[SP Wild]

FWIW, I think the only reason the LCD2s suffer from being overhyped is because when put through the only scientific tests that we know can be applied to headphone measurements, no other headphone has scored better.  Subjectively, the LCD2s have always been as controversial as any headphone can be.  It has been subjected to all negatives that a tall poppy will get subjected to.  IMO, the LCD2s would have fallen off the radar a long time ago if it never had its papers, its signature is never really popular with a majority of headphone hobbyists.
 
I think the HD800s suffered the same fate because it had good measurements and also the might of the alpha Sennheisser brand.  More and more LCD2s are showing up on the for sale forum, so all in all, the natural order of things are coming full circle, more and more will realise that despite its alpha status in scientific tests, most headphone hobbyists - IMO should have problems with its signature.
 

 

[Skylab]

That may well be true, but for me personally it is precisely because of its sonic signature that I like the LCD-2 so much, and it supplanted many other headphones in terms of getting listening time.

 

[grokit]

I wish we could morph the HD800 and LCD-2 into a single headphone, that showcases the strengths of both of them.

 

[purrin]

My initial observations were that the LCD-2s were excessively dark - but this was based on listening to less than optimal setups. On my main rig, I didn't think the LCD-2 was dark at all. It does have a very solid vs. airy sound though - this is probably where personal preferences come into play the most. I must have tried out at least four versions of the LCD-2s with different cables - the amps made most difference. I can definitely see a lot of people selling their LCD-2s because of their amping requirements. A lot of high-end headphones (HD800 included) sound OK with modest amping, the LCD-2s sound like garbage (muddy, slow, muffled, dead) with modest amping.
 
@SP Wild: Good observations. Overall this is a good lesson in hype and FOTM status - that one needs to proceed carefully and see for themselves whether such gear actually suits their own criteria. Most of the folks that hung around with me near my table felt extremely disappointed by the LCD-2.

 

[Roger Strummer]

Quote:

FWIW, I think the only reason the LCD2s suffer from being overhyped is because when put through the only scientific tests that we know can be applied to headphone measurements, no other headphone has scored better.  Subjectively, the LCD2s have always been as controversial as any headphone can be.  It has been subjected to all negatives that a tall poppy will get subjected to.  IMO, the LCD2s would have fallen off the radar a long time ago if it never had its papers, its signature is never really popular with a majority of headphone hobbyists.
 
I think the HD800s suffered the same fate because it had good measurements and also the might of the alpha Sennheisser brand.  More and more LCD2s are showing up on the for sale forum, so all in all, the natural order of things are coming full circle, more and more will realise that despite its alpha status in scientific tests, most headphone hobbyists - IMO should have problems with its signature.
 

 
I agree with everything you say Sam, except that the warm/dark/not bright signatures are not that unpopular in head-fi these days, after all of the K701/DT880/650 appreciation threads, the 650 one has had a lot of constant activity up to this date, and quite a few of new happy 650 users.

 

[SP Wild]

 
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I agree with everything you say Sam, except that the warm/dark/not bright signatures are not that unpopular in head-fi these days, after all of the K701/DT880/650 appreciation threads, the 650 one has had a lot of constant activity up to this date, and quite a few of new happy 650 users.

Agreed, and IMO, only because of the pulling power of the 11 letters proceeding HD650.  I am starting to believe that it is beneficial in many ways to bump up the upper frequencies in order for many to be able to gain a sense of distance to the sound, as in the distance from listener to a set of speakers, which is so often the point of comparison.
 
I'll use the criticism of the K701 upper mids as and example.  To me the K1000 and K701 share the same house sound, flip out the ears of the K1000 out enough and it sounded to me exactly the same tonally as the K701...but the upper mid is realistically translated to distance and soundstaging, but the same amplitude in the upper mid of the K701 is ultimately heard by many, including myself, as a discontinuity...and without coincidence, a massive soundstage.  Its enough for many to ignore the resolution limitations of the K1000 and declare them as amongst the untouchables, when the K701 is clearly more resolving to me and share the same house sound.  Fortunately, headphones are spared the DBT argument due to practical reasons.
 
What I mean to imply is that many seem to forget the primary function of a headphone, to hear the most detailed, highest resolution reproduction of audio, free from room artifacts...as a monitoring device - for which speakers are incapable of doing.  Then to directly compare the distance factor of speakers to headphones in the most regressive logic for which I am not able to reason with.
 
There is only one audio producer I know of that has calibrated his top of the line monitors and then compared them to his headphones in terms of tonality.  The results are inconsistent with head-fi wisdom.
 
I am not having a go at the HD800, because IMO, it has perfect mids and superb bass and exceptional resolution...only my individual HRTF does not entirely agree with the treble presentation.
 
End rant.

 

[dallan]

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I agree with everything you say Sam, except that the warm/dark/not bright signatures are not that unpopular in head-fi these days, after all of the K701/DT880/650 appreciation threads, the 650 one has had a lot of constant activity up to this date, and quite a few of new happy 650 users.

All the people who got the 650's cheap after others traded them out in favor of the 800s.  I kept my 650's, a good back up.

 

[rhythmdevils]

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There is only one audio producer I know of that has calibrated his top of the line monitors and then compared them to his headphones in terms of tonality.  The results are inconsistent with head-fi wisdom.

What were the results?
 
I think the HD650 is so popular because it is the only real option in the mass headphone market if you don't like a bright sound.  Really, there are not any other options unless you do some digging or you are willing to hunt down vintage headphones (they were going for a different sound in the 70's).  And this is also why the LCD-2 is popular and will remain popular.  All the hifiman orthos are bright, and while they may still be less fatiguing and harsh than many dynamics, it still means that they are competing with a lot of headphones.  All the other new flagships are also bright.  With the HD650, and LCD-2 there is really no competition at all (unless you are willing to buy out of production, rare headphones) and since they are in such different price brackets, they don't even compete against each other.  I suppose there's the O2's that LCD-2 competes with, but since the LCD-2 can be driven from an ipod, and is much cheaper it's not much competition.  The O2 is more of an upgrade than a competitor.
 
I don't understand why more companies don't see the success of the HD650 and at least come out with a more neutral/ less bright headphone.  The T1 and HD800 have peaks in different places, but why do they both have to be going for that sound?
 
I listened to some speakers at the Bay Area meet that Amphead made himself, and they were fairly bright, but they sounded good and I realized that it didn't bother me as much as if that same signature were in a headphone.  I think this is because with headphones the drivers are so close to the ear, there's less air for the treble to travel through and it can hurt more easily.  But just a rough theory...

 

[rhythmdevils]

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Just my 2 cents:

Hey Purrin,
It was fun hanging out with you!  Thanks for letting me dump all my phones on your table. 

  I have a thought about the bass response you're talking about.  The LCD-2 has much flatter bass response than the HD800, which has shelved down bass, and in the case of the HP2, as much as I like them, they have rolled off bass at the extreme, so the LCD-2 extends further.  These lower frequencies are much more tone than detail, and when you remove some of them, or lower their volume, you wind up exposing more of the frequencies that contain detail.  I think that if you simply EQ'ed the LCD-2 to roll off like most heapdhones, or brought down the volume of all the bass like the HD800, it would then seem more detailed in the bass.  You still might prefer the HD800 bass I don't know, I'm just saying that this is a factor. 
 
Also, while the LCD-2 might just not be for you, I noticed when I came home, even out of my imod->PPAS they sounded better than at the meet.  I always thought that bass was the thing you loose with background noise, but this makes me realize that you also loose subtle details.  Since these details are mostly in the upper frequencies, I think headphones with a brighter response fair better in a meet environment.  Brighter headphones also catch your attention faster because all the details are louder so they fair better with short auditions, though I'm sure you are used to that at this point.  But the LCD-2 sounded kind of dull and slow to me as well at the meet with background noise filtering in. 
 
Regardless, I'm 100% positive that in a quiet environment your Apex Peak would sound better than an imod-PPAS

 

[IPodPJ]

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Off topic, but towards the end of the meet, after hearing the SR-Omega, O2, SR-507 powered by Blue Hawaii's and glowing blue tube DIY amps, more than a few of us (with LCD-2s, HD800s, etc.) were saying "ahh crap, we gotta move in that direction."
 
My wife did say that under no circumstances will I ever be allowed to have glowing blue rectifier tubes in the house. I don't know if it's their cost, hazard, or both.

I don't care for the O2 really, just the SR-Omega.  I'm hoping that the C32 will improve upon that, but I certainly don't have $10K to invest in a stat rig.  I'd invest in some nice speakers way before I did that.

 

[purrin]

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I don't understand why more companies don't see the success of the HD650 and at least come out with a more neutral/ less bright headphone.  The T1 and HD800 have peaks in different places, but why do they both have to be going for that sound?
 
I listened to some speakers at the Bay Area meet that Amphead made himself, and they were fairly bright, but they sounded good and I realized that it didn't bother me as much as if that same signature were in a headphone.  ...

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Hey there!
 
It's the behavior of single drivers. If you want a tight sound, you need a stiffer more rigid material = nasty peaks somewhere. Speakers (at least multiple driver) can get away with it because you can operate the individual drivers in their optimum areas and low-pass crossover way before / below the peaks. There are other problems associated with multiple drivers and crossovers of course.
 
The headphone companies want to develop a more focused higher resolution sound just for something different. I'm betting the diaphragm materials for T1/HD800 are much stiffer than HD600/650, which means there will be peaks somewhere. The headphone companies probably could produce some smooth sounding headphones, but they would just be HD600/650s again. The state of dynamic driver technology is pretty awful. Maybe someday researchers will find a material that's both stiff and well behaved throughout a large portion of the audio band. I guess if we really want smooth FR, we could use paper - it's lightweight, fast accelerating, well behaved throughout a wide band, but it's got paper colorations (smaller amplitude smoother peaks but throughout a wide area often intruding into optimal operating regions.)
 
As you said, even fairly bright speakers aren't too bad, but that's because well designed speaker crossovers should attenuate the ill-behaved regions of drivers so you don't hear those regions. It's those ill-behaved regions that sound nasty, not necessary brightness or distance to ear. With single driver headphones, we can't exactly push those problematic areas out of band.
 
A possible solution would be for the manufacturers to produce multiple driver headphones, but there could be some serious problems with that too because the output of impedance of headphone amps vary wildly - and this would seriously screw with passive crossovers.
 
But yeah, you are on to something here! I'm rather surprised that so many head-fi'ers haven't complained more about these nasties (the treble resonances and peaks.) In an audiophile speaker setup, such nasties are simply totally unacceptable! But I guess they are just like me, we've all just kind of said fuggit and continue to live with it.

 

[SP Wild]

Quote:

What were the results?
 
I think the HD650 is so popular because it is the only real option in the mass headphone market if you don't like a bright sound.  Really, there are not any other options unless you do some digging or you are willing to hunt down vintage headphones (they were going for a different sound in the 70's).  And this is also why the LCD-2 is popular and will remain popular.  All the hifiman orthos are bright, and while they may still be less fatiguing and harsh than many dynamics, it still means that they are competing with a lot of headphones.  All the other new flagships are also bright.  With the HD650, and LCD-2 there is really no competition at all (unless you are willing to buy out of production, rare headphones) and since they are in such different price brackets, they don't even compete against each other.  I suppose there's the O2's that LCD-2 competes with, but since the LCD-2 can be driven from an ipod, and is much cheaper it's not much competition.  The O2 is more of an upgrade than a competitor.
 
I don't understand why more companies don't see the success of the HD650 and at least come out with a more neutral/ less bright headphone.  The T1 and HD800 have peaks in different places, but why do they both have to be going for that sound?
 
I listened to some speakers at the Bay Area meet that Amphead made himself, and they were fairly bright, but they sounded good and I realized that it didn't bother me as much as if that same signature were in a headphone.  I think this is because with headphones the drivers are so close to the ear, there's less air for the treble to travel through and it can hurt more easily.  But just a rough theory...

You can read up on Lunatiques quest, the results were his journey ended with the M50, HD650 and LCD2.  Vintage phones were likely designed by ear and less so by measurements.  Even headphones in cheaper categories that are less bright end up legendary...like the PX100s...and the undisputed Porta Pro legend.
 
Actually your explanation of the LCD2s in meet conditions has struck a chord with me.  I purchased the K701 after auditioning it in a busy audio shop...I was certain it was clearer and the HD650 in direct comparison was muffled.  The K701 was going to be an amazing upgrade to the HD650s.  But when I got it home...things turned for the worse...especially since the K701 retailed for $900 in Australia...and I got a whopping 100 dollar discount...
 
To this day I couldn't quite explain my experience at having paid big bucks for something I auditioned, liked...took home and was far less impressed, and attributed my strange behaviour to severe upgraditis.  The store having opened a brand new 900 dollar K701 for me to audition, and for me to agree to purchase after extensive audition (20 minutes) I would look silly to beg for my money back.  Then there is the curious case of my auditioning of the ultra expensive D7000s...
 
I think you are correct to imply that auditioning means very little regarding long term ownership satisfaction.  I think you may be correct with auditioning in busy environments, your explanation is the only one that makes my decision to purchase the K701 less illogical.

 

[rhythmdevils]

Quote:

 
But yeah, you are on to something here! I'm rather surprised that so many head-fi'ers haven't complained more about these nasties (the treble resonances and peaks.) In an audiophile speaker setup, such nasties are simply totally unacceptable! But I guess they are just like me, we've all just kind of said fuggit and continue to live with it.

 
Wow, I have never read of an actual reason for these peaks in headphones before, so that was great.  I thought that either I was crazy, or more likely companies do it to exaggerate detail and make their headphones sound more "HD".  (another approach is to take AKG's route and simply write "HD" on the thing, but that's another story  
 
But I agree, I also find it odd that more people don't find the peaks in headphones unacceptable.  I have also been amazed at how much more balanced and even the response is of even cheap speakers.  I think your chances of randomly buying a speaker and being able to listen to them are much higher than with headphones.  I think I can count the headphones that don't have unlistenable (to me) peaks in their FR on one hand.
 
You should definitely hunt down a pair of HP2's.  They are one of the best in this way.  And they have a tiny dynamic driver and were made in the 90's. 

 

[purrin]

 
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Hey Purrin,
It was fun hanging out with you!  Thanks for letting me dump all my phones on your table.  

  

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That was the best part, you and pcf bringing all your stuff = lots of stuff = more fun.
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...Regardless, I'm 100% positive that in a quiet environment your Apex Peak would sound better than an imod-PPAS 

I haven't totally given up on the LCD-2s yet. Just waiting for them to come down price on the used market (which will happen sooner or later). But because of the meet, my priorities have shifted. I absolutely loved pcf's HP1 and I'm considering SR-507s. I don't want to dip too much in my kids' college funds. (Actually I'm not, but I have to buy my wife things if I buy things for myself 

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[kwkarth]

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Hmm, maybe production tolerances? I saw other folks at the meet intently comparing HD800s side-by-side. What is interesting though is I found the bass volume of some of the HD800s I auditioned sufficient compared to one that I heard then they first came out.
 
To clarify, it feels like the driver is too dampened. I also do hear resonances (micro-echos) which sound like the result of the enclosure - sound waves bouncing off the rather large wood cups (whereas the HD800 seems pretty solid in this regard.) Back to the driver: that almost too-perfect-to-be-true CSD plot of the LCD-2 make me think they are indeed over or perhaps very dampened. It's obviously not a lively looking graph.
 
PS Audio PWD and Apex Peak / Volcano w/ Shuguang BT tube. This was from my own rig which I felt mated with the LCD2s significantly better (possibly the best) than many of the other rigs out at the meet. The PWD is pretty detailed and definitely not soft or "Grey-Poupon mustard Rolls TV commercial" polite. The Apex / Peak with the BT tube sounds more solid state than tube with great bass control, texture, and treble extension.

I'm referring to the harmonics - the little fuzzies with go with the bass. pcf and I thought the LCD2s sounded great with K.D. Lang (...49th Parallel), but felt low-level information was left out from the reggae bass lines of Bob Marley (various tracks off Legend). These low-level details were heard on other phones (HP1, PS1000, HD800, W1000X, etc.) I had two pairs of LCD-2s at my table. rhythmdevils was comparing his pair with pcf's. He felt that pcf's pair were more clear sounding. I couldn't tell the difference, but probably because I wasn't as familiar with them as he.

I can't imagine what you're hearing but I would not presume to deny that you heard something, but I have to say that I think your conclusion is pretty far off the mark.
 
There is no wood enclosure as such.  The driver "enclosure," if one wants to call it that, is a rigid metal frame.  This regid frame is in turn, mounted to a fairly minimal (mass-wise) wooden frame which, itself, is a fraction of the mass of the driver assembly.  The diaphragm itself of the assembly has relatively, no mass.
Take a small malet and tap gently on the wooden frame of the LCD-2 and you will see there is no resonance coming from that assembly, at least not on my sample.  There is nothing to excite.  Constrained materials prevent any resonance there.  You may hear some slight resonance coming from the grill material as I do on my first generation LCD-2.  Even if this resonance were excited by audio from the driver, it would not create the resonance character you are describing.
 
They may indeed sound as though they're over damped at first listen, but I encourage you to listen further and in a quiet environment.  What I think you will discover is that virtually every other can you listen to has very subtle resonances that are not present in the output from the LCD-2.  These resonances are visible in the waterfall plots if you examine them.  The "norm" that your ears are used to hearing when listening to headphones is contaminated with these resonances.  The complete absence of these problems in the LCD-2 is at first perceived by many as the LCD-2 being over damped.  This means that more headphones are under damped in these sames areas.  This absence of ringing allows you to hear what was recorded.
 
Anyway, just a suggestion.