Sunscreen? Check.
Sunglasses? Check
Beach reading? Check.
Miles Davis? Jimi Hendrix? The Civil Wars?
Summertime is perfect to kick back from the crazy days at the office, but one of the things you might also be leaving behind is great sound.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
While true state-of-the-art sound still requires an expensive system in a dedicated listening room, you can get this close to the cutting edge with a headphone-based system that’s right at home in your summer house, or even your beach bag.
Here’s are three versatile components that can turn your cell phone or your laptop into a state-of-the-art personal music system you can take with you. And come autumn, these same great toys will brighten up your commute or bring brilliant sound to your office.
Grado PS500 headphones:
The Grado PS 500 is a Porsche 911 for your ears.
With their retro-cool aesthetic and reference-quality sound, these high-end headphones harken back to the company’s iconic HP-1, introduced more than two decades ago. The Grado “house sound” is something special in the world of personal audio, a vivid, detailed, up-close-and-personal perspective that’s great with all kinds of music, but simply shines with rock and pop. Boot up, say, Shelby Lynne’s “I Don’t Want to Hear it Anymore” and the sexy singer is all but whispering in your ear. Or indulge instead in the the hyper-realistic jangle of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s vintage Strat on “Little Wing.” These Grados deliver the sound that today’s trendy, spendy fashion headphones only promise.
The PS500s are 911-like in another way. They offer state-of-the-art performance, but they’re not Ferrari-fussy about how they deliver it. With their unique earcups made of genuine mahogany bonded to machined aluminum, the 500s sport a tonal balance that’s warm and sweet—and 0h-s0 forgiving on less-than-perfect recordings. Meaning you never have to decide between great music and great sound.
And unlike many other comparable high-end models, the Grados are low impedance headphones which means they'll work just fine with your Iphone, Ipod, or the headphone jack of your laptop. (Although, as you’ll see, they deserve to be paired with the very best associated gear like the Audioquest Dragonfly DAC and Woo WA6 headphone amp below)
While $595 may seem like a lot for a pair of headphones, a pair of quality cans like the PS 500s represent a long-term investment. I have a pair of Grado SR-125s that I bought more than 20 years ago. They still work flawlessly and sound superb, and they’ve outlasted a half dozen computers that have since become landfill. The PS-500s offer what CD only promised: Near-perfect sound forever.
Backstory: Grado began as a company that made high-quality phono cartridges. In 1991, company founder Joe Grado, an amateur tenor, started building headphones for his discerning recording engineer friends. The timing couldn’t have been better, because that happened right around the time that CDs started muscling LPs out of the record store. Grado expanded its headphone line when Joe's nephew, John took over the company. Headphones now account for most of Grado's sales, although their phono cartridges have experienced a sales renaissance in recent years. And if you think that all consumer electronics are built in the Far East, think again. All of Grado's high-end products are built only a few subway stops from the Empire State Building at a factory in Brooklyn N.Y.
Tech tip: The PS 500s were quite comfy for me right out of the box, but you can customize them to fit the shape of your head by gently bending the metal headband under the leather padding. And if the foam earcups are a little stiff, you might try removing them carefully and washing them in warm water and mild detergent with fabric softener.
Audioquest Dragonfly DAC:
The Audioquest Dragofly looks like a USB memory stick that you might buy at Staples for $5, but don't be fooled. In terms of the magic it can perform for your music, this ultra-portable DAC is worth every penny of its $250 pricetag.
What’s a DAC anyway? The acronym stands for Digital to Analog Converter and it’s a device that transforms music from an digital stream (produced by your computer) to an analog signal (that can be used by speakers, headphones or conventional amplifiers.) Your computer or phone has a built-in DAC, but, frankly, it’s a piece of junk built to the lowest possible price point. Instead of passing a clean version of the audio signal, a cheap DAC introduces phase anomalies and jitter. Imagine a Borges poem in the original Spanish run through Google Translate, and you get the idea. A bad DAC distorts the sound and strips it of nuance.
Most high-quality DACs are big boxes with four- or five-figure price tags that you plug into your home system. This slick little Dragonfly incorporates most of that performance in a modestly priced device that fits in the palm of your hand, or the pocket of your computer bag. And what it does for your music is flat-out astonishing.
I love the new school rockabilly of J.D. McPherson’s "North Side Gal," but on most cheap systems, the complex musical soundscape gets muddy. When I inserted the Dragonfly into the USB output of my Macbook Pro and plugged the PS 500s into its jack, the effect was like extra-strength Windex for that aural window between you and JD’s hot band. The interplay between the horn section and the string bass snaps into focus and you can even decipher some of McPherson’s less than perfectly enunciated vocals.
One practical note: the Dragonfly draws its power from a USB port. It's perfectly suited to most laptops and desktops, but you'd need a powered USB hub to use it with an Ipad or Iphone.
Backstory: Audioquest is best known for their speaker cables, interconnects, and other audio accessories. so the Dragonfly represents a new venture for the company. They brought in outside help in the person of Gordon Rankin. One of the pioneers of digital audio, Rankin is the brains behind a small but highly respected high-end audio company called Wavelength and a pioneer in the field of computer-based audio.
Tech Tip: If you’re using the Dragonfly with a laptop that travels a lot, you might consider adding an inexpensive right-angle USB adapter that would place the body of the Dragonfly parallel to the edge of the laptop (instead of perpendicular) making it less vulnerable to damage if it gets bumped or jostled.
Woo WA6:
With metal work that channels the House of Tiffany, and glowing tubes straight out of a 1950s sci-fi film, the Woo WA6 headphone amplifier can get the attention of even the most jaded audio geek. But it's the sound that counts, right? Vacuum tubes are to electronics what vinyl is to music reproduction: a thought-to-be-outmoded technology that can add hipster cred. Or state-of-the-art sound. With its modern circuitry and meticulous old-school point-to-point wiring, the $660 Woo WA6 clearly falls in the latter category. What exactly do tubes bring to the party? An engineer might begin with a discussion of odd and even order distortion, but you won’t get a fully satisfying answer from that kind of tech talk, any more than a chemist can fully explain the greatness of a glass of Chateau Latour with a pH reading and an assay of its tannic acid levels.
To understand the magic behind the WA-6, just listen. It has all the slam and sparkle of a great solid state amp. But where the little Woo excels is the midrange—this compact amp is liquid gold. Listen to "Here and Heaven" on The Goat Rodeo Sessions. The Woo invites you to parse the difference in timbre between the viola da gamba that Chris Thile plays in the intro, and the Gibson Lloyd Loar Mandolin he uses in the body of the song. As for Aiofe O'Donovan's seraphim vocals--pushing play is worth 1,000 words.
The WA6 also features imaging that's virtually holographic—cue up Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session and you’d swear you’re sitting in the reverberant Toronto church where that underground classic was recorded. With apologies to Dorothy Parker, with a tube amp like the Woo WA6, there’s just more there there.
The WA-6 may be a little big for backpacking, but if you’re driving to your destination, it’s the perfect finishing touch for any vacation house. And when you return from your holiday, the WA6 morphs into an ideal desk toy. With its near-Freudian rectifier tube, and its tactile good looks, the WA-6 is bound to be a conversation starter. Hook it up to your desktop computer and a pair of great phones like the Grado PS-500s. Turn that big silver volume knob. Then listen to what your best hi-res digital files have to say: Woo WA6 sounds every bit as good as it looks. Maybe better.
Backstory: Woo Audio is a family affair, started by Jack Wu, along with his brother Zhidong Wu, who oversees the in-house manufacturing, and his engineer father Wei Wu. The elder Wu grew up in China, DIYing the first television in his town, and began his career working the sound at the Cantonese Opera House. The Wu family is based in New York City and given the size of a typical New York apartment, it's only natural that they gravitated to the world of personal audio. And like Grado, Woo Audio manufactures its products within the five boroughs, with a factory right in Queens.
Tech tip: The tubes themselves affect the sound of any tube amplifier and the WA6 is no exception. The good news is that tubes can be replaced easily and cheaply; audiophiles call it "tube rolling." Woo can get you started with a few upgrade options, including the splendid $160 Sophia Princess Mesh Plate 274B rectifier. If you get serious about tweaking your system, you can suss out all the arcane possibilities, including new old stock (NOS) vintage tubes from companies like RCA and Telefunken, on the personal audio community, Head-fi.org, where the WA6 has a loyal following.
The equipment for this review was either loaned by the manufacturer or purchased by the reviewer through consumer retail channels.
