The Best Headphones for Under $100
We all know Bose makes great headphones and everybody swears by Sennheiser’s lineup, but how many of us can actually swear by Grado Lab’s headphone series? Grado sounds more like the cave at the playboy mansion than a finely tuned pair of speakers that attaches to our head! Before I go into why the Grado line excels past all the others in this category I want to give you a example.
Lets say I am running a large corporation that produces, designs and sells over 100 different products, related to audio technology in someway. My goals in making those products is to sell a lot of them and make them as cheap as possible. That is just standard large business practice. Now you have a smaller, but also successful business and make only two different product lines related to audio technology. One being headphones and the other being cartridges for record players. Now which one of us has more time to put care and efficiency into our product? I think the answer is pretty clear.
It’s All About Clarity
The real benefit to Grado’s line of headphones is their high fidelity level. When listening to songs through typical headphones, you lose a large amount of sound just based on their low frequency range. With a pair of Grado SR-80 headphones, you get a frequency response of 20-20. What that means is you hear all of your music not just the highs and some of the low. I am still discovering new things in some of my music that I never knew was there before!
How Much For These Cans?
Grado not only makes the SR-80’s for right around $95; they also make the SR-60’s for $70. The two models are nearly identically in design. The one main difference is that the SR-80’s have a larger sound field resulting in increased bass response. Bass is such a key ingredient to most music nowadays I couldn’t justify recommending the SR-60’s in replace of the SR-80’s.
Conclusion
So for the best headphones that are true studio quality under $100 you have to go with the Grado SR-80’s. Yes I own a pair, and yes I would replace them if they were ever stolen. If you’re not in to quality craftsmanship, I would say go buy a popular name brand but I must say small shops seem to always do right. I recommend buying them online as they are a hard to find item in most areas of the country. You can read more about the SR-80’s and the rest of Grado’s great line here on there homepage. GradoLabs.com
Buy
Grado SR80
from Shop.com
Technorati Tags: headphones, Grado, speakers, audio, technology, music, SR-80’s, quality, $100
I’ve never actually heard of Grado Labs before and I’m into music recording and such.
As far as getting the best quality sound from your headphones, you’re absolutely correct - cheap headphones don’t do the music any justice. It’s always nice to listen to music through different headphones or speakers because each gives it a unique sound. I personally don’t own any expensive headphones, but I own quite a few sets of speakers.
Nice article though. Very interesting. =]
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Просто превосходно!
Where the hell do I buy these from?
If you do a search in Google for Grado Sr80 you will find a couple links.
I’ll add a link to the bottom of the post where you can buy a pair of Sr-80’s for $95.00, the standard price.
I personally bought mine on Ebay. They are not always available but if you add a favorite search where you can be notified when ebay finds a search matching your request.
Hope that helps!