Well, I just hope that when that time comes, flagship headphones aren't priced too insanely. It's slowly creeping upward, and whilst there are some companies that resist the urge to go crazy with their pricing schemes, the common flagship-entry price is already hovering at or above the $4,000 figure.
You're right, mate, the LIRIC indeed shares a similar DNA to the Focal stable - at least in terms of dynamics. The Focal headphones have never been anything less than involving, even at the Utopia level, which is, admittedly, one of the best headphones on the market.
I have only heard the Noire once, in comparison to the AEON 2 Closed. The Noire is, fundamentally, an AEON 2 Closed with a slightly leaner tone. This allows the headphone to appear a little more resolving, and less heavy in the lows. Within the Dan Clark Audio stable, the AEON 2 cans (Closed and Noire) remain my favorite - they may not outdo the Stealth, the VOCE, and the Ether in terms of pure resolving capabilities, but they are distinctly more musical in practice.
Good question. I also noticed that the Liric requires much more power than one would expect.
Well i would explain the FR to play a role, but i have to crank Dave up like 8-12 DB to get a similar listening experience with the Liric. It's just ridiculous. The Elite are 32 ohms and 101 dB and didn't require cranking the volume up this much
I'm curious how you would compare the Liric to Z1R and Verite Closed. Sadly i have no way of hearing the Verite without buying it first.
also manufacturer's sensitivity may not be trusted, search HiFiMAN's HP numbers and third-party measured...
Good point... vendor measurements are often not well documented and many measure to impress, i.e. they select measurement methods that make their models look favorable. Comparing across vendors using only their own measurements is hard...
Sounds quite extrem, yes. Unfortunately I can't say wether Meze measurements are reliable (even among their own range), but as @deafenears mentioned it may well be that the numbers suggest a similarity that is simply not there when measured by independent sources.
You can always read the Malevolent's comparison between Z1R and VC and extrapolate to the Liric... Not the same, but approximately.
Thanks, was not aware of it. Based on what i'm hearing in my chain, sounds like the Liric might beat the VC in a few categories as well.
Here's a cursory comparison of the 3 headphones -
This might be a difference due to the chain, but i feel like the Z1R are considerably more resolving, with better separation and imaging. I can hear details in voices that are missing on the Liric. Lips parting, breaths in between notes, background noises, stuff like that. And it's across the frequency range, even though the Liric has more clarity due to the tuning, it does not have that last level of detail. If i used another source to compare them i'm not sure what the difference would be, but they do seem to scale up more. Which is not the Liric's use case anyway. For portable use i can't think of anything better. It's just that the Liric also block external noise a lot less than the Z1R, but they pads are not as thick so it makes sense.
I feel like this is the party trick for the perceived clarity without having the highest level of resolution. However it's not shrill like i find the Steliias. It's a great balance overall.
