Audeze LCD-3 Impressions Thread

[donlin]

Usually when an upgrade is coming soon, the current model goes on sale for a while, but knowing the way Audeze sneaks their upgrades, they will probably be selling 3's one day and 4's the next.  My pair of 3C's must have literally been made the day before they started 3F's.

 

[mowglycdb]

Lol I bought it 4 months before the 3F came out. but I bought the Master-8 when the 9 was announced about a week later :c

 

[Zashoomin]

I got really lucky.  My right driver blew a couple weeks after they announced the 3F and when I sent it in for warranty they upgraded my 3C to a 3F

.  I have to say that Audeze customer support is top knotch.  There was also a scratch in one of the pads so they gave me all new pads.  

 

[BeyerMonster]

  Nice! There prolly aint nothing that can do bass like the audeze's tho. especially not the maggies. My dad has those and they sound very VERY natural. like i've never heard a piano sound more real. But they seem to lack impact. He has a subwoofer but Idk it just doesn't seem to slam like my own dynamic speakers. but i think they're not set up properly (big room)

Uhh... If maggies aren't doing bass well, they're either the miniature ones or you're probably doing something wrong. I guess it depends which ones you have, but they've got some lots of slam with the right setup and amplification. Maggies also tend to scale very well. Even the MMGs.

 

[commtrd]

When I visited with an Audeze sales person he told me that they were working on an improved LCD3 but did not know if it would be denoted differently as in LCD4 and that there was definitely no plan to release it any time soon at all. He also said they were working on a lower cost headphone which would be released in the near future. So they are likely targeting the bigger market share available to potential buyers looking to step up to at least mid-fi from such widely available at Best Buy etc. IMHO between the LCD3(f) and the X, there are two really awesome headphones that even though [allegedly] are not up to Stax standards, are undeniably extremely fine products. Along with a few select others, this offering of headphones available makes this a really good time to be an audiophile! Choice is a good thing... My choice was the X but I could be happy as a clam with a LCD3(f) also. It all comes down to what musical presentation the individual desires.

 

[donlin]

When I visited with an Audeze sales person he told me that they were working on an improved LCD3 but did not know if it would be denoted differently as in LCD4 and that there was definitely no plan to release it any time soon at all. He also said they were working on a lower cost headphone which would be released in the near future. So they are likely targeting the bigger market share available to potential buyers looking to step up to at least mid-fi from such widely available at Best Buy etc. IMHO between the LCD3(f) and the X, there are two really awesome headphones that even though [allegedly] are not up to Stax standards, are undeniably extremely fine products. Along with a few select others, this offering of headphones available makes this a really good time to be an audiophile! Choice is a good thing... My choice was the X but I could be happy as a clam with a LCD3(f) also. It all comes down to what musical presentation the individual desires.

You are absolutely correct that this is a good time to be an audiophile.  Back in the early days of Head-Fi, the ongoing debate was between Grado RS1 and Sennheiser HD600.  Those both sound pretty weak in comparison with today's top phones.

 

[bpcans]

You are absolutely correct that this is a good time to be an audiophile.  Back in the early days of Head-Fi, the ongoing debate was between Grado RS1 and Sennheiser HD600.  Those both sound pretty weak in comparison with today's top phones.

The RS1i's when driven properly really are a stand alone set of cans. I use a Woo WA6 with a USAF 596 rectifier and some Sophia Electric 6SN7 power/driver tubes. Very lush and revealing! The HD600's have been superseded by the HD800's which are an industry standard for soundstage and detail. I'll probably be making a move toward the Audeze X's shortly unless the LCD-3's enchant me more.

 

[LFC_SL]

The HD6xx has high price > value ratio and which will likely not be superseded for a long while based on current headphone audio trends, if ever.

 

[tonereef]

LOL ok!

I have an ageing Stax Lambda Pro and FWIW (I'm sure modern Stax are very different) I would not like my LCD-4 to sound like my Lambda.

Yes, there's detail in spades. But the tonal balance is so treble-tilted it produces lack of body. Women vocalists sound like girls, for example. I usually welcome the added 'detail' at first then soon tire of it.

I guess if Audez'e could retain the tonal body of the LCD-3 and get close to the highs of the SR-009 it would be amazing - but is this even possible?

I've had the 009 for a couple of years but am just now getting really credible bass thanks to a cap mod (Mundorf) to my DIY 6SN7 amp (based on the Stax design but done right in terms of power supply regulation etc. - more like the T2 than the T1 in that regard). And I was amazed to hear how much bass the Lambdas have when driven with that amp; listened to Patricia Barber - no more upward tilt on the voice. Not so very different from the 009 tonally. The 007s of course are very different. Their bass is a bit too prominent now and the mids a bit too rich with that amp. They sound better with the higher voltage swing of EL34s.
 
Recently I bought the LCD-3F. The Lambdas actually produce more low bass now than the 3F. Maybe there's an amp that will pull more low bass out of the 3F than the one I'm using (a balanced hybrid design with 6H30s in the input stage, also DIY, both built by a friend). But they sound great otherwise (using a very low capacitance DIY silver cable - forget the stock cable). Midrange to die for. The 009 is still more revealing, sunnier, more "Kodachrome", and with those amazing highs. The very different presentations of the 009 and the 3F are nicely complementary. The "truth" might be somewhere in between, but that headphone doesn't exist AFAIK. And maybe could never exist, as the different technologies of orthos and electrostats do seem to impose their own sets of limitations. (Though I haven't heard the Abyss.)
 
I also auditioned the LCD-X in my system, but finally they left me cold (too "Ektachrome"). Too bad the 3F doesn't have their bass extension and slam though! I've read many opinions that the X's mids are more neutral the the 3F's, but I don't hear that - at least with acoustic music there's something deadened about their sound, some vibrancy lacking, that seems typical of otherwise very good dynamic headphones. Possibly, technically, the 3F mids aren't quite as neutral (do the FR graphs show anything that would suggest that?), and maybe the 3F does beautify sound to some extent by rolling off the highs a bit more than the X (?), but in the end it's the emotional connection to the music that really counts, and there, for me, the 3F scores. That might also be partly because the 3F produces more fine timbral/textural detail than the X in an audiophile system. Instrumental overtones sound more there. The X outlines sound more (not to the point of "etch" but in that direction compared to the 3F), but it doesn't fill it in as well.

 

[Articnoise]

  I also auditioned the LCD-X in my system, but finally they left me cold (too "Ektachrome"). Too bad the 3F doesn't have their bass extension and slam though! I've read many opinions that the X's mids are more neutral the the 3F's, but I don't hear that - at least with acoustic music there's something deadened about their sound, some vibrancy lacking, that seems typical of otherwise very good dynamic headphones.  And they definitely don't produce as much fine timbral/textural detail as the 3F in an audiophile system.

Exactly my experience!

 

[Jones Bob]

If you have the factory LCD-3F with 110 ohm diaphragms, take off the outer grills and foam inserts then put the grills back on and give it a listen. I did not like this with my LCD-2.2s or LCD-3Cs, as it altered the sound too radically. Am still listening to the LCD-3Fs without the foam dampening, and the change is opening up the soundstage quite a bit. A slight loss of bass, but a tighter more focused bass. Perhaps less muddy?

Still have not decided if I intend to leave them this way. But overall an interesting change. YMMV yada yada....

 

[KmanChu]

If you have the factory LCD-3F with 110 ohm diaphragms, take off the outer grills and foam inserts then put the grills back on and give it a listen. I did not like this with my LCD-2.2s or LCD-3Cs, as it altered the sound too radically. Am still listening to the LCD-3Fs without the foam dampening, and the change is opening up the soundstage quite a bit. A slight loss of bass, but a tighter more focused bass. Perhaps less muddy?

Still have not decided if I intend to leave them this way. But overall an interesting change. YMMV yada yada....

Does this void the warranty? I would be careful doing this given the track-record of Audeze drivers going out.

 

[Jones Bob]

Its reversible. And undetectable.

 

[S Crowther]

Tried removing the foam. Big difference. More open sound and more edgy treble, the muffled mid-range has gone. Better resolution of detail.
I replaced the foam with some folded kitchen paper to keep out dust. That helped too.
Whether you like the change is a matter of taste. It suits me very much. I use the phones mainly with the AK240 balanced and had previously preferred the ultrasone E10 as I thought the LCD3 was too muddy in the mid range. No longer.
Which diaphragms I have is difficult to say. The phones were bought in Dec. last year but they quickly broke and were sent back for repair in January this year. They came back 6 weeks later with a message from Audeze that the transducers had bee changed and fazers added.

 

[Jones Bob]

Removing the foam suits my preferences and my system too. And agree with all your comments about the change in sound. Except the high frequencies are more extended and natural with my tube amp. I was running my LCD-3 with just the grill in place, no foam. IMO, with no science to back it up, dust should not be very much of a problem as the rear of the driver has what looks like wool sandwiched between the diaphragm and fazor. Plus orthodynamics are not like electrostatics and actively attract dust.

Had to return them to Audeze last Thursday as the connector housing on the left earpod was loose and falling out. Could have glued it myself, but then Audeze would not know about the quality issue possibly take corrective action on future production.

If you have a simple ohm meter, one can easily measure the DCR of driver. Even so, by the sounds of it, you more than likely have had the 110 ohm drivers installed with fazors when serviced by Audeze. Removing the foam with the 45 ohm drivers in my previous LCD-3C was terribly disappointing.

The LCD-3F are definitely more open and less muddy after removing the foam. They have me wondering if I really need a Stax rig.