Agree with all of your findings. I only had 15 minutes with them, but on same day I had binged on pretty much everything of note at the Can-Jam London show. The HE-1 is the best no question. In fact, I set it as my target sound on that day, and sold off my Stax 009 and Carbon amp and went Planars - go figure. It is the solidity to the HE-1 sound, the body in the midrange and the smoothness to the treble. Those things (for me) I found in the LCD4.