[jamato8]

Quote:

You can't expect it to have HD800 type soundstage because it hasn't changed the reason it has the soundstage it has.  There's surely some wiggle room because of the lighter diaphragm which may also be a different shape/size and more speed/transparency and better imaging will give a more spacious sound, but the pads are the same, and it's still sealed to the baffle because orthos need to be.  I'd love to eat my words though. 

I have not heard the HD800's but I have read that the soundstage is exaggerated. If it is, then that would not be something to be aspired to. What is you opinion on the soundstage of the 800's?
 

 

[K3cT]

Quote:

You can say they are bright and that your preference is toward a darker balance. The LCD2 is really bad in terms of linearity and smoothness of FR.
 

The HD800 also suffers from that, otherwise it won't have that dreaded peak in the 4kHz and 5kHz region. 
 
I guess this is the reason why it sounds best from a tube amplification. The tubes help to mask this defect. 

 

[K3cT]

Quote:

I spent some time listening to the LCD-3 at CanJam yesterday. Sorry for the delay in posting but I was having too much fun to be on line. The real world is far more entertaining.
That said, I was impressed by what I heard from the LCD-3. While show conditions are not the best, especially for open headphones, it was very obvious to me that the LCD-3 have a level of nuance and transparency that is very, very high, and has the potential to be a significant step up. I say potential because I will not know this for sure until I get a pair in my house for review, which I will be doing soon - Audeze has agreed to get me a review pair very soon.
More later.

Whoa looking forward to this. What was the amplification used to drive it in their booth, the Cavalli Liquid Fire?

 

[purrin]

My measurements of the HD800 don't show a peak at 4 or 5kHz. Instead they show a valley at 4kHz followed up an elevated overall treble plateau. There is bump at 5k. The issue with the HD800 is mainly with the elevated treble. It's just damn bright.
 
The LCD2 shows a few uneven spiky peaks after a smooth ramp down from 1kHz to 4kHz. Some of these are serious. Most people don't hear them because the FR is shelved down so much. Also a lot of people are under the impression that the LCD2 measure extremely well because of the FR graphs Audeze provides with the headphones. However those graphs are highly compressed in terms of db scale and 1/3 octave smoothed. I don't apply smoothing to my graphs.
 
Let me pull up some FR plots

 

[ianmedium]

Thanks Rob, I await your full review with a great deal of interest... And trepidation, trepidation because everything you have given favorable reviews to that I have been interested in has made my wallet tremble and then give in and succumb to the inevitable!!

 

[DoctaCosmos]

Awesome. One of the most highly regarded headphone makers in the business has released a newer higher end headphone.
The Audez'e LCD-3
Can't wait to hear more about the headphone. 
What would make this headphone better than their previous model, the LCD-2?
I have heard a lot about this "house" sound.  Will the new model need to carry on this house sound in order for owners of the original to like it? Being that it's a
better headphone, it would also need other attributes to make it worthy of this new price.  Soundstage, imaging and possibly more detail.
If the new headphone were to lose the house sound and instead retain a more clear and analytical presence, would previous Audez'e customers
be getting a better Lcd-2 or just a whole new headphone that looks like old one and would they be happy.
If this new headphone starts its life without the Audez'e house sound, then many of you should probably just keep your lcd-2's?
 
 

 

[K3cT]

Quote:

My measurements of the HD800 don't show a peak at 4 or 5kHz. Instead they show a valley at 4kHz followed up an elevated overall treble plateau. There is bump at 5k. The issue with the HD800 is mainly with the elevated treble. It's just damn bright.
 
The LCD2 shows a few uneven spiky peaks after a smooth ramp down from 1kHz to 4kHz. Some of these are serious. Most people don't hear them because the FR is shelved down so much. Also a lot of people are under the impression that the LCD2 measure extremely well because of the FR graphs Audeze provides with the headphones. However those graphs are highly compressed in terms of db scale and 1/3 octave smoothed. I don't apply smoothing to my graphs.
 
Let me pull up some FR plots

Ah, looking forward to them. I was under the impression that they measured well, at least based on Tyll's measurement. Let's see some comparison. 
 
I hope I don't come across as hating the HD800 as I always consider them an equal to the LCD2. They seem to excel a lot in imaging and soundstage. Just depends on what you're looking for I suppose. 

 

[jc9394]

 
Quote:

Unless someone figures out some new tricks, an ortho will not have the soundstage of an electrodynamic like the HD800 because the ortho drivers are completely sealed to the baffle by necessity and the way the HD800 gets it's huge soundstage is by having a completely open baffle.  So if soundstage is your priority you should look elsewhere for now. 

 
 
That is why I still have HD800.

 

[cAsE sEnSiTiVe]

 

 


Quote:

I have not heard the HD800's but I have read that the soundstage is exaggerated. If it is, then that would not be something to be aspired to. What is you opinion on the soundstage of the 800's?
 

John,
 
You've heard right. I had them here for a bit, and while the thing that troubled me most about them was their utter lack of proper tonality, I too thought the soundstage inaccurate. I think some believe that if you have a very wide soundstage, that it excels out of hand. It's the proper placement of the images within that stage that I believe matters. Of course it has to be wide enough, deep enough, high enough for all the images to be able to play in their own space.
 
In my system, the LCD's do all of this and then some....and they do it while exhibiting the proper weight and foundation of the instrument. The HD800's were sorely lacking in this respect. 
 
My only goal when assembling a system is: In absence of hearing the real thing, is my system good enough so that it can fool me into thinking I am doing so. Anything else, I'm not interested in.

 

[purrin]

 
Quote:

Ah, looking forward to them. I was under the impression that they measured well, at least based on Tyll's measurement. Let's see some comparison. 
 
I hope I don't come across as hating the HD800 as I always consider them an equal to the LCD2. They seem to excel a lot in imaging and soundstage. Just depends on what you're looking for I suppose. 

 
Not at all. They are both good headphones. I have trouble with the LCD2 because every other pair sounds different; and about 1/3 to 1/5 of them I've heard has had some issues to varying degrees including the ones I measured below.
 

 
Yellow: HD800 L (the R channel for all intents and purposes looks exactly the same)
Blue: LCD2r1 R
Red: LCD2r1 L
 
All plots are un-smoothed.
 
Sorry folks for talking this slightly off topic.
 
One of my concerns with Audeze has been with quality control and driver matching with the LCD2 (and in turn the LCD3.) The above driver mismatch with the LCD2 should never happen with a $1000 headphone in my opinion. It's obvious the right driver should have just been tossed in the garbage and never made it into production.
 
Also, there's some ringing on the LCD2 at different spots. You should know where to click to see those.

 

[K3cT]

I personally find that ultra-wide soundstage of the HD800 to be pretty impressive so long you don't play compressed recordings as it will come across as very strange. As such, I find the HD800 to sound best with live recordings and classical symphonies. 
 
Quote:

Unless someone figures out some new tricks, an ortho will not have the soundstage of an electrodynamic like the HD800 because the ortho drivers are completely sealed to the baffle by necessity and the way the HD800 gets it's huge soundstage is by having a completely open baffle.  So if soundstage is your priority you should look elsewhere for now. 

This is interesting. I wonder how Hifiman does the HE6 as other than the hole in the center image, I thought it's pretty good in terms of airiness and presenting space. 

 

[purrin]

 
Quote:

Originally Posted by cAsE sEnSiTiVe /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
...
 
 I had them here for a bit, and while the thing that troubled me most about them was their utter lack of proper tonality, I too thought the soundstage inaccurate. I think some believe that if you have a very wide soundstage, that it excels out of hand...

Tonality is a matter of taste. One can also say that the LCD2 has an utter lack of properly tonality because the harmonics region is shelved down or there is ringing at certain spots. I do agree that the HD800 is horribly bright and something I would throw away I had not applied mods to it. Even after mods which brings the treble plateau down -3db, I think it's a little to bright. One thing I noted about the HD800 soundstage is that it's also very deep. In other words, the deep soundstage is proportional to the width. This is very amp (and even driver tube) dependent though.
 

 

[cifani090]

Sorry for my LCD-3 thread, didn't even see it, and the OP only beat me by an hour

 

[cAsE sEnSiTiVe]

Quote:

 
Tonality is a matter of taste. One can also say that the LCD2 has an utter lack of properly tonality because the harmonics region is shelved down or there is ringing at certain spots. I do agree that the HD800 is horribly bright and something I would throw away I had not applied mods to it. Even after mods which brings the treble plateau down -3db, I think it's a little to bright. One thing I noted about the HD800 soundstage is that it's also very deep. In other words, the deep soundstage is proportional to the width. This is very amp (and even driver tube) dependent though.
 

No ringing or shelving down of upper harmonics here. It wouldn't be giving me all of the boundries in a recording capable of giving it to me if the upper harmonics weren't present in abundance. 
 
And no, I don't agree that tonality is a matter of taste. Unless of course the individual listening has no idea what an instrument sounds like in an un-amplified environment. In that instance, yes, that particular listener falls into the "I like what I like/know" mentality. A trumpet, an oboe, a baritone sax.....when listening live, you get a sense of the musicians diaphragm, the foundation of the note, the harmonics, the slow fade away of the note into blackness. It either sounds like it, or it doesn't. No gray area.
 
The HD800 only hinted at it, the LCD-2 gives it to me.

 

[n3rdling]

 
Quote:

Unless someone figures out some new tricks, an ortho will not have the soundstage of an electrodynamic like the HD800 because the ortho drivers are completely sealed to the baffle by necessity and the way the HD800 gets it's huge soundstage is by having a completely open baffle.  So if soundstage is your priority you should look elsewhere for now. 

Thank you!  jamato and anybody interested, listen to one of your open dynamics/electrostats and then place your hands on the backside of the drivers.  You'll notice a collapsing of the sounstage and a sucking out of the 'air'.  This effect is my one big qualm with the orthos I've heard.