Audeze LCD-4z - Impressions Thread

[Bfh29]

I was thinking about putting there 4 pin XLR and getting also the 4pin to two 3pin XLR converter, but the additional connectors will have a bit of impact on the sound, so I would rather avoid them.
I also know that 6.3 jack output drives the 4z nicely, but Audeze headphones are beasts and love more power, so I was wondering if the preamp outputs on TT2 don't have a bit of an effect on the sound a bit more body and soundstage

 

[Mrinfinity]

I'm planning to buy Lavricables Grand cable for my Audeze LCD-4z headphones. I have Chord Hugo TT2 as my DAC/headamp and I'm thinking if I should have the cable with the 6.3 jack or go for the double 3-pin XLR option and use the TT2 preamp section for driving the LCD-4z. Did anyone try connecting them to balanced XLR output of Hugo TT2 and comparing it with the unbalanced jack output? Any difference? Which sounds better? Thank you.

Go double 3pin xlr. The balanced option gives the phone's more rumble and slam imo

 

[Bfh29]

Thank you, will try to do that. I'm intrested how will be the combination of Lavricables grand and XRL outpust on Chord Hugo TT2.

 

[InstantSilence]

What are the differences in sound signature and tone va the lcd4.?
I can't find a review that compares them in depth

 

[EDWARIS]

get my LCD-4z in the end, waited them for 1.5 months)

some mixed results by far, after 1 day of listening. I feel that old good LCD-4 was better for rock and blues music, and He1000se is better for classic, vocals, instrumental ect, but as a universal all-around headphones 4z probably the best, something like swiss knife of headphones, despite other headphones may be better in some ways. tried Susvara recently, they are great and probably could be absolutely the best for everything, but Viva Egoista 2a3 can't drive them well, only Solista (and probably egoista 845) can, so decided to go for LCD-4z.

 

[Slim1970]

get my LCD-4z in the end, waited them for 1.5 months)

some mixed results by far, after 1 day of listening. I feel that old good LCD-4 was better for rock and blues music, and He1000se is better for classic, vocals, instrumental ect, but as a universal all-around headphones 4z probably the best, something like swiss knife of headphones, despite other headphones may be better in some ways. tried Susvara recently, they are great and probably could be absolutely the best for everything, but Viva Egoista 2a3 can't drive them well, only Solista (and probably egoista 845) can, so decided to go for LCD-4z.

Give them a minute to break in. They do sound better over time. I agree that are excellent all around headphones.

 

[Mrinfinity]

On top of break in i cannot stress enough how eq turns these into literally any headphone u want, that is if you start finding your self wanting something other than a neutral signature

 

[InstantSilence]

On top of break in i cannot stress enough how eq turns these into literally any headphone u want, that is if you start finding your self wanting something other than a neutral signature

After selling the 4z, I've always missed the 4z. After having the Abyss 1266 TC for about half a year and now, sensitive to sounds in the upper mids/treble area,ive decided to go back to the 4z as it had a sweet blend of resolution /detail/and fatigue free listening.

Also got an insane deal for them especially being new!
I briefly tried the lcd4 (just for 5 tracks) and it just seemed to miss too much of the music and not being as resolving vs th 4z,to my ears

So I'm stoked for them. As I've missed them so much.
The reason for your quote is.
What makes you think it responds so well to EQ, also what does your FR range once in EQ look like?

 

[Mrinfinity]

After selling the 4z, I've always missed the 4z. After having the Abyss 1266 TC for about half a year and now, sensitive to sounds in the upper mids/treble area,ive decided to go back to the 4z as it had a sweet blend of resolution /detail/and fatigue free listening.

Also got an insane deal for them especially being new!
I briefly tried the lcd4 (just for 5 tracks) and it just seemed to miss too much of the music and not being as resolving vs th 4z,to my ears

So I'm stoked for them. As I've missed them so much.
The reason for your quote is.
What makes you think it responds so well to EQ, also what does your FR range once in EQ look like?

Good to hear man! I also sold my first 4z to tour around with other headphones but I always missed their delicate signature and had to go back. I thi k what makes them work so well with EQ is the combination of having extremely low distortion and while I dont know exactly why, from my experience planar drivers have the ability to take what the eq is telling it to do and exaggerate whatever frequency range you want it to without disturbing adjacent frequency ranges. I think the difference is the physical excursion of voice coils bouncing back and forth doesnt allow it to have as much control as the magnets pushing the films in planars (again these are my personal conclusions that could be completely wrong, but make a but of sense to me)

As far as how my FR looks right now, I am using this graph from oratory on my 4zs. it is nnormally intended for the lcd 4 but to me it sounds amazing. When I first got the 4z, all I did at first was give it a 3db high shelf for bass in addition to the audeze reveal lcd 4z eq preset in roon. This gave it the boost I needed for electronic music while the boost in the 3 and 9k range gave the highs a bit more life although not much.

After selling my 4zs and moving to utopia, I found I enjoyed the brightness a lot but eventually it did get fatiguing for me for a while. So once I got back to the 4z I looked around for eq guides and even some professional eq for certain things I wanted to hear to see if I could apply them to my custom 4z curve. What I wanted was high bass, and sparkle in hats and cymbals, more noticable transient in snares, and a bit more grit to vocals and synths (I listen to mostly bass heavy electronic music as well as indie/ funk) after playing around for a while I felt I was completely changing the detail of the 4z while painting its signature. Bass had a new rumble to it, vocals where smooth but crisp around vowel sounds, synths had more grit, snares had more sparkle, but I was still missing a sort of cohesiveness to the sound. That's when I came across oratory eq for the lcd 4. His goal was to shape the sound towards the Harman target, which coincidentally, was exactly the sound I was looking for when I was searching for eq. I followed his custom eq curves in roon and wow the sound is just amazing. Super immersive, full of detail, bass has oomph and it completely transformed the headphone for me.

I would highly suggest using his eq curve and then taking a good afternoon to play around with the peaks and valleys to tune it to the music you enjoy most. For me i lowered the dip around 1k about .5 db more, set the high shelf more so around 125, boosted the 10k and up range about 1.5db for more air

I know it seems extreme. But trust me the 4k can take it. It's obviously far from neutral but it's fun so why not

 

[cangle]

Good to hear man! I also sold my first 4z to tour around with other headphones but I always missed their delicate signature and had to go back. I thi k what makes them work so well with EQ is the combination of having extremely low distortion and while I dont know exactly why, from my experience planar drivers have the ability to take what the eq is telling it to do and exaggerate whatever frequency range you want it to without disturbing adjacent frequency ranges. I think the difference is the physical excursion of voice coils bouncing back and forth doesnt allow it to have as much control as the magnets pushing the films in planars (again these are my personal conclusions that could be completely wrong, but make a but of sense to me)

As far as how my FR looks right now, I am using this graph from oratory on my 4zs. it is nnormally intended for the lcd 4 but to me it sounds amazing. When I first got the 4z, all I did at first was give it a 3db high shelf for bass in addition to the audeze reveal lcd 4z eq preset in roon. This gave it the boost I needed for electronic music while the boost in the 3 and 9k range gave the highs a bit more life although not much.

After selling my 4zs and moving to utopia, I found I enjoyed the brightness a lot but eventually it did get fatiguing for me for a while. So once I got back to the 4z I looked around for eq guides and even some professional eq for certain things I wanted to hear to see if I could apply them to my custom 4z curve. What I wanted was high bass, and sparkle in hats and cymbals, more noticable transient in snares, and a bit more grit to vocals and synths (I listen to mostly bass heavy electronic music as well as indie/ funk) after playing around for a while I felt I was completely changing the detail of the 4z while painting its signature. Bass had a new rumble to it, vocals where smooth but crisp around vowel sounds, synths had more grit, snares had more sparkle, but I was still missing a sort of cohesiveness to the sound. That's when I came across oratory eq for the lcd 4. His goal was to shape the sound towards the Harman target, which coincidentally, was exactly the sound I was looking for when I was searching for eq. I followed his custom eq curves in roon and wow the sound is just amazing. Super immersive, full of detail, bass has oomph and it completely transformed the headphone for me.

I would highly suggest using his eq curve and then taking a good afternoon to play around with the peaks and valleys to tune it to the music you enjoy most. For me i lowered the dip around 1k about .5 db more, set the high shelf more so around 125, boosted the 10k and up range about 1.5db for more air

I know it seems extreme. But trust me the 4k can take it. It's obviously far from neutral but it's fun so why not

Interesting, I've played around with eq on the 4z but kept coming back to the stock tuning as I felt like each eq was taking away a characteristic of the stock tuning that I liked. For example I tried either oratory's eq or metal571's eq for the lcd-4 (I'm not sure which one but they both lean towards the harman curve) and found the bass to feel more cohesive but the treble lacked sparkle and the sound felt less impactful. I've also tried the reveal plugin which I didn't think did anything noticeable and the sonarworks curve which made them sound very unnatural and I believe caused some distortion in the upper mids/lower treble.

Recently I purchased the 800S and seeing what those can do for the upper frequencies I feel like I'm missing the same sense of air and separation that the 800S provides in the 4z. Do you know how to increase the sense of air via eq or is that not something that eq can do? After reading your experience though I'll have to give it another try. I also have roon now where previously I was using peace apo or my ADI-2 so roon makes the eq experience more tolerable and less fiddly.

 

[ajreynol]

get my LCD-4z in the end, waited them for 1.5 months)

some mixed results by far, after 1 day of listening. I feel that old good LCD-4 was better for rock and blues music, and He1000se is better for classic, vocals, instrumental ect, but as a universal all-around headphones 4z probably the best, something like swiss knife of headphones, despite other headphones may be better in some ways. tried Susvara recently, they are great and probably could be absolutely the best for everything, but Viva Egoista 2a3 can't drive them well, only Solista (and probably egoista 845) can, so decided to go for LCD-4z.

I really enjoyed my time with the 4Z's. But in the end, I couldn't get past the limited sound stage. It always felt like there was a perceptibly flat wall of sound, like I was in a small box of sound. Plus, they were too bright to the point of being sharp and painful with some music and voice lines where the LCD-4's were not. My ears are very sensitive to sharp highs and that ended up being a show-stopper for me.

I ended up going back to the LCD-4's which I found better for me. But the fact that the 4z's sounded fully composed even out of my iPhone was remarkable.

 

[InstantSilence]

I moved from Abyss TC to the 4z due to the aggressive forward sharp sound of the TC.
I love the 4z,havent even burned them in yet but I don't hear any sibilance or peaky fatigue. And resolution isn't all that far behind the TC, clarity in the mids needs to be more forward, more clear... But I suppose a quality cable can make thst happen.

 

[jlbrach]

sharp sound?...huh?...you must be overly sensitive...good for you though if you like the 4z because you will save some dollars

 

[InstantSilence]

sharp sound?...huh?...you must be overly sensitive...good for you though if you like the 4z because you will save some dollars

Yeah I like them quite a bit more suprizingly. I found the TC too forward and aggressive with sharp highs. But... Those are good parts abiut it at the same time.

Sure will miss the TC bass.

 

[TheMiddleSky]

Yeah I like them quite a bit more suprizingly. I found the TC too forward and aggressive with sharp highs. But... Those are good parts abiut it at the same time.

Sure will miss the TC bass.

Why not try susvara route?