Are Audeze really that bad quality-wise?

Thanks, Steve.

For nothing.

 

Must be hard for outfits like Audeze to sell a boutique product into a market in which people regularly blow out drivers by rolling defective tubes into directly-coupled OTL headphone amps. At least it's blowing a driver and not an eardrum . . . the former is replaceable

 

I nominate Mr Guttenberg for the SBAF Most Useless Audio Gear Reviewer Award.

Most of his reviews these days have the title: World's Best Headphone?

What a waste of cyberspace.....

 

Got my LCD3 non fazor in 2013. Driver failure late 2014, sent off to Audeze for repair. Came back in early 2015 with fazor drivers.
Mid way 2015 left chrome connector came loose and the right hand wood cracked. Sent off for repairs again.
Received 2 month later. sold them off and vouch never to be Audeze test guinea pig ever again. 2k headphone that has worst build quality than any of my sub $200-300 headphone.

Was about to give them a second chance on the LCD4. Learnt my lesson and waited.
They didn't disappoint, few month later they announced 200ohm. That was the final straw.

 

Hard to find a thread about the old-skool Audezes, well here's some photos of them oldies. My LCD-2.1 and my friend's 2.2, both pre-fazor:













Those vegan pads seem to do something for sure, also that 2.2 puts out about 4db less volume, which is odd. I'll get back with more impressions.

P.S. I'm thinking that 2.2 is bamboo, am I right? Mine is rosewood, of that I'm quite sure.

 

Yes, it's bamboo. Having owned the LCD 2,3 AND 4, my favorite is actually the LCD-2 closed back. It's more resolving than the older models (newer diaphragm, I believe) and it has the upper mids that the other models lack.

 

Anecdotal story about the LCD-i4. My Beijing dealer got 4 pairs in the first batch. An acquaintance, a diehard Audeze fan bought a pair and blows the driver in less than a month. So they send the first pair back to Audeze and gave him a new one. That driver blows again and he gets the 3rd pair. Driver blows a third time, this is about 2 months since the original sale so they refund him and decided to keep the 4th pair as a store demo. That last pair lasted about 3 weeks out of the box.

They got and sold 3 more pairs, which Audeze promised to be less susceptible to driver damage. None of them lasted more than a year, and they stopped ordering new ones except for replacement.

Knowing all this, I still bought a pair because I was curious...and I did like them. I had one driver fail about 9 months in, and sold the replacement pair shortly afterwards. To the best of my knowledge, those drivers will shatter if you so much as breath on them the wrong way.

 

Had the left driver fail on a 2015 pair of LCD-2 Fazor within a month of buying them. Audeze sent me brand new headphones, and while they didn't sound bad, they were not quite as good as the first pair, due to typical inconsistencies between units.

Kinda curious to hear the LCD-1 now, as I've always disliked the weight and bulkiness of their previous designs.

 

Sorry to necrothread, but I'm currently going through a situation my my LCD-2. I posted some pics on the general advice thread. The membranes have some tears along the edges.

They are out of warranty, and part of the first Fazor batch that was notorious for higher than expected (whatever that means) failure rates.

Long story short, they initially said I damaged the membranes myself from air movement and would have to pay for service. After pushing them a bit and referencing numerous complaints on the internet (HF, Reddit) about fragile membranes, they offered to fix them gratis.

Moral of the story: if your LCDs fail outside of warranty, don't give up the first time they say you have to pay for service.

I'll give kudos when kudos are due. I'm sending them off today. Stay tuned for more updates of this incident.

 

I mean I might be missing something (it wouldn't be the 1st time) but isn't "air movement", I don't know, playing music through them? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?

Glad they owned up to it though.

 

I believe reading his other thread, he mentioned Audeze said putting on or taking off his headphones too fast. Guess he will know now to count to 10 while both putting on and taking them off lol

 

That's what they implied I did, and to the best of my knowledge, I never did that. I had no reason to ever push the cups against my head. I babied these things because I had severe guilt about buying such expensive cans (for me) and I viewed them as an heirloom like ancient Klipsch speakers. I can say, without a doubt, that I never heard any squeaky or crinkly sounds coming from the membranes. I'm very sensitive to treble, so I would have noticed. In fact, when the foam in the ear pads adjusts to my head (all my headphones) for a bit after first putting them on, I hear the low level white noise and it drives me nuts for a bit. I start thinking it's from a poor recording, but it's just the pads equilibrating.

After my exchange with CS, I went to the owner's manual, and there was absolutely no mention about anything pertaining to air movement, pushing the cups, etc.

 

That was how the original message from CS read to me, implying that putting them on too fast caused air to be trapped, but after searching the internets, it seems like a common issue was what Marv said about pushing the cups on your head.

To the best of my knowledge, I've never pushed the cups on my ears because I hate any sort of pressure changes with my ears. I had lots of ear infections as a kid, so to this day I have chronic tinnitus and am very sensitive to pressures, air movements, and loud noises in general. Flying is a real hoot.

 

I'm not sure exactly which part of my reply to CS made them offer gratis service, but it could possibly be my mentioning they were the early 2015 Fazors. That's when they first added that feature, and I also seem to remember reading about the adoption of a newer, thinner membrane. But, I'm old and took a few concussions from my football days, so what do I know. However, I remember reading numerous complaints about that batch having driver failures. In fact, at the time, I was debating selling them off so I wouldn't have to play the warranty game.

 

It's no surprised that Audeze will fix them without charge there's so much data on how fragile and as much as I love the LCD-2+LCD-4 terrible QC since 2009/2010. It's mad to think that it's taken so long to get the LCD-2 to a point they're fairly consistent in both sound and failure rate.

 

Ironically Audeze also used an automotive example when a mate of mine had a driver fail on his LCD3. Actual exchange below.

For amusement, this after I tell them I've lost faith in the brand and its quality ”Circling back to the cost vs. reliability question: I sometimes compare Audeze headphones to performance cars such as Ferrari (who also offers a three year warranty by coincidence). As Ferrari owners will surely attest, there are maintenance costs associated with ownership, and if something breaks beyond the warranty period they must pay to have the repairs done."

My reply "Whilst I'm sure Ferrari owners expect to incur repair and maintenance costs, I'm also pretty sure they don't anticipate having to replace a blown engine because they've driven round the block. My daily driver HD800 has worked a hell of a lot harder over the same time period and remains entirely trouble free. Let's leave it there, lesson learned, my bad."

 

Piss poor engineering if you ask me. Imagine if Stax had a driver failure for every fart since 1928 or thereabouts ... Audeze can easily engineer a microvent if pressure differential is a known killer.