FYI all, I have e-mailed Consumerist with my concerns and issues I've been dealing with and seeing. I've pasted the e-mail I've sent them below (personal information redacted):
Consumerist folks,
I purchased a pair of headphones made by an American headphone manufacturer known for high-end, boutique products, Audeze. Audeze produces planar magnetic headphones, which is a type of transducer somewhat different from conventional speakers or headphones. The headphones I purchased, LCD-3s, were, at the time of purchase (2.5 years ago), their highest end product. They received numerous accolades and, honestly, sounded fantastic.
Then, after the first year, my left driver stopped working. Just died out of nowhere. I sent it in to get it repaired, received them after a month, and they worked fine. Then, it occurred again. About 6 weeks ago, it occurred the third time. Always the left driver.
Now, Audeze has had my headphones for over 5 weeks and has shut down communication. I've been contacting them through their support line and have just stopped receiving responses. Furthermore, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Head-fi, a respected headphone enthusiast forum, has a long running poll of not if your LCD-3s have failed, but how many times. If you extrapolate the poll to "three or more times" being three, then of the 181 total votes, there are 184 failures. That's 184 failures of a $2000 pair of high end headphones.
In the amount of time I've owned my LCD-3s, during the three repairs, they have been in the possession of Audeze for over 10% of the time. I can't imagine any other product, high or low end, where a 10% downtime would be acceptable, especially over the course of three repairs. By their own admission (I can provide documentation), these failures are not due to mistreatment. I keep them stored on a special stand so they're always sitting upright, use a proper amplifier which is turned off when not in use, and baby them.
Since I've purchased my LCD-3s, Audeze has released several products including an iDevice only headphone (uses the lightning port) and a higher end, LCD-4, which can only be purchased through Audeze at a premium price of $4000. It hasn't been out nearly long enough to comment on that product's longevity. They have also changed CEOs, which gave some false hope of a better run company. Audeze seems to have no compunction about charging a premium for a premium product, nor should they. However, they also seem to have abandoned all hope of constructing a well manufactured product that can last for more than 12 months before failure.
Myself, I'm a software engineer specializing in testing and product quality. I know how hard it is to make a product that doesn't fail when a customer uses it and I'm also aware that it's nearly impossible to test in all customer situations. However, sitting in an air-conditioned office, on a stand, never driven beyond office listening levels, is not an unpredictable environment and, if the LCD-3 can't handle it for years at a time, Audeze should issue a recall.
I'm not sure if there is anything you can do. I'd love to see some press covering the failures, because Audeze has been largely silent about it and there is very little documentation outside of Head-fi anecdotal evidence, but the failures are very real and Audeze's conspicuous silence about why it happens combined with poor support is a total failure to customers who paid a massive premium to get the best they could afford.
I'm happy to provide documentation of my communications with Audeze, proof of purchase of the product itself, and verify my identity, along with any other information you may need.
Thank you,
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