Bringing open-back: The Grado headphones making life harder for music makersMusic production used to have some house rules: a room, a pair of monitors, and plenty of artistic disagreements. Now it’s increasingly a solo act built around laptops, late nights, and whatever passes for a ‘quiet’ space that week. Headphones are essential to this modern world, but, strangely, they’re also becoming the driver for crucial mixing decisions.
Some engineers are deliberately choosing headphones that don’t sugarcoat that process. Designs refusing to soften anything, that leak sound everywhere, and unearth uncomfortable truths about the music, whether you’re ready to hear them or not.

READ MORE: Margo XS on producing “pop music as noise music”

Open-back headphones, long treated as recording heresy, let sound escape rather than sealing it in. This makes them impractical around microphones, useless for isolation, and brutally honest in environments most engineers spend their careers trying to control. They feel like the wrong answer to modern production problems, which is precisely why they’re creeping back in.
Take brands like Beyerdynamic, Audeze, Sennheiser, and Focal. All accustomed to producing open-back models priced from the palatable to the seemingly ridiculous in the pursuit of producing a ‘natural’ sound. Heresy for tracking, perhaps, but once the red light is off, they’ve long had their defenders.
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
In that group, you’ll also find Grado, where its flagship HP100 SE — hand-built in Brooklyn, New York — can be yours for a Klarna-troubling £2,800. They feature a 52mm dynamic driver deliberately designed to reveal intricate detail and spatial realism to such an extent that it can make the wearer feel uncomfortable.
The company, which deals almost exclusively in open-back headphones, makes no bones about this approach, even if it ruffles feathers in high places — something COO Rich Grado was reminded of after receiving feedback from Grammy- and Emmy-winning producer Giles Martin, son of “fifth Beatle” George.
“Our RS1 headphones got brought into Abbey Road Studios for the recording of one of Sir Paul McCartney’s albums, and the response from Giles was, ‘I heard things using these headphones that I didn’t hear in my original work, and now you’re making me consider going back and readdressing my recordings.’”
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
Speaking via video call from Grado’s 7th Avenue headquarters, the archetypal New Yorker with attitude adds, “The HP1 has taken that further. There have been some questions about whether it’s so detailed that it’s unforgiving. It won’t hide some of the… I don’t want to say errors… but inefficiencies in the recording or even the equipment.”
Grado Labs was founded in 1953 by Joseph Grado, an audio hall of famer best known for inventing the moving-coil stereo cartridge and later developing some of the first high-end dynamic headphones. Today, son John is the owner, other son Rich handles product direction, while John’s son Matthew is Vice President of Operations. No investors. No reinvention. No interest in sanding off the edges.
My first interaction with the brand occurred in 2013, involving a pair of DJ headphones fashioned from whiskey barrels and designed in collaboration with The Lord of the Rings actor, Elijah Wood. Turns out it was a pretty good indicator that this family affair trusts its instincts more than market logic.
For all the talk of heresy – leakage and lack of isolation can ruin a clean recording – they’re gold standard for engineers prioritising natural, expansive sound for critical listening. You wouldn’t track a vocal with them on, for example, but Grado says, “Once you’re on the other side of that glass, engineers want to hear things differently.”
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
The pandemic then fractured production across bedrooms, kitchens, and temporary setups. Grado adds, “Major studio engineers were already using our headphones. During COVID, as people were recording from different locations, they wanted everybody listening to the same thing, so we sent a lot out to big-name recording artists so they would be on the same page.”
Open-back headphones don’t simulate a perfect studio but instead expose the absence of one. For engineers whose job is to make decisions that translate beyond their own setup, that exposure can be brutal, but crucially, clarifying.
A key reason headphones like the HP100 SE can feel so confrontational is that they have a habit of dragging other signals into the sound. Grado says, “It has created issues when somebody buys the headphone and plugs it into an amp, they start hearing things they feel are a problem with the headphone. We start getting into situations where an amp is creating a distortion some other headphones just aren’t able to display, but ours do.”
So, if you want your headphones to not only expose the flaws in a piece of music, but also in your system, the HP100 SE are just the ticket. Perhaps they should be standard issue for every music critic and hi-fi reviewer – after all, some people just want to see the world burn. Grado is candid about where friction leads, adding, “It’s the chicken or the egg. Everybody blames somebody else.”
The company refuses to endorse third-party gear or recommend a single ‘correct setup’, instead pushing users towards community forums and shared experience. A commendable hands-on stance or a cop out? You decide. But one thing is for certain: the HP100 SE exist to make decisions harder.
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
Unlike most flagship studio headphones, it ships with interchangeable ear cushions that materially alter how it sounds. Engineers gravitate towards the G-cushion, which keeps the drivers further from the ear, maximising detail, speed and spatial separation. The B-cushion brings the driver closer, softens the top end slightly and adds weight in the low frequencies. Something easier to live with over long sessions.
Grado believes the split is almost even, adding, “I’m a big proponent of sound being subjective, and I don’t expect to get 100% buy-in on our sound. I think that’s unrealistic. We shouldn’t tell somebody what they like or what they should listen to. We should give them an option to decide for themselves.”
Having lived with the HP100 SE for about a month, including over Christmas, they’re not a pair you instinctively reach for when you want to relax or find comfort in familiarity. They are, however, cans for the curious, when you suspect a song isn’t telling you the whole story, and you want the truth. Whether you can handle the truth is another matter entirely.
To their credit, they encourage a slower, more deliberate way of listening. A throwback to a time when albums were listened to in their entirety and on repeat. I found myself revisiting sections rather than pushing past them to unearth seemingly hidden quirks. No hidden demonic messages summoning the antichrist, but then I haven’t got to the Gesaffelstein yet.
They’re not a pair you’d want to live in all day. The openness that makes them so revealing can become mentally taxing over long stretches, particularly when listening to material that’s already close to the edge. But used as a reference tool that won’t lie like AI, the HP100 SE becomes a trusted companion — if you can handle the relationship.
Grado Labs operates out of the same building that’s been in the family since 1918 and has leaned back into in-person listening events and community-led experiences. Rich Grado talks openly about reconnecting with headphone “meets” and hi-fi bars, particularly in New York, where people bring their own references, their own biases, and their own systems into the room.
In the end, headphones like the HP100 SE aren’t just about hearing what’s wrong with a record. It’s about what happens when people are willing to sit in the same room – literal or otherwise – and argue honestly about music. New Yorkers, for what it’s worth, have never been shy about speaking their mind.
The post Bringing open-back: The Grado headphones making life harder for music makers appeared first on MusicTech.