Grado RS1x
The wood-housing Grado, and the interesting part is not that it is more of the SR60x — it is what it does differently. Measured here on our own bench.
Our take
The RS1x keeps the Grado midrange lift almost exactly, peaking in the same place near 2 kHz, but the region above it behaves differently: where the SR60x carries real energy through 3–8 kHz, the RS1x sits close to level there. That is the whole character difference in one sentence — same forward voice, considerably less bite behind it. Bass extension is still modest and still partly a measurement artefact of an unsealed on-ear design, so judge the low end by ear rather than by the number.
Measured by Warren Labs on a miniDSP EARS Pro. The headphone is seated deliberately for the best fit — the way someone who cares about sound adjusts a headphone before they settle in to listen — rather than placed at random, and the published curve is a single real seating chosen by an objective rule, never a blend. Both channels are measured and stored separately; the line drawn here is their average. Raw response, normalized to 0 dB at 1 kHz. An EARS Pro is not an industry reference coupler such as a GRAS 45CA, so read this as a house reference: repeatable against our other EARS Pro measurements, not directly comparable to another lab. Seating repeatability on this bench is not characterized yet, so there is no variance figure to give. Do not read fine treble detail as settled.How we measure →
Common questions
Straight answers — the same ones our measurements support.
How is the RS1x different from the SR60x?
Measured on the same rig, on the same day: the midrange lift is nearly identical, but the 3.5–8 kHz region is around 3 dB calmer on the RS1x. If the cheaper Grados have ever felt hot to you, that is the difference you are paying for.
Does the wood do anything?
We measure headphones, not marketing. What we can say is what the curve shows, which is a smoother treble region than its cheaper sibling — whether the housing is the reason is not something a frequency response can settle.
Why does the bass look low?
Open, on-ear, no seal — real in part, and exaggerated by the fixture in part. The same caveat applies to every unsealed headphone on this site.
If you like the RS1x
Close on the graph, or a deliberate step in one direction.