Audeze LCD-5 Review, Measurements, Interview

[jaboki]

What hifiman?

The he1000 and susvara had zero pressure whatsoever in my experience

Actually I’d easily go as far as saying the susvara is unmatched in comfort but that is debatable

I agree. I’ve never heard of anyone saying the Arya/Susvara has clamping pressure. Susvara is the TOTL headphone to beat for comfort IMO.

The only comfort issue I’ve heard/felt related to Hifiman is the the elongated ear pads on the Arya that are felt near the lower jaw line over time. The Susvara is perfect.

 

[All Day Breakfast]

Do you know what headphones the Harman institute used for their test?

Audeze have mentioned that they designed the LCD-5 with a goal to have a more consistent sound profile regardless of headphone placement on the head. Perhaps the clamp force has a bit to do with that goal.

From my experience, every headphone changes in sound profile in different ways depending on head placement. I think every focal headphone I've had has been the worst offender; it takes quite a while to adjust their placement to get the optimal sound stage and tonality. The susvara, on the other hand, can sound pretty equal regardless of placement. When I created a small air gap with the susvara, the bass could hit bit harder. When I move the older LCD cans forward, the sound stage changes but tonally stays similar. It's a very interesting topic, and should certainly be a point of research among manufacturers.

From memory they used Audeze LCD 2 and Senn 800s and another which I can’t remember at least in the earlier papers. The papers themselves are behind a paywall. A good 3 part summary begins here: https://www.headphonesty.com/2020/04/harman-target-curves-part-1/

 

[chargedcapacitor]

I don't know if the earpads and band have broken in or I have become accustomed to the clamp force, but I now find the LCD-5 more comfortable than I did at first. I can wear them for longer sessions with less fatigue than I could with my LCD-R's. My only gripe is wiping the earpads after use isn't as quick and easy due to the inward curved cups.

 

[MichalZZZZ]

@chargedcapacitor

How would you compare the MX4 to the LCD5?

 

[audiocroissant]

Arya/Susvara have clamping pressure? I get that it sucks to buy 4500 $ headphone that lacks in comfort but you don't have to make stuff up to rationalise your purchases.

 

[Swisstoni]

Some more thoughts.. I'm not all fancy like many here, so I'm just gonna give you my thoughts on my music..

Back in Black ... loving the separation here, particularly on double-tracked guitar riffs.
Sad but True (Metallica) ... Thick drums. Can hear James' throat grating.
Sympathy for the Devil ... Wide bongos are wide. Mick's vocals are front and center, as are the electric guitar fills. Tight bass in the outro.
Here Comes the Sun ... George's vocals in my right ear. Goosebumps. Also, that flute (Moog?) in the last third..
Dreams (Fleetwood Mac) ... Nice soundstage on the band. Chorus vocals are spacious but tight and separated.
Sultans of Swing ... Lead fills and solos are so clean. Can feel the overdrive in the guitar.
Eye in the Sky ... It's amazing how these can make really great recording and production pop. This album sounds so good.
Stairway to Heaven ... Can confirm it still sounds good.

In Your Likeness (Woodkid) ... Deep vocals that resonate. Crisp percussion around a large empty room.
Oxytocin (Bille Eilish) ... Not her biggest fan, but this track pumps on the bass, the vocals are around you, and the drum-machine hits.
Wish (Nine Inch Nails) ... Such a noisy track, but you can still pull out what you're looking for.

--

Drums! They sound good!
I mean, of course you put some Rush on for this..
The timbre really is only comparable to what I've heard being in a room with a drummer. The quality and detail of the sound is just not something I'm used to. It's crisp, but at the same time it has depth and bass and clarity. Even a quick snare hit, I'm incredibly impressed with the weight that comes through with it. Thick.

Let's talk about bass
It's hard to describe, really. It's not what most would call "Audeze Bass" ... it's better, but different. I don't think anything has been taken away, but the definition and clarity extends lower, and it transforms how you hear the bass that is there. That said, if you're someone who wants a FLOOD of bass, you're gonna want to EQ these. Not because they should have more bass, but because they're representing the recordings genuinely. They don't have less bass than my LCD2's, they just have a lot more definition up above.

--

Note: My source is a PC running Roon streaming Qobuz or local FLAC. No EQ (yet!). Schiit Gungir (Multibit/Unison) + Mjolnir 2. Balanced.

How to you get hold of my play list

 

[KMann]

Do you know what headphones the Harman institute used for their test?

Audeze have mentioned that they designed the LCD-5 with a goal to have a more consistent sound profile regardless of headphone placement on the head. Perhaps the clamp force has a bit to do with that goal.

From my experience, every headphone changes in sound profile in different ways depending on head placement. I think every focal headphone I've had has been the worst offender; it takes quite a while to adjust their placement to get the optimal sound stage and tonality. The susvara, on the other hand, can sound pretty equal regardless of placement. When I created a small air gap with the susvara, the bass could hit bit harder. When I move the older LCD cans forward, the sound stage changes but tonally stays similar. It's a very interesting topic, and should certainly be a point of research among manufacturers.

Often time in research, newer work is based on or builds on older work and sometimes some important limitations and assumptions are not repeated, glossed over or worse just forgotten. Now that so many consumers and reviewers use the research conducted by Harman Institute, I wish there is more talk that explains the limitations instead of just taking the work as gospel and basing headphone purchases on graphs, or worse reviewers just describing tonal response as they see on the graph with respect to a preference curve/target curve which can be misleading to the audience.

All of the research that lead to the Preferred Headphone Target curves was based on using virtual headphones. I.e, the real headphone such as a Audeze LCD-4 was not used, instead the response of the headphones was first measured using a modified 54CA, then the frequency and phase mimicked using a headphone such as HD518. Then the preferred response was arrived at by using a single headphone to mimic (i.e., eqd) all other headphones.

1. Now ask yourself, why spend any money on headphone gear when you can just buy one single headphone and just EQ it to the target, because that is what the study did and the listener preference was based on the virtual headphone.
2. The study assumes if a listener likes or dislikes a virtualized form of the headphone they will equally like or dislike the original headphone being virtualized. They did try to validate if this was true, but guess what, LCD2 was used in this study and LCD2 was virtualized worst! i.e listener preference of virtualized LCD2 did not correlate to the original LCD2. One would think this is a possible red flag. An AKG that was ranked second in this study behind LCD2 before virtualization, now became ranked 1 after virtualization.
3. The study also assumes a preference curve developed using a specific virtual headphone such HD518 or Hd800, would be the same if a different headphone (say LCD-4) were used. I do not think there were studies conducted with listeners to try and determine the variability of a preference curve when different headphones are used. If a different headphone that does well in bass were used, or if the headphone were more transparent or resolved better, it would have affected how the listeners choose to change the response.
4. The target curve was arrived by letting the listener choose between different target curves that were generally smooth, the listeners were not given fine control over what the can tune except for a bass or treble shelf. Those who EQ know that that is just not enough, yes you can make a headphone sound a bit better but given the variability of how headphones measure on a rig, using a nice smooth curve as a target will not produce optimal results. So at best, they should be treated as suggestions.

This is not meant as a criticism of the work done by the Harman Institute. I think the intent in trying to objectively evaluate headphones is a good one, and helps educate both the customers and helps manufacturers understand the customer preference better. However, it is equally important to understand the limitations of the research. A pragmatic approach over a dogmatic approach is better here.

While we have followed the research with great interest, our intent in tuning our headphones has not changed much, we want music to reproduced as is (flat, or equally loud across the frequency spectrum) and not intentionally color it to suit a target curve. Of course, there are limitations to how we can achieve this without compromising on other equally important qualities such as distortion, transparency, dynamics, soundstage etc but we keep working on pushing these boundaries.

 

[joe]

Removed from personal attacks, politics. Guys, let's stay civil.

 

[alishafai]

Some more thoughts.. I'm not all fancy like many here, so I'm just gonna give you my thoughts on my music..

Back in Black ... loving the separation here, particularly on double-tracked guitar riffs.
Sad but True (Metallica) ... Thick drums. Can hear James' throat grating.
Sympathy for the Devil ... Wide bongos are wide. Mick's vocals are front and center, as are the electric guitar fills. Tight bass in the outro.
Here Comes the Sun ... George's vocals in my right ear. Goosebumps. Also, that flute (Moog?) in the last third..
Dreams (Fleetwood Mac) ... Nice soundstage on the band. Chorus vocals are spacious but tight and separated.
Sultans of Swing ... Lead fills and solos are so clean. Can feel the overdrive in the guitar.
Eye in the Sky ... It's amazing how these can make really great recording and production pop. This album sounds so good.
Stairway to Heaven ... Can confirm it still sounds good.

In Your Likeness (Woodkid) ... Deep vocals that resonate. Crisp percussion around a large empty room.
Oxytocin (Bille Eilish) ... Not her biggest fan, but this track pumps on the bass, the vocals are around you, and the drum-machine hits.
Wish (Nine Inch Nails) ... Such a noisy track, but you can still pull out what you're looking for.

--

Drums! They sound good!
I mean, of course you put some Rush on for this..
The timbre really is only comparable to what I've heard being in a room with a drummer. The quality and detail of the sound is just not something I'm used to. It's crisp, but at the same time it has depth and bass and clarity. Even a quick snare hit, I'm incredibly impressed with the weight that comes through with it. Thick.

Let's talk about bass
It's hard to describe, really. It's not what most would call "Audeze Bass" ... it's better, but different. I don't think anything has been taken away, but the definition and clarity extends lower, and it transforms how you hear the bass that is there. That said, if you're someone who wants a FLOOD of bass, you're gonna want to EQ these. Not because they should have more bass, but because they're representing the recordings genuinely. They don't have less bass than my LCD2's, they just have a lot more definition up above.

--

Note: My source is a PC running Roon streaming Qobuz or local FLAC. No EQ (yet!). Schiit Gungir (Multibit/Unison) + Mjolnir 2. Balanced.

You did a great job of describing how bass is presented on LCD-5.

 

[Tachyon88]

Even if you don't use Harman as a target for design, it seems this one is your closest yet.

 

[Sajid Amit]

Often time in research, newer work is based on or builds on older work and sometimes some important limitations and assumptions are not repeated, glossed over or worse just forgotten. Now that so many consumers and reviewers use the research conducted by Harman Institute, I wish there is more talk that explains the limitations instead of just taking the work as gospel and basing headphone purchases on graphs, or worse reviewers just describing tonal response as they see on the graph with respect to a preference curve/target curve which can be misleading to the audience.

All of the research that lead to the Preferred Headphone Target curves was based on using virtual headphones. I.e, the real headphone such as a Audeze LCD-4 was not used, instead the response of the headphones was first measured using a modified 54CA, then the frequency and phase mimicked using a headphone such as HD518. Then the preferred response was arrived at by using a single headphone to mimic (i.e., eqd) all other headphones.

1. Now ask yourself, why spend any money on headphone gear when you can just buy one single headphone and just EQ it to the target, because that is what the study did and the listener preference was based on the virtual headphone.
2. The study assumes if a listener likes or dislikes a virtualized form of the headphone they will equally like or dislike the original headphone being virtualized. They did try to validate if this was true, but guess what, LCD2 was used in this study and LCD2 was virtualized worst! i.e listener preference of virtualized LCD2 did not correlate to the original LCD2. One would think this is a possible red flag. An AKG that was ranked second in this study behind LCD2 before virtualization, now became ranked 1 after virtualization.
3. The study also assumes a preference curve developed using a specific virtual headphone such HD518 or Hd800, would be the same if a different headphone (say LCD-4) were used. I do not think there were studies conducted with listeners to try and determine the variability of a preference curve when different headphones are used. If a different headphone that does well in bass were used, or if the headphone were more transparent or resolved better, it would have affected how the listeners choose to change the response.
4. The target curve was arrived by letting the listener choose between different target curves that were generally smooth, the listeners were not given fine control over what the can tune except for a bass or treble shelf. Those who EQ know that that is just not enough, yes you can make a headphone sound a bit better but given the variability of how headphones measure on a rig, using a nice smooth curve as a target will not produce optimal results. So at best, they should be treated as suggestions.

This is not meant as a criticism of the work done by the Harman Institute. I think the intent in trying to objectively evaluate headphones is a good one, and helps educate both the customers and helps manufacturers understand the customer preference better. However, it is equally important to understand the limitations of the research. A pragmatic approach over a dogmatic approach is better here.

While we have followed the research with great interest, our intent in tuning our headphones has not changed much, we want music to reproduced as is (flat, or equally loud across the frequency spectrum) and not intentionally color it to suit a target curve. Of course, there are limitations to how we can achieve this without compromising on other equally important qualities such as distortion, transparency, dynamics, soundstage etc but we keep working on pushing these boundaries.

There are also serious problems in sampling in or two of Harman’s research that I have read.

I have pointed them out before in Facebook conversations on HeadFi’s FB group.

I do find it misleading when reviewers without much (apparent) knowledge of sampling techniques or research methodologies, but with a practiced ability to read FRs, play on the latter skill while, as you said, take the original research as gospel, entirely uncritically.

 

[All Day Breakfast]

Often time in research, newer work is based on or builds on older work and sometimes some important limitations and assumptions are not repeated, glossed over or worse just forgotten. Now that so many consumers and reviewers use the research conducted by Harman Institute, I wish there is more talk that explains the limitations instead of just taking the work as gospel and basing headphone purchases on graphs, or worse reviewers just describing tonal response as they see on the graph with respect to a preference curve/target curve which can be misleading to the audience.

All of the research that lead to the Preferred Headphone Target curves was based on using virtual headphones. I.e, the real headphone such as a Audeze LCD-4 was not used, instead the response of the headphones was first measured using a modified 54CA, then the frequency and phase mimicked using a headphone such as HD518. Then the preferred response was arrived at by using a single headphone to mimic (i.e., eqd) all other headphones.

1. Now ask yourself, why spend any money on headphone gear when you can just buy one single headphone and just EQ it to the target, because that is what the study did and the listener preference was based on the virtual headphone.
2. The study assumes if a listener likes or dislikes a virtualized form of the headphone they will equally like or dislike the original headphone being virtualized. They did try to validate if this was true, but guess what, LCD2 was used in this study and LCD2 was virtualized worst! i.e listener preference of virtualized LCD2 did not correlate to the original LCD2. One would think this is a possible red flag. An AKG that was ranked second in this study behind LCD2 before virtualization, now became ranked 1 after virtualization.
3. The study also assumes a preference curve developed using a specific virtual headphone such HD518 or Hd800, would be the same if a different headphone (say LCD-4) were used. I do not think there were studies conducted with listeners to try and determine the variability of a preference curve when different headphones are used. If a different headphone that does well in bass were used, or if the headphone were more transparent or resolved better, it would have affected how the listeners choose to change the response.
4. The target curve was arrived by letting the listener choose between different target curves that were generally smooth, the listeners were not given fine control over what the can tune except for a bass or treble shelf. Those who EQ know that that is just not enough, yes you can make a headphone sound a bit better but given the variability of how headphones measure on a rig, using a nice smooth curve as a target will not produce optimal results. So at best, they should be treated as suggestions.

This is not meant as a criticism of the work done by the Harman Institute. I think the intent in trying to objectively evaluate headphones is a good one, and helps educate both the customers and helps manufacturers understand the customer preference better. However, it is equally important to understand the limitations of the research. A pragmatic approach over a dogmatic approach is better here.

While we have followed the research with great interest, our intent in tuning our headphones has not changed much, we want music to reproduced as is (flat, or equally loud across the frequency spectrum) and not intentionally color it to suit a target curve. Of course, there are limitations to how we can achieve this without compromising on other equally important qualities such as distortion, transparency, dynamics, soundstage etc but we keep working on pushing these boundaries.

I’m so glad you wrote this. I’ve been trying to learn more about the Harman research because it doesn’t intuitively sit right with me and the more I read the more convinced I am that it is far from the rigorous scientific unquestionable approach which many claim for it. In a recent video from Headphones.com Sean Olive is a bit dismissive of audio reviewers and those who don’t rely on his “scientific” approach and resulting curve. All I can say is in addition to your points above there are many holes in their conclusions. To cite just one as an example: Harman found there was an at least 4db deviation in peoples’ response to their preferred curve with 20% of respondents preferring more bass and 20% preferring less base and they said those preferring less bass tended to be older and female and those preferring more bass tended to be younger and male. But obviously one could be female or older and prefer more bass and indeed could be younger and male and prefer less bass. We don’t even know if age and gender are the critical factor or if musical taste or some other variable is the critical factor or even if there is no critical factor. In the end Sean Olive recommends drawing up a short list of potential headphones and going to listen to them with your own music. A conclusion I can agree with even though it too has flaws.
I also question his interpretation of science. He does research and he does mathematical analysis but with the vast number of caveats and uncontrolled variables I find it hard to use the term scientific to describe his research. To put it another way, I’m glad nuclear power plants and rockets with astronauts on them don’t settle for the level of variability he seems comfortable with

 

[All Day Breakfast]

Removed from personal attacks, politics. Guys, let's stay civil.

I hope you weren’t referring to my comments above because I intended to attack an idea and not a person. If it comes across otherwise I’ll delete them.

 

[HK_sends]

No, that didn't sound like a personal attack, just a reasonable critique of his methods.
Cheers!
-HK sends

 

[boxster233]

I hope you weren’t referring to my comments above because I intended to attack an idea and not a person. If it comes across otherwise I’ll delete them.

It wasn’t you. Some other posts got removed.