In my experience having the JH13's for two years and the LCD-2's for a year (just ruling out FOTM for either) here are the pros/cons:
JH13 Pros:
- Potent Portable
- Easy to drive
- Hard to break
- Isolation
- Variety of use (I use them while sleeping and they sound great and block out all noise)
- Smoother and faster sound than the LCD-2's
Cons:
- You can't show your friends how awesome your headphones are
- Depreciation
- Cable breaking (one of the ears will start shorting out every 6 months with the stock cables, I've replaced 4 times.)
- Hassle of molds, especially if they don't seal right and you have to send back, etc
- Lacks impact/slam of conventional headphones, kal vachomer for an ortho like the LCD-2. (I am not talking about bass. All IEMs will have a certain lack of impact that conventional headphones have.)
- Needs a remold every few years
- The technology seems to be just hitting its stride over the last couple years. Within a few short years there will be a plethora of companies with a myriad of options, prices will plummet due to so much competition, and the quality will only get better. Do you want to invest that much money in a technology in its adolescence without the ability to recoup your investment?
The LCD-2's pros:
- Asethetics (subjective)
- Premium materials, accessories, case
- Hold up their value fairly well
- Great impact/slam, very involving analog sound across the spectrum (impressions from r1)
- Well priced against competition
- Ortho-right-is (try saying that in a yoda voice)
- Audeze aren't pumping out a new model every 8 months (they've done one fairly major tweak since the LCD-2 came out)
Cons:
- Your friends will steal your headphones because of how cool they are
- Needs home setup to drive it in a way that will do it justice
- Size/Weight/Clamp depending on who you ask (only the size bothers me, I have to slide them too far forward if I lay on my back on a pillow)
- While orthos have been around forever, the release of the LCD-2 helped to hasten the advent of the ortho-age, and it is foreseeable that this will cause a flood of competitors and innovation in the field that will have the same effect on price and quality mentioned with IEM's/BA drivers.
- Not portable at all. Even if you do have the moxie to lug it around... it is like a baby. People will stare at you because how loud it is, you'd never want someone to steal it, it makes tasks that used to be a breeze unwieldy and cumbersome, and its probably best not to drop it.
- Some people claim they don't want to buy from a company that may be out of business in five years. I find this ridiculous as Audeze are successful and have grown exponentially. But even if they do go out of business, DIY repair companies will crawl out of the woodwork, and the price of a used LCD-2 will inflate to near R-10 levels of extortion. So I see it as a win-win, not a con at all.
As far as customer service, both companies have a lot of positive and negative feedback. Factoring in the JH3A and Jerry Harvey's cocky stability (they'll never do repairs for free, they always find ways it wasn't in your warranty, hence $200 so far in upkeep) and I give the edge to Audeze.
Hope that helps.