Headphones

Heading west Straight from Brooklyn, New York, comes the brand new Grado PS500 headphone. Richard Black lives the American dream… By most standards, £700 is a lot of money to spend on a pair of headphones, yet the PS500 isn’t actually Grado’s top model – the PS1000 will make a £1,600-shaped hole in your wallet, whereas the GS1000 is a mere bagatelle at just £1,000. And it’s not like Grado has a monopoly on the high-end headphone market, as there are numerous rivals from the likes of Sennheiser, Stax and so on… Still, compared to the world’s finest loudspeakers, some of which cost in excess of £50,000, this is still small change. Given that the very best headphones can, in some respects at least, equal the sonics of cost-no- object speakers, £700 spent on this Grado begins to look like better value.

Unique proposition In-ear newcomer Unique Melody is breaking the (custom) mould with its six-driver tailor-made earphone. Dan George fills his ears ew to the UK, Unique Melody is an earphone specialist with an impressive range of feature-heavy products. The flagship model tested here, the Miracle, is unusual in boasting six drive units: twin treble; twin mid and twin bass drivers, with a passive three-way crossover all packed into a compact shell barely any bigger than rivals from Shure and ACS. From a respectable line-up, the UK distributor AmpCity, suggested we dive straight in with the top model, aimed at audiophiles on the move.