Headphone Reviews

Grateful Dead Steal Your Ears

“Hippies will buy anything if you say it’s made of hemp,” Dr. Lirpa mentions in his marketing material. And, indeed, the Steal Your Ears are made of hemp. Entirely of hemp, in fact. From the cable to the drivers and the magnets, it’s all made from that magical herbaceous. You’d think this would make them hard to drive, and Dr. Lirpa concedes: “You’ll need a headphone amp with no less than 2,100 watts.” Such high power occasionally causes pyrolysis in the Steal Your Ears, but the owner’s manual says not to worry, because after a few minutes of this you won’t be concerned.

One of the unique features of the Ears is the integrated, adjustable CrocClip®. This is to hold — and the literature is very clear on this point — your tobacco cigarettes. However, if the headphones detect the presence of THC, they enter a special “Extended Jam” mode that softens the frequency response and adds auto-tune. Dr. Lirpa explains: “To appreciate the artistry of the Grateful Dead, the listener must be properly preconditioned.”

In California, legal “tobacco” for said clips is readily available. Brent, for example, got himself a medical prescription card due to occasional ice cream headaches.

So enabled, Brent greatly enjoyed the Steal Your Ears’ performance, saying, “Jerry Garcia’s playing always sounded like nothing more than diatonic noodling to me, but through these headphones it sounds like birdsong — well, the song of very stoned birds, at least.” My notes say the Ears were “the greatest headphones I’ve ever heard in ever, wow” and “Kettle Chips are the greatest headphones I’ve ever eaten in ever ever, wow.”

During Brent’s and my testing, Lauren eyed us with suspicion. Though, to be fair, this isn’t too far different from how she normally looks at us.

Lirpa Labs Grateful Dead Steal Your Ears headphones $420