Grado Hemp (2020) Measurements, Reviews, and Impressions

Discussion in 'Headphone Measurements' started by Vtory, Jul 22, 2020.

  1. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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  2. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Enjoying Hemps for the past two weeks, and triangulating various information collected from here and elsewhere, now I am speculating the followings.
    • Hemps are almost an antithesis to classical Grado sounding. They still have some of the house sounding, but challenge against what people have regarded "Grado's sound". Myself included who ever could imagine buttery smooth and delicate highs from Grado?
    • Looking at different impedance of 38 ohm in the spec sheet (different from 32 ohm of everything else) and their distinct tonal voicing, there is a chance that Gradolabs is experimenting newer gen drivers. I don't think for such a small company, having different drivers for each LTD model (i.e., small batch) makes any business sense for the current asking prices.
    • Positively interpreted, John Grado and his family perhaps tries to reach out to potential customers who never liked Grado products at all. Too bad they put a bad gimmick on Hemps, otherwise this model could gain a little better awareness.
     
  3. likearake

    likearake Acquaintance

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    Just trying to join some dots between this headphone I doubt I can ever demo and one that I know, is your impressions of the rs2e with the flat pads or the stock pads?

    Just wondering how similar the hemp might be to rs2e with the deluxe ttvj pads to fix the tonal response.

    Is the difference with the hemp vs rs2e in terms of amount and /or peakyness of treble? Or is the character different across the board?
     
  4. pure5152

    pure5152 Friend

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    I only had used it with stock pads. I actually had the ttjv deluxe at the time, but didn’t use it because I found it uncomfortable and/or I didn’t like the sound - I honestly forgot. Please keep in mind it’s been over a year since I last heard the rs2e, so my comparisons are probably not the most accurate haha. But from memory, the hemp with the flat pads is the most tonally correct stock Grado I’ve heard. Honestly I thought the rs2e was pretty refined as well, maybe not as “full” sounding as the hemp, but pretty smooth; but then again, I was listening to the rs2e on the lyr 3 at the time, vs now listening to the hemp on the 3F and Sonett. Again, take my comparisons with some salt.
     
  5. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Several relevant data points you may triangulate from
    [​IMG]

    Assumptions I'm making:
    • Others being equal, SR80e's resemble SR225e's fairly well in FR (but may not as much in technicalities)
    • TTVJ DX is nearly identical to F-cushions in major physical/acoustic characters
     
  6. likearake

    likearake Acquaintance

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    Thanks both. I did spend a strangely long amount of time comparing the graphs earlier, but at the end of the day the Hemp look pretty similar to me except for less + smoother treble. Which... is great of course, but maybe not telling the whole story.

    I do find the Rs2e to have a bit of magic that SR225e does not (compare Bryan Ferry's voice on something like Rain Rain Rain for example). I can't see why that would be based on the FR, maybe cup material or slightly better drivers, but the Hemp could be different again I suppose for both those reasons.
     
  7. JK47

    JK47 Guest

    "Grado Gravy Train Compendium" needed ASAP!!!

    All these different cross referenced Grado threads with multiple ear pads swapped in and out pertaining to various measurement graphs strewn out all over the place like the day after a bachelor party that starts in LA and ends in Vegas, with random bullet points... is just about as confusing as this run on sentence.
     
  8. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    All I'll ask is that the measurements be reuploaded with consistent 1/48oct smoothing or at least 1/24 because I'm curious how much the psychoacoustic setting is smoothing things over. That aside, yeah data collation would be good.
     
  9. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Agreed with this part. I thought you were wondering about tonal characters, which is largely (if not all) explained by freq. response. Sorry not to provide subjective inputs as I don't have RS2e (or even SR225e) sitting around me (+ neither heard by myself). However I do observe a similar thing when I compared SR80e and Hemp side by side with pads rolling and EQing. To my knowledge, there is also a consensus that some subjective arguments (resolution, macro- and micro capability, transients, etc) are hardly supported by measurements.

    Bottomline, I'm not sure if you have TTVJ DX already, but if not, that would be the most straightforward upgrade in sounding if you like RS2e as a whole. If you think peaks around 4-5khz particularly annoying (i.e., too hard, sharp, edgied, strident, etc), then perhaps Hemp could be worth considering. I personally think Hemp is more polite and refined for that range even than HD600 stock.
     
  10. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    I think I consistently posted any configuration with 1/24 oct smoothing when it was first presented. Typically with both channels overlapped. But I do think that resolution is pretty annoying to my eyes when it comes to comparative presentation (narrow dips and peaks don't give me much value in comparison). In fact, you can easily find 1/24 oct one for any combo I used in comparative graphs with psychoacoustic smoothing. And at least with my results I couldn't find any situation where 1/24 was significantly more informative than pa smoothing. I believe you already checked this out, but pasting just in case.

     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2020
  11. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Yup, I trust you to use less aggressive smoothing at your discretion given you've more experience with measurements than I, it's just that I often prefer seeing grit where it exists even if it's a bit confusing to parse haha. Only asking because I'm certainly familiar with how much beautification goes on with the psy smoothing esp for planars and biodynas with aggro treble :p
     
  12. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Mostly agreed with this point. Disagreed with wording. Who the f*** hell think smoothed results beautiful at face-values.

    Anyway there are already less smoothed results for all the combinations, and photoshop (or many other freeware equivalents) would be the best tool for anyone who want to go in-depth overlaying for him/herself.

    PS. I didn't think you meant it. But the last emoticon looks too offensive to me not only for this context but also in general (and for that reason I refrained from using it for myself). I might be a little grumpy today though. Feel free to ignore this entire PS if you want to adhere to it.

    ADD: Just remembered that last Sat you said liking a measurement site where corrected responses only reported with 1/3 octave-averaging bar charts. Bro, you don't sound consistent.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2020
  13. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Yesterday emailed Gradolabs to ask whether I can buy extra f-cushions from them directly.

    I got the response this morning, shortly speaking they don't have enough stocks at the moment. Likely Covid affects their manufacturing? They couldn't guarantee when they would sell the cushions. One interesting point to me was that they didn't refer to TTVJ at all. I didn't specifically ask whether TTVJ-DX was the same as f-cush though. Maybe I'd better reach out to Todd to investigate this further.
     
  14. Ruined

    Ruined HD700 ruined my ear holes

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    As a counterpoint, the gimmick is what got me to look at them in the first place, and are the first grado I have owned after owning many Sennheiser.

    I would also say these Grado Hemps would make it more likely to try Grado in the future with more expensive models.

    As for the product itself, I think for the price its a great unit and will serve certain types of music very well. I wouldn't say its a great "all arounder"-type headphone though, since IMO the high end is just a little too rolled off/smooth to be good for all types of music. It makes a nice supplemental headphone to a treble-heavy headphone like the HD800 or T1.

    Compared to Sennhesiers, overall I personally like the Hemp better than the HD600 but less than the HD700.
     
  15. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    Wait, what??
     
  16. Ruined

    Ruined HD700 ruined my ear holes

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    Yes I am one of the rare people that *really* likes the HD700 :) note though that it doesn't pair well with very bright amps tho

    I also like the HD820 the best of the HD8xx series :)

    Finally, I dislike the HD600. So I guess that makes me a headphone contrarian.

    Hemp I find more exciting than the hd600 but top end a little too dull for me to prefer over hd700. But it does have its merits for some types of music.
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2020
  17. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    I debated responding to this since I'm well aware it's noise and various things offline have been making me angry, but inbox is open for more of a discussion— replying publicly just to clear a few things up.

    I say "beautification" because it is more flattering to the headphone at expense of utility of measurements. I understand that my writing can be confusing because I seldom speak very definitively— I do that because I try not to offend anyone and am aware of my own lack of knowledge and experience, though there are times when I realise that being overly-nice is a disservice.

    The same goes with using emoticons, which I intend as a sign of light-heartedness and because I feel their levity better represents how I communicate in-person. Individuals that I have spoken with in person or online may attest to my character. No disrespect intended, but if my use thereof discomfits anyone then I will remember to restrain myself.
    Yes, but I look at the raw measurements and shared and ignore the compensated ones because I DO think 1/3d octave smoothing is ridiculous; every measurement I've made (within my limited capacity to make them) is either un-smoothened or 1/48 oct because I feel that's the most representative data available, and it's up to people to determine for themselves whether they want to read into obscenely high-Q artifacts or midrange "fuzziness" typical of planars being audible or not.

    Moreover, those compensations are Diffuse Field/Free Field/various versions of f'ing Harman— more reason for me to ignore them and focus more on comparatives between raw FR and spectrum decay. The reason I shared that was because I found it interesting that there was another person with established history in audio measurements entering the headphone game, though there are limited samples and very few popular reference headphones. Enthusiasts aside, it's reassuring that people in old-school audiophileland have not forsaken measurements entirely.
     
  18. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    @Lyander

    Fair enough, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

    While a few major points disagreed (and some not quite the case), I don't think here the nicest place to talk about any basic algebraic issues. Maybe I should have ignored your original post not to cause consequent noises (this post included).
     
  19. spoony

    spoony Spooky

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    Making justice to your handle, huh?
     
  20. Ruined

    Ruined HD700 ruined my ear holes

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    Just don't like boring-sounding headphones :D

    When I listen to headphones I want something that has a lifelike soundstage and feel, I don't like sterile and flat-sounding reproduction.

    Don't care about FR if it sounds good . Measured FR is interesting but ultimately fails to inform the true capabilities of a headphone as the way we naturally hear sound in any environment (reflected, diffuse sound) is contrary to the way we typically hear headphones (directly into ear canal).
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2020

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