Quote:
Audiocrack just reported having a similar issue: Crackling while moving about. I also heard someone else's LCD3 within the last few days that would cut in and out rapidly on the right driver.
I'm the "someone else" to whom
purrin is referring.
The cutting-in/out of the right driver on the LCD-3s occured during the Head-Fi Village Headphone Meet 2012 last Sunday in Hollywood.
We swapped cables between several sets of LCD-3s to eliminate the cable as the issue.
After some further fact finding, Marv declared the behavior to be in the headphone; and that was good enough for Alex and Sankar.
Sankar insisted on taking my un-veiled day-1 LCD3s for immediate warranty replacement.
He was willing to give me any of the several LCD-3s they'd brought to the show; but thought it may be preferable to provide a pristine pair.
A brand new set of LCD-3s showed up on my doorstep within 30 hours (note that my locale is SoCal...YMMV).
I actually like the wood on the replacment cans better than the originals, the Zebra Wood is darker with a tighter grain.
Alex confirmed that one of the adjustments made to the newer LCD-3s involved tension of the driver.
This was perhaps confirmed by the fact that the replacement LCD-3s were initially a bit bass-light compared to the originals (tightness of new drivers?)
After roughly 96 hours of burn-in, the new phones have improved significantly in bass extension and authority - easily equalling my original LCD-3s.
In some ways, these are better than the originals - the bass is now better controlled (not as much bloom in the mid-bass and the lowest reaches display better impact).
The treble were more present (see attached FR graphs) and the mids less recessed straight out of the box.
I'm mildly hesitant to offer these observations...
because when A-B ing at the show (on the several different sets of upstream hardware) I found there to be no audible difference bewtween my original LCD-3s and several pairs of new LCD-3s.
So why do I hear a difference now? Good question.
Meets present very sub-optimal conditions for critical listening, so maybe the differences were there and I just didn't hear them.
Plus, we often hear what we want to hear; but my brain now believes that these new LCD-3s are better than the originals - given some mild burn-in.
Thanks to
purrin (Marv) for troubleshooting.
And thanks to the guys and gals at Audeze who were unflinching in their efforts to assure complete customer satisfaction.
Old and new FR grahps for comparo.
T.