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- Oct 22, 2011
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Who needs a 360 get the 458! Or better yet the Aventador!
What do you do for a living that you can afford to spend upwards of $20k on headphone equipment alone?
Flips stolen audio gear.
I just spent the whole of Sunday afternoon in Mongkok (people in Hong Kong will know where that is) auditioning the LCD3 with "cheaper" amps and DACs. As I said, I think my CLAS-PB2-SR71B and CLAS-SR71A combos no longer work for LCD3 IMO. They still sound good, but IMO are not able to express the LCD3 50% of its potential. If I could rate my Esoteric K-01 and Leben with the LCD2 as 100% (as a reference point only), the LCD2 on my portable rig probably still had 75%. Neither do I think one must use something like my home gear, namely Esoteric K-01 and Leben, to make the LCD3 sound its best - quite unlike the SR009 where the improvement is virtually infinite, the better source and amp you feed the SR009, it just sounds so much better with no limit. Simply put, in my experience the diminishing return effect of source and amps (in relation to headphones) kicks in much later in the SR009 than the LCD2, so I think the right gear for the LCD3 must be somewhere in between.
And that's the reason I went to try out a lot of gear today for the LCD3. The thing good for Head-fiers in Hong Kong is that there are a few shops within three blocks where you can try virtually any amp or DAC mentioned on Head-fi, except the more expensive ones like the Liquid Fire. When I took out the LCD3 from my bag every time the one who is selling amps to me was like "WOW" or "You got the 3 already?", except the Audeze distributor in Hong Kong who either didn't seem to care or wasn't aware it was a 3 at all.
Anyway - I have some interesting findings and I do think I have found the balanced point for price and performance for the LCD3. I was thinking about getting the Antelope Zodiac Gold and the Cavalli Liquid Fire for my office LCD3 rig. But after auditioning today I think I have found something good enough to express the LCD3 nearly to its best, but still relatively cheap. In particular there are two units which I want to mention which are one-box solutions (DAC+amp) which IMO are working quite well with the LCD3.
At the distributor, I also tried out the ALO copper chainmail and silver+copper chainmail cables for the LCD2 as well and was able to compare them side by side with my old Norse cable.
I did not get myself anything today, except a dust cover for my SR009 - but I think it will take me probably just one more audition of the two selected units to decide. Although I did not purchase anything (except the Stax dust cover), I think it is a Sunday afternoon well spent and a very satisfying experience.
I will post some impressions of what I heard after dinner.
My LCD-2s seem to be quite a bit stronger in the upper mids and treble, so the LCD-3s aren't sounding that radically different to me. In the picture below, if you ignore the original LCD-2 graph in yellow, the differences (from 3k to 6k) between my LCD-2s and 3s could be down to the position when measured IMO.
No way to tell with that graph. They are too smoothed. The rev1s will have a resonance peak between 6k and 9k. The rev2 will have a higher peak.
This explains why: http://www.head-fi.org/t/580283/lcd3-measurements/90#post_7903491
Coming up soon, need to write a Chinese review first for our headphone community though. Need a bit more of the head time just to be certain.
Any link to the website of the Chinese headphone community? Is it erji.net? I'd be interested to read your review.