Drop + Grell OAE1 Headphones

The best open-back headphones strive to break free from the headbands and earcups that bind them. Engineering to emulate the natural listening experience—where sound reaches your ears through the open air, from a source right in front of you—our Axel Grell-designed OAE1 signature Headphones took a step closer to that freedom. Naturally, they sold out fast. Now they’re back in all-black version with the exact same acoustic design. Meet the Drop + grell OAE1: a groundbreaking pair of headphones with game-changing driver geometry and an ultra-expansive soundstage. Working in harmony with the body’s innate process for perceiving stereo sound—where we face audio sources so that they’re directly in front of us—the OAE1 positions its drivers further out and in front of the ears to create a soundfield that’s stunningly natural. It’s an innovative yet undeniably intuitive acoustic concept that grell founder and lead designer Axel Grell first implemented in high-end Sennheiser headphones like the HD 800. In the OAE1—available here in a blacked-out build with reduced clamping force, new left-and-right indicators, and a new cable—he’s perfected it. 

Study the structure of the human ear, or simply watch people listen to different sources out in the real world, and you’ll see that our bodies are built to intake stereo audio in a specific way. That’s facing the audio source, with soundwaves reaching the pinna (the ear’s external structure) at an angle from the front, rather than directly from the sides. Undoing the tradition of unnatural headphone driver positioning, the OAE1 puts its ultra-responsive biocellulose drivers in front of the ear and further away from it, angling each one back to send sound to the pinna much like a natural stereo source. This positioning also reduces unwanted reflections from the membrane and magnet structure, helping improve fidelity and reduce listener fatigue. And where past attempts to implement similar positioning (such as the historic AKG 1000) have resulted in poor low-end reproduction, the OAE1’s driver design generates impressive bass response due to an onboard acoustic baffle.

With its revolutionary driver design, the OAE1 was already well on its way to a wide-open soundstage. But the goal was to create the most open open-back headphones on the market—and you don’t get there by stopping at the drivers. Widening the soundstage even further, Axel Grell and his team developed earcups that are 90-percent open metal mesh and a woven stainless steel acoustic-damper mesh, both of which allow sound waves to pass through with minimal interference. It’s an ultra-expansive soundstage—complemented by the OAE1’s reduced 3 N clamping force (versus 3.5 N on the signature) and rivaled only by the headphones’ ultra-expansive compatibility. Wired to accept both dual- and single-entry cables, each earchup features a socket design to accept a 2.5-millimeter plug. (An integrated overhead wire allows for the input signal to be shared between both drivers when using a single entry cable, which means you can connect a single-entry cable to either side.) For versatile listening right out of the box, the OAE1 comes with a single-sided 3.5 mm TRS cable featuring silver-coated, oxygen-free copper wiring, a 6.3 mm adapter, and an indicator stripe to help reduce cable-insertion errors. 

Axel Grell created some of Sennheiser’s finest headphones—including our very own HD 6XX and HD 58X, as well as models in the high-end HD 800 Series. Over the past several years, he’s been hard at work founding his own company to take his innovation, and motivation, even further. “I've always tried to create the best possible acoustical experience for the money, no matter the price point,” Axel says of his approach. “With grell, we put our resources solely into achieving the best sound possible, emphasizing the acoustic experience of the product and providing audio that is fine-tuned to the user’s ear.” With world-class products already behind him, we can only expect his next releases to raise the bar even higher. That’s why we’re proud to be the first brand to partner with grell—and why we couldn’t be more excited for future launches—to elevate the audiophile experience together.