[Rolesium]

No engineering is perfect. It's a difficult balance between improving the product and trying to maintain a stable supply for customers. It's not possible to please everyone especially the audiophile community which has high standards. I'm not saying it's the right choice, but we didn't improve and put out a new LCD-X and XC to try and piss off our community believe it or not...

I personally am quite excited by the new revision.

 

[Another Audiophile]

No engineering is perfect. It's a difficult balance between improving the product and trying to maintain a stable supply for customers. It's not possible to please everyone especially the audiophile community which has high standards. I'm not saying it's the right choice, but we didn't improve and put out a new LCD-X and XC to try and piss off our community believe it or not...

I believe you and your honest intention. Nevertheless, there are things to learn from this process if you aspire to be a premium company with trusted product. Building trust with your customers should be now your number one priority. I wanted to order the LCD-4 but who tells me what exactly I will get. It’s a matter of principle, consistency and trust.

 

[AudezeGrover]

I know for sure you guys have good ears and use measurements as a guide for making the presets. When the LCD-1 was brand new before the Reveal profile for it existed, I came up with some kind of EQ profile by ear, and the final profile was similar to how I had tuned my profile, but with better filled-in bass and more appropriate ear gain filter frequency locations. Given that experience, and the resulting very high accuracy to your own house target with the Reveal preset, I cannot for the life of me understand how the Reveal presets could have been tuned for the memory foam pads - they are very far off even with correction.

Not sure if the team will let this information out there, but it would also help to know when the memory foam pads started being shipped as standard on all models, too...

Personally, as Grover, I agree with you 100%. I think Chris is generally sort of in the same headspace as I am, we tend to agree on a lot of things sonically.
I'm also still relatively new at Audeze and learning how things work, and catching up on the history of the brand. I hadn't owned any Audeze headphones other than the Mobius and LCD-1 before working here - and the fact of the matter is that I really don't have a lot of influence or say on how the headphones are tuned, though I am asked and do give my feedback on prototypes. I think we're seeing a new direction with the 'house sound' of Audeze, at least from my personal perspective, but I can't really say more than that at the moment.

I also want to mention that I am bringing your feedback to the team and Chris and I are letting the R&D team know about your feedback, but things don't happen overnight or without other folks input and opinions obviously. Wish they did...

 

[betula]

EDIT: Just checked with support - ALL of the new LCD models have this pad change.

Is it only a pad change on the other LCDs or transducer changes as well?

 

[mikecheck95]

No engineering is perfect. It's a difficult balance between improving the product and trying to maintain a stable supply for customers. It's not possible to please everyone especially the audiophile community which has high standards. I'm not saying it's the right choice, but we didn't improve and put out a new LCD-X and XC to try and piss off our community believe it or not...

I think most people are very happy/excited with the improvements. I think it was “the way it was carried out” that is frustrating for some. But I understand you can’t please everyone.

 

[AudezeGrover]

I believe you and your honest intention. Nevertheless, there are things to learn from this process if you aspire to be a premium company with trusted product. Building trust with your customers should be now your number one priority. I wanted to order the LCD-4 but who tells me what exactly I will get. It’s a matter of principle, consistency and trust.

I hear you. I will also say the focus recently hasn't been on hi-fi specific products, but we have not forgotten about you guys and we're not ignoring you. The feedback is received and appreciated.

 

[AudezeGrover]

Is it only a pad change on the other LCDs or transducer changes as well?

Just a pad change as far as I know. Email support@audeze.com to confirm this though.

 

[AudezeGrover]

I think most people are very happy/excited with the improvements. I think it was “the way it was carried out” that is frustrating for some. But I understand you can’t please everyone.

Is there a way you would have found preferable? Again, I didn't make the decision, but I'd be interested to hear. My experience when I worked at Schiit and some other audio companies was that a period of silent revision, then a full release announcement is pretty common.

 

[AudezeGrover]

The last thing I'd want is for the takeaway from this thread to be that they should stop improving things - or at least, I hope that's not the spirit of the feedback. But this is also why I think it makes sense to just come out with a 'model years' approach. I would agree that the revision stuff is confusing, and they could do a better job of communicating which version sounds like what (and adding measurements as Metal571 pointed out). But something else seems to be missing from this discussion and it's that no company seems to want to address this type of stuff. Small revisions seem to detract from customer confidence, and while many (if not most) companies do it, nobody except Audeze seems to be willing to admit it. Now, granted the differences in this case are significant - enough to warrant a clear demarcation for which version you may have - and we can only assume that this trend could continue. So at this point I really see no reason not to adopt a naming scheme and launch cycle that reflects that.

I actually really like this idea!
My understanding of Audeze's policy is still evolving, but my takeaway is that it's similar to Schiit's - you can express your personal feelings on a product's sound, but we try not to tell people what to hear, nor do we want to prescribe a single 'correct' way to do things. I own and enjoy (as do other team members) audio products from other manufacturers, and we want to be very cautious of claiming we're the only ones who know how to make good headphones. There's room for everyone.

 

[mikecheck95]

Is there a way you would have found preferable? Again, I didn't make the decision, but I'd be interested to hear. My experience when I worked at Schiit and some other audio companies was that a period of silent revision, then a full release announcement is pretty common.

I’m stealing this idea but I like the idea of having model years for the product revisions. That way you could also manage the reveal plugins to suit the various revisions. I realize this would not be an easy thing to implement... maybe not possible right now as Audeze is still a relatively small team and does a lot of stuff by hand (which I’m sure we’d all miss).

 

[ThanatosVI]

@AudezeGrover
Did the LCD-2C also receive noteable revision changes since it's release?

Really liked the tuning of it, whwn it first came out

 

[metal571]

@AudezeGrover
Did the LCD-2C also receive noteable revision changes since it's release?

Really liked the tuning of it, whwn it first came out

At the least, a memory foam pad switchover. I bought mine new in Sep 2018. From others in this thread, it looks like it is now also using the new non memory foam pleather version of the 2021 pads, which should significantly improve the FR.

 

[ThanatosVI]

At the least, a memory foam pad switchover. I bought mine new in Sep 2018. From others in this thread, it looks like it is now also using the new non memory foam pleather version of the 2021 pads, which should significantly improve the FR.

"Improve the FR" Is quite relative, especially if you liked the original tuning.

Over the years I sold my 2C, hlwever sometimes I miss them. so now I'd like to get a feeling what to expect from a new pair

 

[AudezeGrover]

Not sure why you would backdate tell people there's a huge revision. I'd understand if u do a silent revision or tell u in advance, just doesn't make logical sense

This wasn't necessarily supposed to be a HUGE revision as I understand it, which is why we didn't make a lot of fanfare. It was more to let recent purchasers know they had the knew one and to loop the general community in...
Also as I understand it, supply issues have a thing since covid, and a LOT more LCD-X customers are pros than audiophiles. It's a pretty different market.

 

[AudezeGrover]

I had purchased the LCD-2C on December 27th but I have no way of verifying if they were built after this late November revision timeline. It was fitted with the non leather, memory foam pads though. We’ll probably have to wait a bit and see if the change was only implemented on the leather pads but one would think they changed those as well given that the LCD-X/XC are offered with a leather free option.

email support@audeze.com they should be able to answer this question.