[Icenine2]

Paired with a top flight DAC like the DAVE or even Hugo2, it's bang on neutral. The 281 rolls off quite a bit too much for my liking (both ends).

Mac, I've got a Wyred4Sound DAC 2v2SE. I really want to get the MKII. Think that will fly OK?

 

[Hifi59]

My Wells Audio Headtrip Reference (aka Level 2) plus Lcd-4 (or any of my other 8 sets of headphones) is the best I have ever heard in my 59 years. Just killer. Tonal color, transparency, texture, impact. It’s all there like I’ve never heard before. I can no longer listen to my Pathos Aurium amp (as good as that is!) for any length of time. Although the Lcd-4s are my favorite with this amp and others, my HiFiman (He-1k and He-6) scale best on it than any other set that I own.

 

[rgs9200m]

For Sahmen, actually, I find you do not need a super-amp to make the LCD4 sing. I have an EMM cd player with an old Headroom Max amp from 1999, and somehow there is great synergy here.
This little amp, which you can find used sometimes for a few hundred dollars, really makes for a superb, musical, resolving sound that is also free from fatigue. And it also "wakes up" the LCD4 with a wonderful
balanced sound over the entire spectrum.
If you can find one of the older Headroom amps (there were many of them), they drive the LCD4 nicely for a bargain price. Look around via Google for one. (Tyll designed them.)

 

[sahmen]

For Sahmen, actually, I find you do not need a super-amp to make the LCD4 sing. I have an EMM cd player with an old Headroom Max amp from 1999, and somehow there is great synergy here.
This little amp, which you can find used sometimes for a few hundred dollars, really makes for a superb, musical, resolving sound that is also free from fatigue. And it also "wakes up" the LCD4 with a wonderful
balanced sound over the entire spectrum.
If you can find one of the older Headroom amps (there were many of them), they drive the LCD4 nicely for a bargain price. Look around via Google for one. (Tyll designed them.)

Thanks for the suggestions... I am hoping my Violectric V281 and my Monoprice Cavalli Liquid Platinum will both do just fine with the LCD4. If they happen to fall short, in spite of my expectations, I shall definitely explore other options, which may include the unit you have mentioned.

 

[MacedonianHero]

My Wells Audio Headtrip Reference (aka Level 2) plus Lcd-4 (or any of my other 8 sets of headphones) is the best I have ever heard in my 59 years. Just killer. Tonal color, transparency, texture, impact. It’s all there like I’ve never heard before. I can no longer listen to my Pathos Aurium amp (as good as that is!) for any length of time. Although the Lcd-4s are my favorite with this amp and others, my HiFiman (He-1k and He-6) scale best on it than any other set that I own.

Agreed...the Headtrip is a trip! Love that amp!

 

[MacedonianHero]

Mac, I've got a Wyred4Sound DAC 2v2SE. I really want to get the MKII. Think that will fly OK?

Should be a great source for these revealing headphones!

 

[Zurakx]

Sorry guys i have a quick question, does audeze send paypal invoices on custom audeze lcd 4 orders? I just ordered a set through emails with Tony and got an invoice through paypal. It's just a little odd since we never discussed paying through paypal. I'm just trying to verify that I did not somehow get myself setup in some email scam chain before paying out on these.

-edit-

called audeze just to verify. it is how they do it. They are assembling my LCD-4s right now and it will be starting burn in shortly. Cant wait to get them.

 

[Icenine2]

Still running my Cavalli Liquid Fire(Stax Mafia...your criticism is noted and sorry about all my jingoism on the amp when I first got it and wrote about it). All good but I'd like to go w/HeadAmo GSX MKII (Although new GSX-mini looks really nice as does Pass Amp. Ultimately I like the Headamp for one reason which is Justin just kills on detail and coolness. Sorry but those are a criteria for me.

 

[Articnoise]

Just to follow up with some information regarding our earlier discussion, below is the reply I received in a PM from Rob:

"For Dave - at 15 ohms it will be voltage limited to 6.8v RMS. That's 3W of power! 200 ohms is 231 mW at 1%.

Below 15 ohms the 0.5A RMS current limit comes in, hence why 8 ohms is only 2.1W. The LCD-4 will go to 111 dB SPL. I think that's enough SPL!"

So no, the DAVE won’t run out of Current at low Ohms and will be just fine for the efficient LCD4z. For the LCD-4 the 111dB he quotes is pretty much what I calculated earlier. If someone doesn’t like the DAVE with the LCD-4 it isn’t technically a lack of power (as is common for people to perpetuate) but personal preference/synergy (nothing wrong with that) unless listening at stupid loud levels, or the source material is incredibly quiet. I don’t mean to come off as defensive regarding DAVE, but rather just trying to inform with actual numbers.

231 mW at 1% isn’t very much for driving the LCD-4 and Audeze is recommending much more.

If more power wouldn’t be favourable with some headphones, Chord probably wouldn’t make the TT2 with so much more power on tap .

 

[x RELIC x]

231 mW at 1% isn’t very much for driving the LCD-4 and Audeze is recommending much more.

If more power wouldn’t be favourable with some headphones, Chord probably wouldn’t make the TT2 with so much more power on tap .

You will never actually feed what Audeze recommends (1-4W) in to the LCD-4 (200 Ohms) without destroying your hearing quickly. It’s just how electricity and transducers work.

Edit: To be fair, Audeze doesn’t specify in to what load or sensitivity their 1-4W recommendation is for, and they use the 1-4W recommendation for many of their headphones... even their very efficient ones... which can cause confusion for many. If a regular consumer is just looking at the max power output spec of an amp - which is usually specified anywhere between 8-32 Ohms - then the 1-4W recommendation is a good ballpark for the LCD-4 but waaaay overkill for, say, the LCD-XC.

 

[mlxx]

I did a little research into the power/Dave issue...
One thing that confused me was that my CMA800R that I use in its published specs didn't have a lot of power, about the same as the Dave yet it sound great to me and the Dave a bit lifeless. These are the published specs for the CMA800R at 300 ohms. Note at the 200 ohms of the LCD4 these will be a bit higher. Also I am using the stereo mode not the mono mode. Max volts is specified as 7.5V.

Audio Performance
Gain: 15.5dB
Sensitivity: 1.2Vrms
Input Impedance: 47kΩ
SNR: 114dB in stereo mode, 118dB in mono mode
THD+N: 0.00038% @1kHz, 300Ω ; 0.00026% @1kHz, 300Ω
Max Output Power:
180mW (7.5Vrms) @300Ω, stereo mode
710mW (15Vrms) @300Ω, mono mode

However, this is the actual test sheet that came with my unit also at 300 ohms. Note the max volts now is about 12V. Also note how the distortion shoots straight up after that due to voltage clipping. Also, the sweet spot for this amp is >5V where it has extremely low distortion. So in reality it has lot more power than I thought it did. Makes a bit more sense.

https://images2.imgbox.com/ee/ec/d8JqXT5C_o.jpg

I also found this below that says need half a watt at 200 ohms but also lists the Dave there too.

https://audeze.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001679686-Headphone-Amp-Recommendations-for-LCD-4

In theory the Dave may be able to reach 111dB, it gets loud enough, but it does so sounding a bit lifeless IMO. The TT2 will be a very interesting listen.

 

[Articnoise]

You will never actually feed what Audeze recommends (1-4W) in to the LCD-4 (200 Ohms) without destroying your hearing quickly. It’s just how electricity and transducers work.

Edit: To be fair, Audeze doesn’t specify in to what load or sensitivity their 1-4W recommendation is for, and they use the 1-4W recommendation for many of their headphones... even their very efficient ones... which can cause confusion for many. If a regular consumer is just looking at the max power output spec of an amp - which is usually specified anywhere between 8-32 Ohms - then the 1-4W recommendation is a good ballpark for the LCD-4 but waaaay overkill for, say, the LCD-XC.

Yes if all what you want from your amp is that it would be able to play loud many amps will be suitable. If someone OTOH is looking to get a really good sound with their Hi-End headphones other things than max SPL matters too. So yes I agree, if all that your amp is supposed to do is playing loud, 1-4 watt is not needed and would probably damage ones ear if played that loud.

A good amp that will match the use of our Hi-End headphones is about much more than how loud they can play at max, it’s about how good and effortless they can drive our headphones. Different headphones have different sonic and electrical properties and to get a proper match we need to use an amplifier that is capable of doing the amplifying as good as possible, and it is not then the amp is forced to operate near it maximum, it will sound too strained.

The root of the problem (as I see it) is that some/many people read too much in to those calculations that is made to tell us how loud we can play before the amp start clipping or distorted. If loud sound is all you want from you amp, then yes most amp will be suitable. If high fidelity is what you want you need to understand a few things first.

1) An amp start to sound compressed, less dynamic and boring long before it start clipping.

2) Those calculated numbers that we can find online isn’t showing the amount of power (watt, voltage, A) that is needed to get ultimate fidelity, they only show max SPL then we use a headphone that has this or that impedance and sensitives.

3) To be able to play 3 dB lounder (everything else the same) means that we need to double the amount of “power”, e.g. 100 % more power. 10 dB greater is usually perceived as double the loudness or twice as loud.

4) In a speaker system it’s also essential to match the speakers with a suitable amp. If we ‘are aiming to get good SQ we won’t use an (SS) amp near its max capability (or even half of its capability), because it would not sound very good. Instead we use amps with a lot more power on tap than we ever will use. The difference between a 50 watt amp and a 200 watt amp is 400 % more power, but only 12 dB loudness if we calculate merely the max SPL.

I can’t speak for Audeze thou I read their recommended (basic) spec as being with the impedance of the headphone in question and it’s why the same general power recommendations can be used with many of their HPs.

*To be clear, if someone really likes his/her amp, that’s on paper doesn’t have the recommended power to drive the LCD4, doesn’t mean that they need or should buy a new more powerful amp. Listen to music is subjective and recommendations are just recommendations and spec is just spec. To understand the spec and the “limitations” of those online calculations is still good to know IMO and was my only goal then posting on this topic*

 

[x RELIC x]

@Articnoise, I agree with much of what you've written and I applaud your last line (*), BUT, more output power provided to the transducer produces more SPL and that's not debatable, it's physics. However, just the power output spec on its own is one of the least important specs for quality once you have enough to get to your listening level with some headroom for clipping/distortion for peak levels within the gears limits.

I would never suggest driving the LCD-4 with a low powered or poorly designed amp just because it can get loud enough. I'm talking about high quality gear that doesn't fall apart when the volume is turned up, and that is down to good design. I get what you're saying about amps sounding congested long before hitting near max volume, but with headphones I've rarely experienced this if the gear is designed well. I find within 80% of max volume is a good guideline for most well designed headphone gear. We are talking about a 200 Ohm load with 97dB SPL/mW sensitivity, which isn't a stupid difficult load to drive well with TOTL gear, which the LCD-4 deserves. If the sensitivity were in the low 90s or in the 80s with the same impedance then yeah, it would be a slightly different conversation.

Oh, and I'm well aware of perceived loudness and the logarithmic scale for dB levels ; )

I often quote SPL measurements in reference to peaks and not RMS, and the chart I show clearly provides the V / A / W needed. If one is listening to dynamic peaks louder than 111dB then they are listening very loudly, or the music has unbelievably incredible dynamic range. I personally don't like wincing when I hear loud dynamic peaks in my music at 111dB. Also, the charts I've posted clearly demonstrate how much less power a 10dB difference in SPL requires (~10x), which is why I quote very loud dB numbers to cover most bases. 101dB peaks would still seem quite loud to most people and require 10x less power than the 231mW quoted by Rob with the DAVE for 111dB.

This isn't specific to the DAVE either. If any amp sounds better because it has 50% headroom it is more of a statement on the quality of the amp than the power required at the transducer.

Yes, I'm being academically pedantic.

Another consideration is the music that is being played may be mixed/mastered poorly (which is too common nowadays) and this is what falls apart to the listener at louder volumes (especially with better gear). If not identifying the music when making comments all bets are off when discussing quality of the gear.

Touching on fidelity, it is defined as how accurately the source signal is reproduced. The gear that measures better to the source is the better designed gear, for fidelity. On the other hand, some gear measures poorly but can sound very pleasant (especially louder), which is why I say preferences are very important as well, if not the most important metric for enjoyment. This is why I'd encourage people to ask how something actually sounds in the audio chain after they know there is enough power (charts help with this knowledge).

As an aside... The human brain/hearing is very tuned-in to relative differences, but very poor at identifying them accurately on their own. That's why we usually distinguish a 0.5dB difference in loudness as more dynamic and clear sounding, yet we fail miserably to attribute the difference to a slight increase in dB levels. Most people can not distinguish a 1dB increase as actually louder and the average person needs around 3dB (double the power) to even begin to easily perceive a difference in loudness. Human psychoacoustics are a funny thing. It's the same with our eyesight - we can easily distinguish a slight difference relative from one thing to the other, but we are incredibly poor at visually identifying minute differences accurately without a point of reference.

 

[Articnoise]

@Articnoise, I agree with much of what you've written and I applaud your last line (*), BUT, more output power provided to the transducer produces more SPL and that's not debatable, it's physics. However, just the power output spec on its own is one of the least important specs for quality once you have enough to get to your listening level with some headroom for clipping/distortion for peak levels within the gears limits.

I would never suggest driving the LCD-4 with a low powered or poorly designed amp just because it can get loud enough. I'm talking about high quality gear that doesn't fall apart when the volume is turned up, and that is down to good design. I get what you're saying about amps sounding congested long before hitting near max volume, but with headphones I've rarely experienced this if the gear is designed well. I find within 80% of max volume is a good guideline for most well designed headphone gear. We are talking about a 200 Ohm load with 97dB SPL/mW sensitivity, which isn't a stupid difficult load to drive well with TOTL gear, which the LCD-4 deserves. If the sensitivity were in the low 90s or in the 80s with the same impedance then yeah, it would be a slightly different conversation.

Oh, and I'm well aware of perceived loudness and the logarithmic scale for dB levels ; )

I often quote SPL measurements in reference to peaks and not RMS, and the chart I show clearly provides the V / A / W needed. If one is listening to dynamic peaks louder than 111dB then they are listening very loudly, or the music has unbelievably incredible dynamic range. I personally don't like wincing when I hear loud dynamic peaks in my music at 111dB. Also, the charts I've posted clearly demonstrate how much less power a 10dB difference in SPL requires (~10x), which is why I quote very loud dB numbers to cover most bases. 101dB peaks would still seem quite loud to most people and require 10x less power than the 231mW quoted by Rob with the DAVE for 111dB.

This isn't specific to the DAVE either. If any amp sounds better because it has 50% headroom it is more of a statement on the quality of the amp than the power required at the transducer.

Yes, I'm being academically pedantic.

Another consideration is the music that is being played may be mixed/mastered poorly (which is too common nowadays) and this is what falls apart to the listener at louder volumes (especially with better gear). If not identifying the music when making comments all bets are off when discussing quality of the gear.

Touching on fidelity, it is defined as how accurately the source signal is reproduced. The gear that measures better to the source is the better designed gear, for fidelity. On the other hand, some gear measures poorly but can sound very pleasant (especially louder), which is why I say preferences are very important as well, if not the most important metric for enjoyment. This is why I'd encourage people to ask how something actually sounds in the audio chain after they know there is enough power (charts help with this knowledge).

As an aside... The human brain/hearing is very tuned-in to relative differences, but very poor at identifying them accurately on their own. That's why we usually distinguish a 0.5dB difference in loudness as more dynamic and clear sounding, yet we fail miserably to attribute the difference to a slight increase in dB levels. Most people can not distinguish a 1dB increase as actually louder and the average person needs around 3dB (double the power) to even begin to easily perceive a difference in loudness. Human psychoacoustics are a funny thing. It's the same with our eyesight - we can easily distinguish a slight difference relative from one thing to the other, but we are incredibly poor at visually identifying minute differences accurately without a point of reference.

@ RELIC I like you and have found you knowledgeable on many things related to digital audio and SQ. I’m glad that we can agree on what’s most important is how the gear in our audio system ultimately sound like. Am not debating that, only that those web calculations can be used to match amp to Hi-End HPs. If one take them to heart more or less any amp could be used to drive everything and that’s not my experience.

On this very subject, how much power that is general recommended to have, I simply have another understanding and experience than you have. I find that there’s a strong correlation between how much power an amp has on tap and SQ. This correlation is the same no matter if we use speakers or headphones. How much more power someone “need” is of course debatable and depends on listing level, HPs, the amp design as well of the rest of the audio system. If you do the same kind of calculations for most Hi-End speakers as you did for LCD4 you would see that most only use a few watt max to get 110 dB and still many people can hear a clear difference between small and bigger amps from the same company, there the only difference is bigger PSU and more power out.

I think, and I can be wrong, that you find that the down side of adding an amp to your DAVE is bigger than the positive improvement more power on tap will result in. I know that this is a divider and we have many people that support your finding with Chords DAC/amps. BUT even if that is true and the pros of connecting a LCD4 directly is better sounding overall (with one specific devise like the DAVE), it doesn’t really change the fact that it would have sounded even better without the limitation of power at 200 Ohms. It also goes without saying that not all amp designs are the same and that their ability to sound good then forced to play near its limits is not the same.

So in summery I find that there’s a strong correlation between how much power an amp has on tap and SQ with hard to drive headphones like LCD4, HE6 etc. That doesn’t mean that power is the only or even most important factor we need to consider.

IMO the human hearing is very good at recognising if something sound accurately or not. It’s the audiophile curse .

 

[x RELIC x]

@Articnoise, interesting that you bring the general feeling of adding an amp specifically to Chord products to the conversation. Others brought DAVE in to the conversation and I wouldn’t recommend the Mojo with the LCD-4 for example. I haven’t mentioned anything with regard to adding an amp, or not, and the difference this brings with Chord products specifically... That’s a completely different topic. I’m simply expressing what I feel is enough in general terms of drive ability and the DAVE was in the mix of the conversation. Actually, I was initially showing how impedance is less of a factor for total power output requirements than sensitivity and how the impedance shifts the Current vs Voltage ratio yet total power requirements remain very close for a given sensitivity.

However, as I mentioned earlier in the conversation, I find it strange that Audeze recommends the DAVE and Chord has used the DAVE and the LCD-4 to showcase their products and yet consumers feel they don’t match. To me that screams preference / synergy. Of course many will disagree with me, and the designers, and that’s fine. I do have a Liquid Gold and besides the added Cavalli tuning, at all volume levels with any headphone I’ve used, I honestly don’t hear any technical improvement from more power "on tap". It’s adds a pleasant sound and I like it when in the mood (I did purchase it after all). I would still always recommend quality gear that speaks to the individual’s tastes.

Regarding speakers there is also the distance factor to account for. As you know, headphone calculations at the ear do not fall off with distance (1/r²) like speakers which adds another dimension to the power required for speakers.

Regardless, I feel this topic has taken enough time on this thread and I shouldn’t detract from it further. Thank you for the discussion and kind words.