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Grado Labs PS2000e Headphone

Grado Labs PS2000e Headphone

Grado Labs doesn’t rush new models to the market. The iconic Brooklyn-based firm moves at its own stately pace, befitting its rich history and high-end bona fides. Even so, it’s been nearly ten years since its last marquee headphone, which is a veritable lifetime in today’s sizzling personal-listening sector. Given the lengthy interval, who can blame Grado for anointing the PS2000e—its new Professional Series flagship—the best cans the company has ever produced. After a few months in my clutches, I’ve got to admit they ain’t kidding.

From conception to reality, the PS2000e is the product of a two-year process. True to its forebears it remains an open-air, dynamic-type system. It uses a vented, low-mass polymer diaphragm in a large air chamber. Per longstanding Grado tradition, the transducers are housed within hand-carved wooden chambers—maple in this instance. However, unique to Grado’s Professional Series is the proprietary hybrid housing—a chrome metal alloy outer shell encapsulating the maple inner chamber. Grado contends that this configuration rigidly supports the drivers and further eliminates ringing, distortions, and resonances.

Other technical refinements include an updated diaphragm geometry plus front cap and grille revisions that reduce diaphragmatic diffraction. The voice coil and magnets have also been modified to yield increased bass response and a larger soundstage. Build quality is high, but purposeful rather than posh. With a wider leather headband exclusive to this model, the comfort factor is very good to excellent. The headband distributes the weight evenly over the top of the head, while the large-diameter foam ear-cushions are roomy and rest evenly against the entire ear—important for avoiding pressure points and fatigue. The issue of comfort is an almost indefinably personal one. Everyone’s head and ears are shaped differently, but it seems to me that Grado has chosen an appealing route. Still, selecting a headphone is much like buying a hat, and given the not insubstantial weight and bulk of the Grado, an extended audition makes sense.

Grado Labs PS2000e Headphone

In various ways, the PS2000e recalls the sonic personality of Grados as I’ve experienced them in the past. (Grado buffs needn’t worry that the company has jettisoned the formula that brought it this far.) Primary is the emphasis on the totality of the listening experience. The PS2000e still conveys the warmer, yielding, soothing character that I’m accustomed to from Grados, but this is also a more tightly resolved and controlled effort, and a vastly more propulsive ride. The PS2000e is a headphone with a balanced attitude—weighting neutrality, dynamics, low-level resolution, and extension with equal precision.

Tonally the Grado doesn’t back off or shy away. Its sonics are upfront and dead honest. So, if you’re in the mood for something cozy and laid-back, you might better consider a hammock or a cruise. While the competition may generate a false sense of dimensionality or soften an aggressive balance, that’s not the way of the PS2000e. In this sense the Grado is like an incisive studio-monitor loudspeaker, capable of the full expression of what went on the disc without coloration. Grado’s treble response is sweetly extended and fully integrated into the tonal spectrum. From my perspective it doesn’t cast excess light onto a recording where it isn’t warranted; rather, it unaffectedly presented air and buoyancy and lift from Diana Krall’s voice and piano during her cover of “Isn’t it Romantic.”

 

The midrange remains a study in posh sophistication with velvety textures and timbres. These elements are coupled with a stiff dynamic spine throughout the frequency spectrum. Bass has been further bolstered in extension and resolution, making the Grados a superior partner for large-scale symphonic recordings or for the slam of a good pop track like “Getting Better” on Sgt. Pepper’s, which had a bass line that was clean, unmarred, plump, but contained and controlled. It’s not just a matter of raw extension, however. There’s more to it than that. What the Grado imparts is the timbral and textural essence that defines the character of particular bass-range instruments, be they bass viols, bassoons, timpani, electric bass guitars, or what have you. The Grado doesn’t cut off the sustain of these instruments, either. During BS&T’s “Sometimes in Winter” from the Columbia SACD, the bass line was articulate but not unforgiving or overly controlled. Similarly when bassist Edgar Meyer lays his bow across the bottom string of his bass viol, an explosion of transients and harmonics bloomed into a rich reverberant field, steering away from typical headphone hyper-reality into more naturalistic musicality. The Grado tenaciously grips these low-level bass cues.

Further, there is no mistaking that the Grado character is plainly of the dynamic driver school. As I listened to Clark Terry’s disc One on One [Chesky], piano and trumpet transients were spotless and swift, but unremittingly natural rather than crisp or etched. The PS2000e moves air in a way that’s as familiar as a traditional cone diaphragm loudspeaker—a sense of weight and substance backs each image. Planar-magnetic or electrostatic headphones by contrast take me for a fast-twitch, whip-snappy ride in many respects, but also convey a particular transducer signature that seems slightly bleached or papery. Both are valid approaches, of course, but for me it comes down to one crucial issue. Music, as presented through the PS2000e, made me less aware of the machinery within the headphones. For example, during Diana Krall’s cover of “S’ Wonderful” the Grado was deep-pile velvet rather than thin summer linen. It became as nearly invisible as I imagined a good headphone could be.

The soundstage was cleanly defined from edge to edge or, uh, ear to ear. A good example was Dean Martin’s “I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You)” from Dream with Dean, where the spread of the soundstage places the bass and lightly brushed drumkit at opposite sides of the stage but acoustically linked together in purpose by the wealth of ambient cues. Generally speaking, the Grado soundstage wasn’t the narrower, more vertically oriented representation of my resident HiFiMan Edition X ’phones, but rather a truer horizontal, reasonably dimensional stage that supplies relevant cues to the acoustic weight and breadth of an orchestra in full song. There’s a whole-cloth continuousness about the soundstage with the Grado.

In my opinion, today’s high-caliber headphones don’t get a free pass simply because of advancements that have reduced distortion and heightened transparency. Yes, these are significant qualities, but to be of the highest caliber headphones must also create an authentic and immersive space—the reverberant atmosphere of a recording venue. This was the area where the PS2000e excelled. Cue up an ambience-rich track of massed voices, with organ and strings, performing in a voluminous hall, as in Rutter’s Requiem, and if you close your eyes it is often like listening to a terrific high-end loudspeaker. There is an unvarnished honesty, emotion, and intensity about these ’phones.

Ten years between flagships and two years in the making? The PS2000e was worth the wait.

Specs & Pricing

Tranducer type: Dynamic
Operating principle: Open-air
Frequency response: 5Hz–50kHz
SPL: 98/1mW
Nominal impedance: 32 ohms
Price: $2695


GRADO LABS
4614 7th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11220
(718) 435-5340
gradolabs.com

Neil Gader

By Neil Gader

My love of music largely predates my enthusiasm for audio. I grew up Los Angeles in a house where music was constantly playing on the stereo (Altecs, if you’re interested). It ranged from my mom listening to hit Broadway musicals to my sister’s early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beatles, and Stones LPs, and dad’s constant companions, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. With the British Invasion, I immediately picked up a guitar and took piano lessons and have been playing ever since. Following graduation from UCLA I became a writing member of the Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshops in New York–working in advertising to pay the bills. I’ve co-written bunches of songs, some published, some recorded. In 1995 I co-produced an award-winning short fiction movie that did well on the international film-festival circuit. I was introduced to Harry Pearson in the early 70s by a mutual friend. At that time Harry was still working full-time for Long Island’s Newsday even as he was writing Issue 1 of TAS during his off hours. We struck up a decades-long friendship that ultimately turned into a writing gig that has proved both stimulating and rewarding. In terms of music reproduction, I find myself listening more than ever for the “little” things. Low-level resolving power, dynamic gradients, shadings, timbral color and contrasts. Listening to a lot of vocals and solo piano has always helped me recalibrate and nail down what I’m hearing. Tonal neutrality and presence are important to me but small deviations are not disqualifying. But I am quite sensitive to treble over-reach, and find dry, hyper-detailed systems intriguing but inauthentic compared with the concert-going experience. For me, true musicality conveys the cozy warmth of a room with a fireplace not the icy cold of an igloo. Currently I split my time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Studio City, California with my wife Judi Dickerson, an acting, voice, and dialect coach, along with border collies Ivy and Alfie.

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