[nicholars]

Does anyone else have any experience with the LCD 2C with Dekoni velour pads?

I had the LCD 2C for 3 weeks, I returned them, but now I think I want them back, my reasons for returning were :

1) They were uncomfortable and too much seal - Does the velour help with this?
2) I was worried about reliability after reading about driver failures - To be fair this seems to be much less of a problem with the LCD 2C (?)
3) I think they were making my tinnitus worse, but this could be due to the seal of the pleather pads? Do the velour pads stop that suction effect?
4) They were a bit too recessed in the upper mids - looks like the velour fixes that?
5) a bit peaky around the 12Khz area....

Overall I should have tried the Velour pads, do you think that will solve my problems I had with the LCD 2C? Are they brighter in the treble with the velour? Or does it just change the upper midrange?

Thanks

 

[Venture Guy]

Does anyone else have any experience with the LCD 2C with Dekoni velour pads?

I had the LCD 2C for 3 weeks, I returned them, but now I think I want them back, my reasons for returning were :

1) They were uncomfortable and too much seal - Does the velour help with this?
2) I was worried about reliability after reading about driver failures - To be fair this seems to be much less of a problem with the LCD 2C (?)
3) I think they were making my tinnitus worse, but this could be due to the seal of the pleather pads? Do the velour pads stop that suction effect?
4) They were a bit too recessed in the upper mids - looks like the velour fixes that?
5) a bit peaky around the 12Khz area....

Overall I should have tried the Velour pads, do you think that will solve my problems I had with the LCD 2C? Are they brighter in the treble with the velour? Or does it just change the upper midrange?

Thanks

Yes, you should have tried the Dekoni Velour pads. I was not impressed with the upper midrange with stock pads. Put the velours on and it transformed it into a neutral'ish with a straight line downward slope that sounds beautiful. No treble issues.

 

[nicholars]

Yes, you should have tried the Dekoni Velour pads. I was not impressed with the upper midrange with stock pads. Put the velours on and it transformed it into a neutral'ish with a straight line downward slope that sounds beautiful. No treble issues.

Do they remove that "suction effect"? With the pleather pads when I first put them on, they made a sort of vacuum on my ears like that feeling you get in your ears when you go through a tunnel in a train. I think that might be why they were making my tinnitus worse. If the Velours stop that then that might be the answer! I think the reason I did not try them at the time was that I was worried they would ruin the best part about the LCD 2C which is that nice bass also I ran out of time before I could return them. I do miss them now because they sounded sort of like sennheisers but with extremely good bass.

 

[nicholars]

I think I want to try out these new type of LCD 2C.... The LCD 2CV :

 

[Venture Guy]

Do they remove that "suction effect"? With the pleather pads when I first put them on, they made a sort of vacuum on my ears like that feeling you get in your ears when you go through a tunnel in a train. I think that might be why they were making my tinnitus worse. If the Velours stop that then that might be the answer! I think the reason I did not try them at the time was that I was worried they would ruin the best part about the LCD 2C which is that nice bass also I ran out of time before I could return them. I do miss them now because they sounded sort of like sennheisers but with extremely good bass.

No sucking sound. No negative impact on bass. Just that beautiful floaty planar thing

 

[nicholars]

Hm this is slightly worrying though, this dip in the bass, do you use them for electronic music? I am a bit of a basshead, well currently I am using the HD660S which have pretty much no sub bass, I still enjoy them more than most other headphones, because everything above about 80hz is extremely good, the LCD 2C though was similar but with massive sub bass, hopefully the velours do not mess with that too much :

 

[Venture Guy]

Hm this is slightly worrying though, this dip in the bass, do you use them for electronic music? I am a bit of a basshead, well currently I am using the HD660S which have pretty much no sub bass, I still enjoy them more than most other headphones, because everything above about 80hz is extremely good, the LCD 2C though was similar but with massive sub bass, hopefully the velours do not mess with that too much :

That glitch below 30Hz is an artifact of the measuring rig. It should be pretty much a straight line at 93dB... Deadmau5 sounds great on them!

 

[nicholars]

hmm what about the Dekoni Elite Hybrid pads?

Those are velour and leather, anyone tried those? Or are the velour the best pads? That would be convenient because they are also the cheapest!

 

[marcan]

5) a bit peaky around the 12Khz area..

That one is strange. A bit shouty in the mids at high level I could agree but picky around 12khz area...

 

[nicholars]

That one is strange. A bit shouty in the mids at high level I could agree but picky around 12khz area...

I should possibly not have said "peaky", because technically they are not "peaky" around 12Khz, but I have this on a lot of headphones, where I need to reduce the 12Khz area with EQ otherwise it "annoys" my ears. I must have some issue with my hearing around 12Khz, some headphones are not a problem but a lot of them are too sharp around this area. For example if the Velour pads made 12Khz a lot louder than the stock pads, this would be a problem.

 

[nicholars]

Here is another graph of the Velour pads :

Looks like it could be good with the LCD2c, less shouty midrange, more upper midrange, possibly more 12Khz area although probably OK. Does anyone notice if this area is louder with the Velours compared to the stock pads?

 

[nicholars]

Also those 2 different measurements with the velour pads are very different!

Sry for the obscure questions here, but I am trying to avoid purchasing the LCD 2C again if I would end up returning them, it is a bit annoying because I very much liked the sound of them.

Also I did not like the clamp and comfort much on the LCD 2C, but I am thinking Velours + LOHB strap + stretching the headband, might make them comfortable enough. Although as I just said I have a problem with 12Khz area so I hope the velours do not make this area louder than the stock pads.

 

[ChaChaRealSmooth]

Also those 2 different measurements with the velour pads are very different!

Sry for the obscure questions here, but I am trying to avoid purchasing the LCD 2C again if I would end up returning them, it is a bit annoying because I very much liked the sound of them.

Also I did not like the clamp and comfort much on the LCD 2C, but I am thinking Velours + LOHB strap + stretching the headband, might make them comfortable enough. Although as I just said I have a problem with 12Khz area so I hope the velours do not make this area louder than the stock pads.

In my experience, treble that is "righter" also tends to sound smoother even in leu of elevated response in the area. It's actually less fatiguing than listening to peaks.

The LCD-2C with the velour pads are no exception to this (I do like the sound of the stock pads though, but do think the LCD-2C can be a bit grainy in the treble with leather pads). The velour pads just seem to make the treble response much smoother. What you sacrifice is the extra percentage points in the very end of the subbass. And also, if you like the slightly warm/dark tilt of the LCD line, you're going to lose that by going with velours; it tunes them to become very neutral, but still non-fatiguing and an easy listen.

Take my words with the appropriate amount of salt though; a good friend of mine owns the particular LCD-2C with velour pads. I did listen to them on my rig as a proper audition though, and compared to my LCD-3.

 

[nicholars]

How "neutral" would you say they are compared to the stock pads + Reveal?

I found the stock pads + Reveal to sound definitely better than the stock pads without reveal, would the Velour pads without Reveal, sound similar to the stock pads with Reveal? Or are the Velours significantly brighter than the stock pads with reveal?

I guess only way to know would be to try them, but it is a lot of hassle to get the headphones again, get the pads and stick them on (which hopefully I could reverse in the event I did not like it) If I end up not liking the velour sound.

If the velours make them sound significantly brighter in the upper treble and lose a significant amount of the sub bass (also if they made the quality of the bass worse), then I could probably say that I would not like them, IF they only lose a very tiny amount of sub bass, do not significantly increase upper treble (above ~10Khz), that could be good.

Hm overall this is almost impossible to know without trying them, but also a lot of hassle to try them if I ended up not liking it!

 

[nicholars]

Problem is though, that those 2 graphs are very different, one of them does not show any change around 12Khz area, the other one is potentially showing a TEN decibel increase at the 12Khz area, the second graph there, if you look around 11-13Khz there, the velours are quite possibly 10Db louder at 12Khz, I am not sure if this is the case at all, but really if the Velours were to cause anything like a 10Db increase in this area (which is where I have a problem with various headphones, my ears do not like 12Khz for some reason).... So you can see my predicament here, one graph shows 10Db louder at 12Khz, one graph shows no difference at 12Khz!

Also could be that my ears were having a problem with that spike in the upper treble you can see on the red line, which is around 13Khz and you can see there is a big spike there on the Stock pads, with the velours they look louder around 11-12Khz, but more of a flat line overall, so as you said possibly they sound smoother overall.

Another thing is that I did notice that the treble was like what Tyll described in his review, for example the 660s are quite a lot smoother sounding in the texture of the treble, possibly the velours help with this by making the frequency response less "spiky" even if the treble is actually brighter, Also the 12.5Khz band on the 31 band EQ is between 10Khz and 16Khz, so it is possible the peak I was hearing might actually be better on the Velours, argh so difficult to know without trying them!