[johnzz4]

Hi guys,
I'm having trouble "appreciating" the LCD-X, so I need some help. I bought an open-box (e.g., returned) LCD-X and it's really dark above 2.5kHz, which I can't find report of anywhere. What are the odds that I have a bad unit vs. just not agreeing with the LCD-Xs or planars? Here are the details...
* Playing through TEAC UD-501 and TEAC HA-501. These tend to be on the bassy/warm side of neutral just a bit. I previously thought that no one could possibly call Bur-Brown 179x chips "bright" even if they got a perfect score on the GRE, but then I plugged HD800s in and it was like battery acid poured straight into my ear onto my brain (Oh, don't look at me like you haven't tried it!). So, they're pretty transparent pieces of gear.
* I'm accustomed to HD600s. I seem to be allurgic to anything outside of neutral, as I've found from 30+ years of experience.
* I adore everything from the LCD-Xs up to 1.5 kHz or so, but then it swoops down, much like the HE-400s. Absolutely no air at all, much like a digital remaster where they've tried to noise-suppress.
* These are braided cable, suspension-band, memory foam LCD-Xs, so that seems to mean 2018.
* I've broken them in by playing them on a stand (banana hanger, actually) for about 12 hours, checking them every so often. They've gotten better in the upper mids, but still even EQ doesn't bring back the sense of coherent space I'm used to from Senns.

I'm reminded strongly of owning the HE-400s. I had to mess around with EQ a lot to listen to them, but it never got better and I got rid of them after 6 months or so of trying to let my ears adjust. So, do I just dislike planars, or is it more likely that my unit is just out of spec? A tonal frequency sweep definitely seems to drop about somewhere north of 1.5kHz for a moment, and then a peak around 10kHz. Really strong bass 10-20Hz that then calms down to linearity (by comparison, I hear the HD800 mounting very linearly until you-know-where).Everyone seems to call these "neutral," but I find them far from it.

The swoop down after 1.5k is typical and is part of the LCD-X house sound - don't know about Hifiman. I've done frequency sweeps with my LCD-X and LCD-4, and they all follow that curve to varying degrees.

I don't find it annoying, though - and other headphones that don't dip there feel too 'in my face'. I'd chalk this up to preference, but the rest of your chain may very well be part of the issue. There was a chain I had before that made the LCD-X too bright up around 10 kHz, but my current system sounds pretty balanced. If there are multiple headphones that sound the same to you, I would look into your interconnects/components. Maybe try playing them out of a different system, or even your phone, just as another data point.

 

[kid vic]

Hi guys,
I'm having trouble "appreciating" the LCD-X, so I need some help. I bought an open-box (e.g., returned) LCD-X and it's really dark above 2.5kHz, which I can't find report of anywhere. What are the odds that I have a bad unit vs. just not agreeing with the LCD-Xs or planars? Here are the details...
* Playing through TEAC UD-501 and TEAC HA-501. These tend to be on the bassy/warm side of neutral just a bit. I previously thought that no one could possibly call Bur-Brown 179x chips "bright" even if they got a perfect score on the GRE, but then I plugged HD800s in and it was like battery acid poured straight into my ear onto my brain (Oh, don't look at me like you haven't tried it!). So, they're pretty transparent pieces of gear.
* I'm accustomed to HD600s. I seem to be allurgic to anything outside of neutral, as I've found from 30+ years of experience.
* I adore everything from the LCD-Xs up to 1.5 kHz or so, but then it swoops down, much like the HE-400s. Absolutely no air at all, much like a digital remaster where they've tried to noise-suppress.
* These are braided cable, suspension-band, memory foam LCD-Xs, so that seems to mean 2018.
* I've broken them in by playing them on a stand (banana hanger, actually) for about 12 hours, checking them every so often. They've gotten better in the upper mids, but still even EQ doesn't bring back the sense of coherent space I'm used to from Senns.

I'm reminded strongly of owning the HE-400s. I had to mess around with EQ a lot to listen to them, but it never got better and I got rid of them after 6 months or so of trying to let my ears adjust. So, do I just dislike planars, or is it more likely that my unit is just out of spec? A tonal frequency sweep definitely seems to drop about somewhere north of 1.5kHz for a moment, and then a peak around 10kHz. Really strong bass 10-20Hz that then calms down to linearity (by comparison, I hear the HD800 mounting very linearly until you-know-where).Everyone seems to call these "neutral," but I find them far from it.

Audeze is famous for their relaxed top end, it might just be that you don't like that signature. Any other headphones you've tried and liked for comparison?

 

[adlevision]

@johnzz4 and Kid Vic, thanks for the replies. Upon further reflection, I think my issue with the X is also about decay, which may still be a factor of upper-frequency harmonics. I'm blind, and so use echolocation to help gain clues to things like poles, walls, and doorways. Notes seem to decay very quickly on the Xs. Musical notes decaying unnaturally fast are like an anachoic chamber, not giving me reflections or other spacial cues to envision my surroundings. Planars feel like that, in addition to just sounding dark. It's fatiguing and disconcerting. If the current crop of LCDs still are recessed above 1.5kHz and are said to be more neutral than older revisions, then yiches! Of course, the sense of "air" in most recordings is itself an artifact, since the raw materials are, depending on genre, cables running from amps into a mixer. The planar presentation may well be less distorted/more accurate; it may just be messing with a quality, particularly in acoustic music, that I'm more sensitive to than most.
My first pair of headphones were Sennheiser full-size on-ears from 1985. I don't think they even had model numbers then. Buying the HD600s was instantly a homecoming, right out of the box without break-in. Everything I've read says that this is textbook neutral. Between the Xs and HD800s, my impression is that anything beyond the 600s is "exotic," with remarkable strengths but at a cost elsewhere.

 

[johnzz4]

@johnzz4 and Kid Vic, thanks for the replies. Upon further reflection, I think my issue with the X is also about decay, which may still be a factor of upper-frequency harmonics. I'm blind, and so use echolocation to help gain clues to things like poles, walls, and doorways. Notes seem to decay very quickly on the Xs. Musical notes decaying unnaturally fast are like an anachoic chamber, not giving me reflections or other spacial cues to envision my surroundings. Planars feel like that, in addition to just sounding dark. It's fatiguing and disconcerting. If the current crop of LCDs still are recessed above 1.5kHz and are said to be more neutral than older revisions, then yiches! Of course, the sense of "air" in most recordings is itself an artifact, since the raw materials are, depending on genre, cables running from amps into a mixer. The planar presentation may well be less distorted/more accurate; it may just be messing with a quality, particularly in acoustic music, that I'm more sensitive to than most.
My first pair of headphones were Sennheiser full-size on-ears from 1985. I don't think they even had model numbers then. Buying the HD600s was instantly a homecoming, right out of the box without break-in. Everything I've read says that this is textbook neutral. Between the Xs and HD800s, my impression is that anything beyond the 600s is "exotic," with remarkable strengths but at a cost elsewhere.

The spacial cues are mostly in the highest frequencies - one of the biggest differences between the LCD-X and LCD-4. I bet you'd like the Beyer T1 and the Hifiman HE1000.

 

[kid vic]

@johnzz4 and Kid Vic, thanks for the replies. Upon further reflection, I think my issue with the X is also about decay, which may still be a factor of upper-frequency harmonics. I'm blind, and so use echolocation to help gain clues to things like poles, walls, and doorways. Notes seem to decay very quickly on the Xs. Musical notes decaying unnaturally fast are like an anachoic chamber, not giving me reflections or other spacial cues to envision my surroundings. Planars feel like that, in addition to just sounding dark. It's fatiguing and disconcerting. If the current crop of LCDs still are recessed above 1.5kHz and are said to be more neutral than older revisions, then yiches! Of course, the sense of "air" in most recordings is itself an artifact, since the raw materials are, depending on genre, cables running from amps into a mixer. The planar presentation may well be less distorted/more accurate; it may just be messing with a quality, particularly in acoustic music, that I'm more sensitive to than most.
My first pair of headphones were Sennheiser full-size on-ears from 1985. I don't think they even had model numbers then. Buying the HD600s was instantly a homecoming, right out of the box without break-in. Everything I've read says that this is textbook neutral. Between the Xs and HD800s, my impression is that anything beyond the 600s is "exotic," with remarkable strengths but at a cost elsewhere.

You have the fabled golden ears then. If planars consistently have the too fast decay issue maybe you would like the Focal Clears, AKG K812s or ZMF Auteurs?

The spacial cues are mostly in the highest frequencies - one of the biggest differences between the LCD-X and LCD-4. I bet you'd like the Beyer T1 and the Hifiman HE1000.

+1 for the T1 but maybe not the HE1000

 

[514077]

@johnzz4 and Kid Vic, thanks for the replies. Upon further reflection, I think my issue with the X is also about decay, which may still be a factor of upper-frequency harmonics. I'm blind, and so use echolocation to help gain clues to things like poles, walls, and doorways. Notes seem to decay very quickly on the Xs. Musical notes decaying unnaturally fast are like an anachoic chamber, not giving me reflections or other spacial cues to envision my surroundings. Planars feel like that, in addition to just sounding dark. It's fatiguing and disconcerting. If the current crop of LCDs still are recessed above 1.5kHz and are said to be more neutral than older revisions, then yiches! Of course, the sense of "air" in most recordings is itself an artifact, since the raw materials are, depending on genre, cables running from amps into a mixer. The planar presentation may well be less distorted/more accurate; it may just be messing with a quality, particularly in acoustic music, that I'm more sensitive to than most.
My first pair of headphones were Sennheiser full-size on-ears from 1985. I don't think they even had model numbers then. Buying the HD600s was instantly a homecoming, right out of the box without break-in. Everything I've read says that this is textbook neutral. Between the Xs and HD800s, my impression is that anything beyond the 600s is "exotic," with remarkable strengths but at a cost elsewhere.

Interesting. I'm also a blind guy, and I find them my first-choice of my small collection. I bought mine in 2014, and after a bit of cable swapping, found the included flatwires of the time, somewhat wanting. I'm a firm advocate for aftermarket cables as a means of improving SQ. I may have missed it; but with what are you driving them?

 

[adlevision]

I may have missed it; but with what are you driving them?

TEAC UD-501 and HA-501. The TEAC DAC is a dual-monaural Bur-Brown 1795, which is itself perhaps rolled off a bit in the trebble, so it could be a problematic pairing. At any rate, I've now found several references to the X's as sounding "closed in," which is how I encounter them--everything recorded in an underground kiva, which is great at first but then I find it distracting after 15 minutes or so with several forms of music. The HD800s I've been auditioning at the same time, even after having to EQ the crap out of them to pull down their trebble and sloping the lower mids, still offer something I can't say no to. I also looked into the units JohnZZ recommended above and found three separate people, one of them being Tyll, calling the Focal Clears the natural step up for people stuck on the HD-600s, which is me. So, I ordered them to give'em a shot and will be returning the Xs. Planars and I don't seem to get along. Pitty, because I love putting the Audezes on my head.
Cheers.

 

[commtrd]

And this is the neat thing about the pursuit of listening to hi-end audio. Everyone is different and needs to customize their equipment to suit them. And fortunately there is a plethora of great audio equipment out there that may be had for a price.
Good luck with whatever you end up with. The trip was a journey and the journey was a trip? =)

TEAC UD-501 and HA-501. The TEAC DAC is a dual-monaural Bur-Brown 1795, which is itself perhaps rolled off a bit in the trebble, so it could be a problematic pairing. At any rate, I've now found several references to the X's as sounding "closed in," which is how I encounter them--everything recorded in an underground kiva, which is great at first but then I find it distracting after 15 minutes or so with several forms of music. The HD800s I've been auditioning at the same time, even after having to EQ the crap out of them to pull down their trebble and sloping the lower mids, still offer something I can't say no to. I also looked into the units JohnZZ recommended above and found three separate people, one of them being Tyll, calling the Focal Clears the natural step up for people stuck on the HD-600s, which is me. So, I ordered them to give'em a shot and will be returning the Xs. Planars and I don't seem to get along. Pitty, because I love putting the Audezes on my head.
Cheers.

 

[514077]

TEAC UD-501 and HA-501. The TEAC DAC is a dual-monaural Bur-Brown 1795, which is itself perhaps rolled off a bit in the trebble, so it could be a problematic pairing. At any rate, I've now found several references to the X's as sounding "closed in," which is how I encounter them--everything recorded in an underground kiva, which is great at first but then I find it distracting after 15 minutes or so with several forms of music. The HD800s I've been auditioning at the same time, even after having to EQ the crap out of them to pull down their trebble and sloping the lower mids, still offer something I can't say no to. I also looked into the units JohnZZ recommended above and found three separate people, one of them being Tyll, calling the Focal Clears the natural step up for people stuck on the HD-600s, which is me. So, I ordered them to give'em a shot and will be returning the Xs. Planars and I don't seem to get along. Pitty, because I love putting the Audezes on my head.
Cheers.

Enjoy the journey. It can be fun. Hope the Clears are right for you.

 

[Dan Lee]

I'm keeping

BROTHER YOU HAVE GOT SOME SERIOUS EQUIPMENT THERE. I RECENTLY INVESTED IN MY FIRST SET OF AUDIOPHILE GRADE SPEAKERS (VANATOO TRANSPARENT ZEROS) WHICH I AM VERY IMPRESSED WITH AT A PRICE TAG OF $360. I WOULD LOVE TO UPGRADE TO A SET OF KEF'S AT SOME POINT. ARE YOURS THE LS50'S? HOW DO THEY SOUND IN YOUR OPINION WHEN COMPARED TO YOUR INSANE HEADPHONE RIG?

 

[sahmen]

BROTHER YOU HAVE GOT SOME SERIOUS EQUIPMENT THERE. I RECENTLY INVESTED IN MY FIRST SET OF AUDIOPHILE GRADE SPEAKERS (VANATOO TRANSPARENT ZEROS) WHICH I AM VERY IMPRESSED WITH AT A PRICE TAG OF $360. I WOULD LOVE TO UPGRADE TO A SET OF KEF'S AT SOME POINT. ARE YOURS THE LS50'S? HOW DO THEY SOUND IN YOUR OPINION WHEN COMPARED TO YOUR INSANE HEADPHONE RIG?

Dude _ You have got some serious CAPS going on Are you safe? Should I call 911 for you or something? Just let .me know what you need, and help will be on the way soon.

 

[Dan Lee]

Dude _ You have got some serious CAPS going on Are you safe? Should I call 911 for you or something? Just let .me know what you need, and help will be on the way soon.

HAHAHA I know I work at a place where all the info we input has to be in all caps so I just end up leaving it on even at home. I will try and remember to turn off in the future though I appreciate your concern for my safety

 

[sahmen]

HAHAHA I know I work at a place where all the info we input has to be in all caps so I just end up leaving it on even at home. I will try and remember to turn off in the future though I appreciate your concern for my safety

 

[the finisher]

BROTHER YOU HAVE GOT SOME SERIOUS EQUIPMENT THERE. I RECENTLY INVESTED IN MY FIRST SET OF AUDIOPHILE GRADE SPEAKERS (VANATOO TRANSPARENT ZEROS) WHICH I AM VERY IMPRESSED WITH AT A PRICE TAG OF $360. I WOULD LOVE TO UPGRADE TO A SET OF KEF'S AT SOME POINT. ARE YOURS THE LS50'S? HOW DO THEY SOUND IN YOUR OPINION WHEN COMPARED TO YOUR INSANE HEADPHONE RIG?

I love the headphones, I just received a Lyr 2 form a friend and am now loving the HD6xx with that amp.
But the X with the Jot and Sonarworks is still my favorite HP sound, nice to have options.

Now I get to be a tube roller

I will always prefer a good speaker setup to headphones, Yes those are passive LS50s, they got replaced on the desk by the Focal Solo 6be.
They need more room to be at there best, moving them to a new room.

Here is my current rig before Lyr 2 showed up. So that's a 1500 watt desktop, now you know why I like speakers more than HP's

Headphones are for when I can't be loud

 

[thecrow]

An eye-opening accident. A family member wanted a headphone in the lower price range, and one of the few choices I gave them was the HD650 based on popularity and reputation I suppose. In the process I tried selling them the iFi Nano BL portable DAC/amplifier. To my dismay I was told and heard for myself that a laptop sounded better with plenty of volume to spare than that DAC/amp paired with the HD650. So much for what I have been reading over and over again. I compared the HD650 to the LCD-X under the same conditions at the time and was satisfied with the LCD-X being significantly better- the sound was much fuller, other aspects seemed better too. The Gumby and Taurus MKII I had turned into a casualty, however, as later on I decided to compare them with the LCD-X to the Nano BL with the LCD-X and decided I was wasting [a lot of] money.

Fastforward to a few days ago, I haven't been fully satisfied with what I have. I suppose that's ok, eventually would go for a V281 and an expensive DAC (add that up, thought the next logical step would be an Yggdrasil, maybe try reading about all the other ~$1500 stuff I don't hear anything about except for random mentions from knowledgeable people). The thing is a couple of further upgrades to my PC popped up and I was short on money. For whatever reason it occurred to me to try the HD650 vs the Audeze LCD-X, and see if I can further plug the HD650 directly into my computer to sound good (I had read something about doing so directly into my motherboard). Lo and behold the HD650 plugged into my motherboard sounds sufficiently hefty and close to the LCD-X plugged into a Mimby and Jotunheim, certainly in the context of $350 vs about five to six times as much when I could use more money. Keep in mind I'm not a person whose first instinct is to settle for clearly inferior stuff. The funny thing is recently, in fact all of the big money items I've bought and am buying for my PC have themselves been of poor value, yet their improvements are concrete. I also tend to game much more than I listen to music.

It has been a long path for me since I found out about expensive headphones, DACs, and amps, but I have come to a strong opinion, born from experience, that the value in these types of products is awful. I can spend the money better elsewhere. The LCD-X was my winner at the <$1500 price range but when you add the price of DACs and amps, even mid-tier ones at best, the money put in balloons further. The HD650 is by comparison only $350 and I have found out I do not need to spend a stinking cent on a DAC or even an amplifier despite the myriad claims to the contrary. I have heard enough things myself, and of course plugged the HD650 into the current Mimby + Jotunheim stack I have. It doesn't make sense for me not to sell. Like I said, I wasn't particularly satisfied beforehand and the HD650 alone has come impressively close. At some point diminishing returns become unacceptable. It does depend how big of a part of your life headphones and music are though, so that's an important qualifier.

Anyway, all of the stuff in my signature is for sale. Need to snap a few picks of the Schiit. When I'm ready to spend >=$5000 ($5000 being realistic with second-hand items, mind you) to give this another crack I'll be game again. If I get a life in the meantime I might be out until the revolution that makes this stuff worth the money it asks for. That or maybe I lose my legs and my arms and don't have the spirit to make lemonade. Then I'll be listening to Skrillex and classical music on a Susvara and the equivalent of a good quality used car.

Have you looked into the massdrop hd6xx? You probably have, if not i would say, do