after 3 months ... Grado GW100x

[Brubaker]

3 months using this Grado and probably i changed for ever my opinion about wireless quality and my way to listen music.... with Bluetooth aptx adaptive 24/96 you 'll make a big big jump men.... i can't hear the difference from cable.... what about Grado's Sound? The bad sound without eq but it shines with eq corrections.... shines... no way.. so Crystal... deep bass ... unbelivable trust me... how can you drive to best this headphone? I have a huge flac music library on NAS and i manage it with plex server installed on it. You need a smartphone with plexamp app (client) and you can access to all your library everywhere in the world.... now you need Wavelet app installed on your smartphone to correct all your headphones by autoeq database (directly from wavelet app... see attached photos)... you need to grant some dump permissions using developer option (android) ... and go... i've bought for some euros the wavelet app extra options to activate virtualization+bass control... i suggest to do this... sound is so beautiful, so deep, so wonderful.... i prefer Grado over my hd800s.... absolutely.... no wires... light... about 50 hours... try it.... this is my dream team.... plex on nas+plexamp+wavelet+grado gw100x... no more amp... no more dac.... no more expensive equipment... this is so perfect for me... have a nice day to all!!!

 

[JustinB]

I have the GW100X and love them and their sound. Though always looking for more, I have tried the EQ you specified many times, as supplied by Wavelet for the GW100. I found it gives very poor results with the GW100X. Looking into it, they have very different drivers, so this is totally expected. The Grado GW100 uses the standard drivers developed specifically for that model. The Grado GW100x, on the other hand, features updated 4th-generation Grado drivers. These drivers are larger and have been tuned to offer improvements in clarity, dynamics, and soundstage compared to the original GW100.

I tried your settings for virtualisation, bass tuning, etc. Cranking the virtualisation right up makes it sound like the music is reverberating around a tin can. I'm not sure in what situation it’s good to have effects like this over the music, but I haven't found one yet. Flicking the bass settings on and off didn't make any discernible difference. I think this is because these headphones cut the bass off a little early.

I'm hoping that Wavelet will upload an EQ update for the GW100X at some point. Until then, I just boost the low end to counter their slight lack of bass, and this seems to work okay.

Perhaps I have done something wrong, but I’m not sure why you are getting such great results with those settings and I am not. I know things are subjective, but not this much. Perhaps a bit of user error on my part?

 

[JohnBooty]

3 months using this Grado and probably i changed for ever my opinion about wireless quality and my way to listen music

Very interesting.

As much as we all love our fancy hardware it's good to remember the ultimate goal is music reproduction... the holy grail in many ways is magical full-fidelity wireless music, and getting rid of the hardware stacks would be a blessing.

I had a smaller revelation with Bose QC45. With lossless source material, a little EQ to match my hearing, and AAC as the BT codec... I'm pretty happy.

plex on nas+plexamp+wavelet+grado gw100x

I'm curious: what is your source material? Lossless or lossy?

I "feel" like lossy music over a lossy BT compression algorithm is still unsatisfactory. And that lossless music over a (good, high bitrate) lossy BT protocol is good enough for me usually. But I have also not rigorously blind tested that or anything, so maybe I'm fooling myself there.

 

[dzerig]

I enjoy Grado sound very much and have listened to them for years. They really mastered the open back, full headphone sound with their bowl headphones, for realistic spatial reproduction they outdo anything I've heard for all types of music. The 8xx sounds like it's in a long tunnel, and the Atrium Open sounds too big and wide for my taste (looking forward to trying the Atrium Closed, however).

The original Grado sr60 was a bargain and perfect for the medium of the time (cassette) that people used with headphones. Today their X drivers have tamed the historic treble emphasis while keeping the detail and spaciousness ... these are not detail monsters however, the detail is musical detail or apparent detail, not audiophile detail.

People pretend if you have a Harman matched curve and low distortion then viola! perfection without noticing how different identically measuring headphones sound from one another.