[Currawong]

  Hey guys, I've had the LCD X for about three days now, with a little over 45 hours of burn in. While I was initially blown away by the sound, I now can't help but notice this ever slightly muffled quality to the mids with both male and female vocals, like I'm expecting it to be just a tad more clear but it never really gets there. Running the music through my Violectric V200 with a Rega DAC + Audiophilleo 2 with Nordost Purple Flare interconnects if that helps. Also have the silk Q cable for the 'phones. Could it just be the overall warmth of each component of my setup? I had the LCD 2 R2 before I bought the X and didn't have any issue with the mids there at all, but there's just something a little "off" about what I'm hearing with my LCD X. I was just wondering if anyone's experienced this. I'll try leaving it burning in for a while and see how that goes. I did have my Audiophilleo 2 repaired a while back while I still had my LCD 2s due to a cold solder joint inside the unit, I'm not sure if that has any bearing on the situation though.

 
I think that is something of the Audeze "house sound" as the mostly flat FR from deep bass to 1 kHz is more forward in the upper bass/lower mids than most headphones are. It looks like they dropped it a bit in the latest LCD-2s and LCD-X but I found they can still come through as a bit thick- or heavy-sounding.  Funnily enough, since people are talking about cables, ironically I liked them best with the ALO Reference 16 which works well with the HD-800s as it brings just a little bit of warmth low down, or an amp like the WA7 which does the same. That was rather unexpected, but I think where both do this is quite low down. There's something in the sound that reminds me a bit of those old, huge JBL studio monitors that had horn tweeters which I often see here in Japan hooked up with Macintosh amps.
 

  I have to say though that the LCD X is effing BRILLIANT with electronic music. Stuff like Hallucinogen and Infected Mushroom never sounded so good! The PRaT is expertly executed and you definitely feel the fast-paced momentum with how everything is presented.

 
This. Shpongle is my favourite in these genres.

 

[leesure]

FWIW, I finally got my last set of upgrades tubes in for my WA22. With the Tung Sol power tubes, the Sylvania 6F8G drivers and the RCA 5U4G, the WA22 sounds fantastic with the X's. Great depth to the imaging. Rich tonality without being overly lush or tubey. The upgrades cost me a total of <$300. So at a total of $2300, this amp is a very nice match for the X's.

Thanks to Frank I for the tube recommendations.

 

[cizx]

Man I love the look of that WA22... it's that or a Master 9, or Ragnarok.  With the 3 year old and the 6 year old, the tubes might be asking for trouble... but man, they're cool.  I miss my WA2.

 

[Amuro_Rey]

Two weeks with my new LCD-X after two LCD-2 (one rev.1 and one rev.2)
Wow what a headphone !he new LCD-X is far away from LCD-2, far away, all the bad point of LCD-2 was canceled with that new headphone, fatastic work Audezè !

 

[Miksu]

Just got Graham Slee UL Diamond amp and Beyerdynamic T1. I'm not happy with T1 (mid+treble bumps) and thinking of trying out LCD-X.
 
Is amp impedance of 4 ohms too high for these cans? It has been said that the minimum factor of impedances should be 8x, so max impedance of the amp should be 22 ohms / 8 = <3 ohms.
 
 
--My first post here in this great forum, but have been reading for a long time...

 

[M-13]

  Just got Graham Slee UL Diamond amp and Beyerdynamic T1. I'm not happy with T1 (mid+treble bumps) and thinking of trying out LCD-X.
 
Is amp impedance of 4 ohms too high for these cans? It has been said that the minimum factor of impedances should be 8x, so max impedance of the amp should be 22 ohms / 8 = <3 ohms.
 
 
--My first post here in this great forum, but have been reading for a long time...

I believe the dampening factor rule does not apply to planars. You should be fine.

 

[DoctaCosmos]

@Miksu this is what i found to be a good explanation.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/607282/headphone-amp-impedance-questions-find-the-answers-here 
When i got my he-400 planar headphones i thought any amp would be fine so i was using my receiver with pretty good results.  of course this headphone in particular is relatively easy to drive and the hifiman suggests and advertizes that it can be driven with a cell phone. Much more amplification than that and the headphone became fatiguing due to the added body of the forward EDIT * forward highs not mids.  The lcd-x is easy to drive but more than likely will benefit from higher current.  Especially if it is a non-fatiguing headphone in the first place like the other audeze models

 

[Miksu]

Thanks both for replies. The water hose analog in above link really clarifies these electrical terms. So I won't sell Graham Slee before listening LCD-X with it.

 

[gahan]

Just receiveid my new LCD-X...
 

 
Sounds amazing with my Audio-GD SA-31SE.

 

[Tony1110]

Just receiveid my new LCD-X...




Sounds amazing with my Audio-GD SA-31SE.

Is that a Charleston cable?

 

[gahan]

Is that a Charleston cable?

 
No, this cable is from Hamlet cables (Spain). Very high quality components and best sound.

 

[magiccabbage]

  Just receiveid my new LCD-X...
 

 
Sounds amazing with my Audio-GD SA-31SE.

DARKNESS!!! 

 

[the8o88y]

"Twin brotha darkness! Darkness is Spreadin!"

 

[JWahl]

  Just receiveid my new LCD-X...
 

 
Sounds amazing with my Audio-GD SA-31SE.

Nice combo, I thought the LCD-3 paired great with my old SA-31.  I sold it though because I preferred the Soloist with the HD-800.

 

[F1REStarter]

So I've totally gotten rid of my blasphemous Rega DAC and placed my order for a Concero HD. I've returned the LCD-X to Audeze already and gotten a full refund and am now highly pursuing the LCD-XC, which I've committed at the moment to ordering on Monday. I may have made the -X return a little too soon, but my initial problem with the LCD-X, although a really superb headphone, was that the clarity in the mids could have been better, and clarity overall actually and not having such a warm 'analog' sound to everything which I attributed to the Rega DAC/V200 combination. I blame the Rega DAC mostly for everything that went wrong with my experience with the LCD-X basically. Hell, even the Bifrost sans Uber mode was more listenable. Right now I'm curious to find out how the LCD-XC/V200/Concero HD will sound, but now I'm really curious as to how the LCD-X/V200/Concero HD pairing will sound as well. If you were in my situation, which of the two headphones would you choose for the setup I'm going to have? I started gravitating towards the XC after I read about the stuff I liked about it: clearer more focused midrange, more forward midrange and treble, less laid-back sound and overall bass quantity/quality. But looking back at the LCD-X I was stunned at how much potential the things had and how much potential I was missing out on because of the limitations of my setup. Now that I'm going to have a DAC superior to the Rega, will things be just that much better if I go back to the X? Isolation isn't a major concern of mine and could live without it. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks for all your well informed responses to my posts.