Audez'e LCD-4 -- again -- anyone...?

Discussion in 'Headphones' started by MuppetFace, Nov 5, 2015.

  1. m17xr2b

    m17xr2b Friend

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    Gave these another try, from time to time the evil thoughts of buying it again appear and need to be squashed.

    Still great low end but loose, dense mids but the lack of separation just kills it for me as always. Plus the mids still can't beat my senns on a TOTL setup. Even when I had the Stellaris I found it veiled somehow and got bored of it pretty fast.
     
  2. Rthomas

    Rthomas Friend

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    Hi Guys.

    I've ordered one of these as I got a great deal on a demo unit from a dealer. Pretty much the only reason I want to own these for a bit is because of Bob Katz's articles on IF from 2 years ago. At this price I can sell for what I paid so I thought it was worth a shot.

    I'm looking forward to comparing them to my Harman EQed HD800S.

    I emailed Audeze asking them if any driver revisions have been done in 2019 and I received an answer that a politician would be proud of :D

    Makes no sense to me whatsoever. How can your company's official response be that every batch of your flagship product may sound different?????????

    IMHO it would be much wiser to say that at this level of performance there will be small variations in the mids upwards but mild EQ or the Reveal plug in will bring the headphones to the target response but I guess they don't have the balls to admit that.

    Exact response from Jimmy at Audeze below:

    Our philosophy has always been to make the best headphones we can, every time we make them. As with most any manufacturer striving for constant improvement, we make small incremental changes to nearly every batch of headphones we build. Sometimes those changes are based on what we learned making the last batch and sometimes they're based on new knowledge from other sources. Our hope is that every change leads to some improvement in either sonics, reliability or efficiency. Over time these changes can add up to larger differences that may be noticeable when comparing older and newer examples.
     
  3. Magnetostatic_Tubephile

    Magnetostatic_Tubephile Friend

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    Thank you very much for posting this! Not sure how closely this relates to the everlasting inconsistencies in sound noticed with Audeze headphones but we all should probably bear this in mind when doing comparative listening.

    Anyway, very appreciative of Jimmy's transparency but not sure if he shouldnt rather have kept his mouth shut. Kind of a sensitive information I would say.
     
  4. 9suns

    9suns [insert unearned title here]

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    Jimmy has to be an honorific member here if he gets fired. A true hero.
     
  5. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    I don't know, these are at the end of the day niche, "boutique" products. I appreciate the honesty/transparency as well and I think this sort of thing goes on all the time to one degree or another. Would it surprise anyone to learn that each and every unit from EC, or ZMF, or fill_in_the_blank is just a little different from the other?
     
  6. ChaChaRealSmooth

    ChaChaRealSmooth SBAF's Mr. Bean

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    There's a difference between product variability (which happens even in the best, most consistent of manufacturers) and intentionally inducing changes in formulation from batch to batch; the latter of which I think is what @Rthomas was getting at with Audeze's response.

    Also, my experience with emailing Audeze runs parallel to the reponse given to @Rthomas. Back when I owned a LCD-3, I emailed them asking about any driver revisions (mine was an older model that sat unpurchased for a while), and that was the exact response I also got.
     
  7. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Schiit does running changes do they not, so that we have to talk about OG, A1, A2 and such? My point is not to argue whether this is "good" or "bad" but to simply note the continuum. Yes, Audeze admits to being on one extreme. Since they are upfront about this a potential customer can avoid them easily enough if they don't want deal with what this means - I am weary of them. I suspect (could be wrong) that many of our favored suppliers are closer to the "running changes" side of the continuum than we would care for.
     
  8. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    The differences being that Audeze was infamous for running a lottery under the radar that to this day is still extant, albeit to a lesser degree than before (based on LCD2C thread impressions), whereas most other manufacturers have products that all generally perform within tolerances of one another in spite of running changes. I've only tried a few Audeze headphones, not nearly enough to form a meaningful opinion on variability within their family of products, but I distinctly recall loving the hell out of the original LCD2 in a demo and feeling decidedly meh about the LCD3, though that was at a smaller meet so I was polite because the owner was a stranger (haha).

    As far as Schiit is concerned the way I read it is that running changes have been a part of the process for far longer than most were aware of, and it wasn't until the new analogue boards debacle that said changes were drastic enough to warrant comment.
     
  9. mkozlows

    mkozlows Friend

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    The thing is, there are three ways you can go, and none of them are truly satisfactory:

    1. Come out with a product, and then just... let it be. Don't try to improve it at all, just keep it exactly as it is, for a long time. Even if you've learned more and could make it better, just don't. Nobody will get upset, but your product isn't as good as you believe it could be. Think Grado SR-60 or HD-650, or any product that stayed largely unchanged for a long time (bracketing here the question of whether the HD-650 did get running-improvement changes at some point).

    2. Come out with a product, and then come out with fast "improvement" releases where you transparently announce what you've changed and offer upgrades and such. This is what MrSpeakers did with its "Flow" changes on the original Ethers (and at other times), and it pissed off a bunch of people and built the brand a reputation for constant tweaksmanship.

    3. Come out with a product, and then roll improvements into it silently. This seems like it should make people happy -- everyone gets the best possible thing, and nobody feels like they lost out -- but the lack of transparency ends up pissing people off and causing a lot of uncertainty and superstition, as Schiit found out and as Audeze may not yet have realized.

    It's hard to fault Audeze for wanting to keep improving their products, but it's definitely possible to fault them for their lack of transparency about the changes they've made, even while admitting that the alternatives might just have made different people angry.
     
  10. Zed Bopp

    Zed Bopp Friend

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    With Audeze's mindset of constantly tinkering with the product why not release yearly models, clearly marked, and come out once a year with what's new (or don't if it's the same). A "2018-model" is not going to feel old or less-than if it has a good reputation.
     
  11. TheloniuSnoop

    TheloniuSnoop Friend

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    To say nothing of how this policy torpedos the used market. "I better buy new to be sure I get the latest version."
     
  12. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    Just the opposite! "For sale is an LCD-4 from batch#34 - this has more airy highs, better low end extension, expansive soundstage, crazy microdetails compared to all the other batches!"

    What really gets me is this: "we make small incremental changes to nearly every batch of headphones we build"

    IOW we can't keep a consistency with our headphones. What could "incremental changes" mean? Different screws? Leather sourced from a remote village in India? .0023mm thicker headband?

    And these are intentional variations on a ~$4k product. If I'm spending that kind of money I sort of expect German precision engineering to ensure my headphones are the same as the rest of the LCD-4 owners. Or at least give me the option to have an Audeze employee handpick my headphone per my sonic preferences.
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2019
  13. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Audeze is one of those American-Chinese hybrid company/cultures is it not? If you want German precision/culture, best go with an actual German company ;)
     
  14. PeteMullersKeyboard

    PeteMullersKeyboard New

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    Sure hope no one here ever buys an Aston Martin, Bentley, or Rolls Royce. I'm quite certain the differences are far smaller than they're currently being blown out to be here and on the "other" site...there are always going to be natural, slight variations with extremely hand-made products...that's unavoidable. The great thing is, there are manufacturers besides Audeze that also make headphones, which is good news for all the people that don't want to buy them.
     
  15. Ksaurav402

    Ksaurav402 Friend

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    I think last few posts are not about the variability that is unavoidable but about Audeze purposefully applying tweaks on incremental basis from batch to batch of same product. Making early buyer feel that they have an inferior one. I think they should get the feedback from market after a period of time for a model and then apply all those tweaks and give this enhance tweaked headphone a new name or revision so that buyer knows what he is gonna get. Right now if I buy I don't know what will I end up getting.
     
  16. Ksaurav402

    Ksaurav402 Friend

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    I can understand some variation due to change in raw material sourcing because of change in supplier but if the variation is because of change in raw material and hence BoM or change in manufacturing process then that warrants a change in product name or version at least.
     
  17. songmic

    songmic Gear cycler East Asia edition

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    The first time I heard the LCD-4 was soon after its initial release, at a headphone shop hooked to a $$$ tube headphone amp. At the time, it was unimpressive.

    Maybe because the LCD-4 has been updated with new drivers (higher impedance, lower sensitivity) or because I'm using a more suitable amp now, but in its current state, the LCD-4 has dethroned Code-X as my favorite planar headphone of all time. Susvara, while being technically superior, sounds too ethereal and stat-like even when driven by a megawatt speaker amp to ear-piercing volumes. I have not heard the latest version of JPS Abyss.

    First of all, the LCD-4 is not as efficient as I had expected. On paper it is more sensitive than Code-X, but maybe due to its higher load impedance, it needs to be driven by a reasonably powerful amp to reach sufficient SPL.

    I mentioned this in the Studio Junior thread, but if you own the LCD-4, don't bother getting a tube amp (unless it's designed to be very powerful). Generally speaking, the majority of OTL amps are simply not up to the task of driving planars, and even when you're looking at OPT amps with higher output power and lower output Z, chances are a more powerful SS or hybrid amp will sound better.

    The current endgame OPT amps, i.e. Stratus/Stellaris and SJ/Studio, all have an output Z of less than 10 ohms and are capable of delivering up to approximately 2W into low impedance loads. If I crank the SJ's volume knob all the way, then yes, the LCD-4 gets reasonably loud. However, when using the Pro iCAN, not only does the LCD-4 sound louder but also effortless, with a much wider and deeper soundstage. There was no comparison, really, and I had the same results with Code-X. Though seemingly overkill, the EX-M1 (215 wpc speaker amp) took the LCD-4 to a whole new level. Both amps cost significantly less than the SJ.

    I can safely say that the LCD-4 driven by a powerful amp is not only the best planar I've heard, it also surpasses Studio/HD650 and ZDS/Utopia as the best headphone that could be driven by a conventional headphone amp (which excludes stats, SR1a, etc.). This weekend I'll be pitting it against SJ/Utopia, which I believe would be even better than ZDS/Utopia.
     
  18. m17xr2b

    m17xr2b Friend

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    Why do I have a sense of déjà vu reading this?
    LCD-4 is a lottery, Audeze themselves admitted to the production variation by stating each batch has minute improvements.
    Soon they'll resort to binned headphones as with CPUs.
     
  19. Magnetostatic_Tubephile

    Magnetostatic_Tubephile Friend

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    The particular LCD4 I heard a while back was technically very impressive - clean, clear, dynamic, microdetailed. There was a sense of purity to it for which I love my PMx2s so much. It was pretty much what I always wanted to hear from Audeze in that regard - a true high-end sound quality. Unlike the usual sidegrading when going from LCD2C to LCD3 to LCDX etc., this was a clear step-up.

    That being said, the tonality was too fucked up to care in the end personally. Simply put:
    • Lack of presence due to severely depressed upper mid to low treble region.
    • Excessive zinginess streaming from pronounced mid treble.
    Correcting the above at least partially would make for a truly great headphone. Clearly overpriced yet worth having.
     
  20. m17xr2b

    m17xr2b Friend

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    When I was in a full plannar craze I had LCD-3, LCD-4 and Abyss on the Stratus and SimAudio 600i 125W/8ohm. Running from the taps of the 600i did wake them up a bit but not transformative. I've heard stories of crazy amps with the LCD4 and supposedly going up a level but that hasn't been my experience. The LCD-4 broke and Audeze replace the drivers, sounded the same but I have heard significant variations at meets. You're either in honeymoon phase or have a bit of a unicorn.

    I could never get along with the low treble dip and the somewhat unfocused low end.
     

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