Audeze LCD-5: Setting a New Benchmark
Thank you to Todd @ TTVJ for sponsoring the review tour of the Audeze LCD-5. I was able to test the headphone on my home setup for a week in exchange for my honest opinions.
Overview
There's a scene in the 2nd season of the television show The Expanse
where an alien intelligence deconstructs an entire space-ship into its individual component parts. The Audeze LCD-5 does this to music, exposing every detail, every nuance, every intricate detail in such a way that's breathtaking.
Associated Equipment
Source - Bluesound Node 2i with Apple Music Lossless and FLAC CD Rips on USB Stick
DAC - RME ADI-2 DAC
Amp - Schiit Ragnarok 2
Overview
Build, Presentation, and Comfort
The Audeze LCD-5s come in a high quality aluminum travel case, similar to the previous Audeze Pelican cases, but feeling more premium due to its metal construction. The headphones fit into a beautifully precise laser-cut cutout and are surrounded by copious padding above and below, giving full confidence to take these when traveling without having to worry about the headphones being damaged.
Audeze has swapped their signature wood rings for an acetate ring finished in a lovely tortoise shell pattern. I'm always a sucker for brown, and in the right light the tortoise really pops. I own a pair of LCD-3s that have suffered from the common cracking of the wood rings around the cable connectors, so going to a most robust material that shouldn't suffer such a fate is a move I fully support.
The adjustment rods are now more rectangular than the older style, but work in essentially the same way. The suspension headband has a leather (or leather-like) strap that touches your head, and a beautiful carbon fiber strap on top. While it's not really that important day to day, the leather on the Audeze headband doesn't smell anywhere as nice as the leather on the Meze Empyrean Elite headband.
The cups are a major departure from previous Audeze headphones, with a concave construction that tapers in from the lip. This was reportedly done to help reduce unwanted reflections inside of the cups to produce a purer more detailed sound. The unfortunate part about it is that due to the high clamp force and smaller cups, my ears were mashed up against the inner surface of the pads. Over my week as the headband stretched a bit they did become more comfortable however.
Sound
The official Audeze LCD-5 thread has had a long-running debate since its inception about whether or not these headphones require EQ. I'm personally in the pro-EQ camp for the majority of headphones that I own, and it's rare that I find one that I feel reaches its full potential without it. In order to give the most well-rounded feedback about the LCD-5 I listened to it for several days without EQ, then with just a bass shelf, and finally with a full EQ profile (in my case
Oratory1999's EQ Profile, as I've always been very impressed with his work). While just a bass shelf did improve and enhance them, I felt that the full EQ profile was considerably better, so the following are my impressions stock, and with full EQ.
Stock
Bass: Light in impact, but with extremely deep extension, and the most detail I've ever heard in the bass of any headphone. Some rumble and a bit of slam on tracks that were mixed heavy in the bass, but on others with a more neutral production the bass often felt somewhat lacking in quantity. At no point did the bass ever bleed into the midrange or cause any problems for any other area of the frequency response.
Midrange: Hands down the best midrange of any Audeze headphone ever, and in easy contention for the best stock midrange of any headphone I've heard at all, perhaps falling a bit to the HD6XX/650 in overall tuning, but easily besting it by orders of magnitude in detail and speed. Voices come alive with proper harmonics and richness.
Treble: I'm not a treble-head, so it's hard for me to make direct comparisons, but it seemed very detailed and was never sibilant or over-emphasized.
With EQ
Thankfully my RME ADI-2 DAC makes it very easy to apply EQs to various headphones, and to also switch between full-EQ, no-EQ, and just bass boost, all while still listening through quick hot-keys on the remote, so I could switch multiple times per track to really make sure I was hearing what I was hearing.
Bass: With EQ these slam and rumble with the best of them, easily matching or exceeding my LCD-3s, and maintaining the level of detail and accuracy without any bleed even with a copious amount of boost. The texture of the bass in Bela Fleck's
Flight of the Cosmic Hippo came across perfectly, hearing nuances I'd never heard before, even on $200,000 speakers at audio shows. Switching to some electronic music Propellerhead's
Bigger? showed off the bottomless extension and ability to rattle one's cheeks. HA:TFELT's
Ain't Nobody is a track I love to test headphones on because it has both deep bass that should slam and punch that occurs at the same time as a yearning vocal line, a great headphone will make that sweet bass feel like it's suffusing your entire being while not letting it intrude on that vocal line, and the LCD-5s pass with flying colors.
Midrange: While the stock midrange performance is strong, with the Oratory EQ it's rounded out without being reduced, giving a bit of boost into the 5-6khz range and into the lower treble, making for a more fulfilling presentation with more bite, edge, and detail. Sara Bareilles'
Live at the Variety Playhouse is one of my favorite live albums, and the LCD-5s did an amazing job reproducing her vocal tone while maintaining the sound of the live venue in songs such as
Brave. As a long time fan of Mamamoo and their individual works, I'm intimately familiar with all of Solar's Gamsung releases, so reached for
Alone People to test timbre and was richly rewarded with a holographic presentation that sounded like she was singing directly into my ears, plus the panning Hammond Organ at the beginning of the track gave a very cool effect with the LCD-5s. Turning to some male vocals I broke out one of my favorite rock albums, House of Freaks'
Tantilla a beautiful exercise in how amazing music can be created with minimal production. With
When the Hammer Came Down every bit of the stripped-bare rock goodness came through crystal clear.
Treble: I always feel at a loss trying to describe treble. Where does midrange end and treble begin? With the EQ applied the treble is more present and the transition from the midrange into it smoother. Elevations in the lower treble helped provide more intensity that I personally enjoy. I turned to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 (the Royal Philharmonic recording conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras is a favorite of mine) as it's a piece I'm intimately familiar with having listened to it many dozens of times and performed it in community orchestras in the past. The violins sounded properly airy, the trumpets properly piercing and brash, and the celeste in the final moments of the first movement had the proper sparkle.
Soundstage and Imaging: I personally prefer a more intimate soundstage but with precise imaging, and the LCD-5 is right up my alley in that regard. The soundstage isn't small by any means, but it's not artificially wide as with some other headphones, things are kept inside the head or just outside of it. The imaging is top-notch, rivaling or even exceeding my previous imaging champ, the Beyerdynamic T1.2. Not only can the LCD-5 place sound properly within a single horizontal plane, there's a lot of depth forward and backward, plus top and bottom, it's capable of truly three-dimensional triple-axis placement of music, which combined with its amazing detail retrieval creates some breathtaking moments listening into the mix. Going back to the Propellerheads their song
360 Degrees (Oh Yeah) begins with a skateboarding sound that pans back and forth across the head. With some headphones it just appears on one side and then immediately appears on the other, with the LCD-5 I could hear it cleanly transitioning in three dimensional space around my head.
Comparisons:
Meze Empyrean Elite: The Meze is a beautiful headphone with impeccable craftsmanship and astounding comfort. When it comes to sound however it's rather relaxed and reserved, not coming close to the LCD-5 in terms of detail and precision. The tuning on the Empyrean is more laid-back compared to the more forward LCD-5, which some people will undoubtedly prefer, but during my time I couldn't help but feel it was lacking due to that smoother tuning. Audeze could learn a thing or two from Meze when it comes to comfort, however.
Audeze LCD-3: My first higher-end Audeze that I've owned (I do have an old pair of EL-8 Titaniums). Stock to stock the LCD-5 takes the LCD-3 out behind the woodshed. IMO the LCD-3 absolutely needs EQ to not sound dead and dull. EQ'd close to Harman and compared head to head the LCD-3 is still more lush and fuller sounding in the lower midrange, and (though I generally hate the term) 'organic' in that it smooths things out a bit, details are obscured, but because of that it's also more forgiving. Comfort-wise, I do prefer the LCD-3 to the LCD-5 even with the LCD-3s extra weight. The large earpads and lighter clamp make it a headphone I can wear for hours without ever having to readjust.
Hifiman HE6se V2: While comparing a $600 headphone to a $4,500 headphone may seem unfair, the HE6se can more than hold its own in a specific niche. Stock tuning to stock tuning the HE6se is somewhat similar to the LCD-5 in that it has a forward midrange, though the peak is a bit higher on the HE6se, and it scoops the mid-mids around the 1-2khz region. You don't buy the HE6se to listen to it stock however (at least I didn't). The HE6se is a headphone you buy to swap on the Hifiman round velour pads, and then give it great heaping gobs of bass boost. With a Harman EQ from 1khz up and 12db of bass boost below 105hz the HE6se becomes a hysterically fun and brutal monster of a headphone, providing bass slam that I've never heard anything else come close to matching, including the LCD-5. On the other hand it doesn't match the LCD-5 in terms of details in that bass, nor anywhere else in the frequency response, and sports built quality that's far more in line with its $600 price. Still, it's an amazingly fun headphone for when I want to get all about that bass.
Conclusions: The Audeze LCD-5 comes super close to being the perfect headphone for my tastes, with the biggest issue being the comfort from the extreme clamp of the stock headband. Thankfully Audeze is now shipping them with a larger headband that from reports greatly improves comfort. This is one that I really didn't want to let go at the end of my review tour. Because of that, and I suppose this is my ultimate vote of confidence, I called Todd and placed an order for one for myself.
(this one is still Todd's, but I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of mine so it can take its place. I just left it there long enough to take the picture, I didn't want to scratch it up, I should probably get a headphone stand).
