Specialisation is only good when you won’t be left totally inconvenienced by the results.

In theory, hifi and AV is all about specialisation. You can choose any configuration between active speakers with enough power to boil the fluid in your inner ear replaying multichannel high res digitals to horn speakers sensitive enough to work happily on a watt of input power to replay your vast vinyl collection. In recent years however, we have seen products become more and more feature laden as they strive to compete. My blu ray player is a streamer, DAC, media portal and preamp as well as a means of playing blu rays. Specialisation is definitely out at the moment.

With headphones, there are limits to how much diversification you can ask of them but one area has become increasingly popular. Full size headphones have evolved into ‘Hybrid’ designs that are designed to be as happy used on the move as they are at home. This is a category that has come from nowhere to become a significant market ground and we’ve tested designs from PSB, Harman Kardon, NAD, Sennheiser, Aedle and Onkyo to name but a few. What happens if you draw a line in the sand though? What if you don’t need your headphones to move around but only for home use? If you are solely looking for a pair of headphones to use on the sofa, does choosing something more specialised. What happens if you drop the £300 you had planned for a pair of hybrid headphones on a pair of dedicated home headphones? As home headphones don’t get more dedicated that Grado, it seems only logical to reach for their offering at this price point, the SR325is.

Grado SR325is Design

Grado SR325is Headphone
Grado is such a keen adherent to the maxim of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ that for all I know, they invented it. The SR325is is the top of the Prestige range of headphones and in truth looks like almost every other member of the range. We have tested the SR60i before and this is the other end of the Prestige range (the slight outlier of the ‘iGrado’ portable model excepted) and the design principle is exactly the same. The 325is is an open back design built around a pair of dynamic drivers of a material that Grado is seemingly determined to keep secret come what may.

If they look so similar, why is the 325is three times the price? When you start to pull apart the specs, it becomes apparent that the 325is is the culmination of an evolutionary process that takes the basic design of the SR60 and tweaks almost every aspect of it. This means that the cable is thicker and uses higher quality copper. The foam pads are slightly thicker and more accommodating. The driver uses a beefed up voice coil to give it more punch and where the SR60 uses a plastic extrusion on the outer part of the earpad, the 325 is metal. Indeed the ‘IS’ part of the description relates to the brushed silver effect on these sections as distinct from the shinier finish of the older model.
Grado SR325is Headphone
There are some design decisions that mean that the 325 is a true home headphone rather than a hybrid. The first is true of all Grados in that the 325 is open backed. This means it doesn’t simply leak a little noise to the outside word, it does in fact generate at least 50% of the output it does towards your ear out in the other direction too. You’d be more unpopular than any youth using their mobile phone speaker if you tried to use these on a packed train or bus. In the case of the 325is though you’d be hard press to use it on the move. That higher quality cable terminates in a fixed, full size 6.3mm (quarter inch for the imperialists) jack. If you want to use the 325is with a portable device you are going to need an adapter. The end result is very much a home headphone but not necessarily a perfect home headphone. The fixed cord is ever so slightly short for the distance it needs to travel between my electronics and chair (and it isn’t like I live in a hangar either) and while I like the statement of only fitting a large jack, it does mean that this comparatively sensitive and easy to drive headphone is not something you can make use of with a tablet. With this in mind, the one optional extra available for the 325is looks very peculiar. For an extra £20 in the UK, you can have the Grado supplied with a carry case- something sourced for the UK market. This is a perfectly nice example of the breed but does strike me as a little superfluous on a home headphone. You can choose not to order it though.
Grado SR325is Headphone
Grado is such a keen adherent to the maxim of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ that for all I know, they invented it.
The appearance and build of the SR325is is absolutely type standard for Grado which is either going to be something that appeals to you or leaves you absolutely cold. If you put the SR325 next to its less expensive brethren, the family resemblance is obvious but the 325 is more substantial and feels a little more special. As well as the metal exterior extrusions, the foam padding is deeper and more encompassing than the less expensive models and the overall effect is closer to the Reference series that is the next level up in the Grado hierarchy (although these use wood for the extrusions rather than metal ones). The standard Grado idiosyncrasies- or failings depending on your feelings on how charitable you aren’t- are present. The single pin mounting for the earpads means that they have good rotation to them but the Grado is still not the most comfortable headphone on the market. Build however is excellent- the Grado feels like something that will last you a very long time and the simplicity of the construction is a real bonus in this regard.

Grado SR325is Setup

Thanks to the Grado having a full size jack, it was tested exclusively with full size devices. These included a Naim SUPERNAIT 2 connected to ND5XS streamer, a Cambridge Audio 751R with 752BD blu ray player, Sky HD and an Arcam irDAC and a Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus connected to my Lenovo ThinkPad. Material used included lossless and high res FLAC, Spotify and Grooveshark, blu ray and broadcast TV.

Grado SR325is Sound Quality

Grado SR325is Headphone
If you aren’t particularly interested in headphones and don’t spend any time around them, the concept of an open back design that lets both noise in and out seems slightly absurd. The bald fact of the Grado’s design is that you will be able to hear noise around you and whatever you are listening to is going to leak back out- something to remember if you are using headphones to listen to things you don’t want other people to know about.

With this in mind, why would you bother with such a design? Using the Grado side by side with the Focal Spirit Classic which remains a very fine headphone indeed shows that in some areas, you would never believe that the two designs are sold for the same amount of money. The main- perhaps only- reason why open backed headphones remain is that the Grado has a performance that effortlessly extends beyond the confines of the earpads. The venting of energy isn’t done to annoy people, it puts the driver in free space and this gives it an airiness that even the very cleverly implemented Focal can’t match. If you need headphones to prevent noise leaking to another room or floor rather than the immediate vicinity, the Grado starts to make a great deal of sense.
Grado SR325is Headphone
When you match this openness with the superb detail retrieval common to every pair of Grados I have ever used and you have a pair of headphones that is truly impressive for film use. The SR325is manages to find effects and fine detail that you can miss even when you listen to the same piece on forensically detailed full size speaker packages. If you take the rain soaked showdown at Fuji in Rush, you can hear water and car effects on the SR325is that will have you marvelling at the sound team’s dedication to the final product because they are all but inaudible normally. I have never liked watching films via headphones- I still don’t- but the Grado is the nearest thing to a sensibly priced design that makes it enjoyable. There is enough sense of there still being space and a soundfield that the result is believable.

With music, the same strengths make the Grado a capable performer. Listening to a big performance like Dead Can Dance’s Children of the Sun, the Grado feels unconstrained and spacious in a way that allows the music to flow and pan like it does on decent speakers. As you pick up the tempo, the Grado never sounds slow or lacking in drive but there is a slight lack of urgency that allows the more energetic Focals to claw some ground back. The bass response is also something that does tend to rob the SR325is of some excitement. Open backed designs need considerable bass extension to counter the energy radiated outside of the earpad- something that Oppo’s mighty PM-1 has expended considerable time and effort achieving and the Grado doesn’t feel as powerful. The detail to the low end is impressive though and compliments the rest of the frequency range nicely.
Grado SR325is Headphone
The SR325is manages to find effects and fine detail that you can miss even when you listen to the same piece on forensically detailed full size speaker packages.
Depending on how much low end oomph you want in you music, the Grado may or may not impress on a short term test. Where it starts to win out though is longer term listening satisfaction. I still don’t think that the SR325is is the most comfortable design I’ve lived with- indeed many of the hybrids are more comfortable to wear all day- but the way that the Grado can move from watching an episode of Person of Interest, to testing high res FLAC to nostalgically listening to some random material from the 90’s on Spotify is exceptional. After listening to the Oppos for an extended period as well as the Final Hope Pandora VI (to say nothing of some time spend elsewhere with the astonishing Stax SR-009), the very fact that the Grado can prove such a happy partner says much for the rightness of the design- sonically anyway. The short cord and slightly constrictive headbands do rather count against me calling the SR325is a design masterpiece full stop though.

Conclusion

Pros

  • Airy, open and refined performance
  • Great build
  • Usefully sensitive

Cons

  • Cord is too short
  • Leak huge amounts of noise
  • Not as comfy as some rivals

Grado SR325is Headphone Review

The hybrid headphone market is an important sector for manufacturers with many different designs now on sale. Where sound market thinking meets reality is harder to judge however. I spend less time in London than I used to so I don’t know just how many people are sat on the tube wearing full size headphones is unknown to me but up here in Buckinghamshire, I just don’t see that many. This suggests that if people are looking for headphones, a pair that is setup for home use isn’t going to be too restrictive.

And this is where the Grado SR325is makes a huge amount of sense. This is not a perfect headphone- the short cord, slightly less than comfortable earpads and the sense that if you eat, sleep and breathe dubstep, it might be a little laid back- are things that need to be taken into account. For £300 though, this is a seriously accomplished all-rounder that works superbly with film and music. If you are only keeping the noise down rather than sealing it in altogether, you need to look at open backed with an open mind.

Scores

Build Quality

.
.
8

Ease of Use

.
.
8

Sensitivity

.
.
8

Design and usability

.
.
.
7

Sound Quality

.
9

Value For Money

.
9

Verdict

.
.
8
8
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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