Audeze LCD-X

Do you want to be entertained or do you want to be educated? Depends entirely on the circumstances, doesn’t it? Equally, circumstances will dictate whether you want headphones to listen to or headphones to enlighten you.

If you want to be educated and enlightened, you want the Audeze LCD-X!

Although to be perfectly fair, the LCD-X are great for listening to as well, and they even offer a significant degree of entertainment. Serious-minded and well-supervised entertainment, admittedly, but entertainment nevertheless.

The Costa Mesa, California headphone specialist and planar magnetic obsessive began building its LCD-X model in 2013. Ever since, an ongoing policy of upgrade and improvement has ensured LCD-X has always been a part of the conversation whenever the subject of studio-grade, audiophile headphones comes up. Which isn’t too shabby, especially when you consider Audeze has only been a going concern since 2009.

Slimmed down

In 2022 guise, the Audeze LCD-X are an open-back, over-ear headphone that use a pair 106mm planar magnetic transducers to do the sonic business. The headband and the big, round earpads are covered in leather (at least, those of our review sample are – there’s a leather-free option available at the same price) – there’s very little padding to the headband and an awful lot to the earpads. Meanwhile, the earpads are angled quite steeply towards the front of the wearer’s head and are big enough to fully cover all but the most generously proportioned ears.

Throughout, there’s a strongly mechanical vibe to the LCD-X. Exposed screw-heads are everywhere, from the clicky headband adjustment mechanism and the union between yoke and earcup to the vented cover on the outside of the earcup. It seems perfectly possible to disassemble the Audeze almost entirely, which is good news for both professional maintenance personnel and amateur fiddlers alike. Even the way the four-pin mini-XLR connection clicks into place on each earcup feels satisfying.

The LCD-X has slimmed down over the years, but at 612g you’ll never be in any doubt as to whether you’re wearing them or not – thanks to carefully considered hanger and headband engineering, they’re less of a burden than that weight might suggest.

Set Fazors to ‘stunning’

Some of that 612g can be explained away by the configuration Audeze insists on for the LCD-X, of course. Those big (and extraordinarily thin) diaphragms need a frame around them, of course, and positioning a Fazor waveguide array outside each row of Neodymium N50 magnets is no weight-saving exercise either. Still, this painstaking transducer arrangement results in high efficiency with notably low impedance, so while headphones of this type deserve a high-end, high-current source the LCD-X doesn’t absolutely demand it. Virtually any device with a headphone socket should be capable of driving them.

The Audeze LCD-X are available in a couple of packages. The ‘creator’ package consists of the headphones, a 1.9m cable with dual four-pin mini-XLR connections at one end and an unbalanced 6.3mm plug at the other, and a carry-case – it will set you back £1,149. Or you may prefer the ‘premium’ package, which adds a balanced four-pin XLR to dual four-pin mini-XLR cable, a 6.3mm-to-3.5mm adapter and upgrades the carry-case to one of those bomb-proof items you occasionally see handcuffed to the wrist of a burly man in a suit. You’ll need to part with £1699 for this package.

And if you buy it at the same time as your LCD-X, Audeze will sell you its ‘Reveal+’ plug-in for half the usual $199 asking price (no sterling pricing is currently quoted). This allows you to EQ the headphones to sound like many of the world’s most famous recording studios – handy for professional producers, diverting but ultimately pointless for the rest of us.

A Joyful Noise Unto the Creator

For the purposes of this review, the ‘creator’ package is used in conjunction with an iFi iDSD Diablo headphone amp/DAC connected to a 2020 Apple MacBook Pro running Colibri software (to circumvent Apple’s ongoing antipathy to properly high-resolution digital audio files). And as well as using the Audeze cable into the Diablo’s 6.3mm output, the LCD-X are connected to its 4.4mm balanced socket using a Forza Audio Works Claire Hybrid HPC cable with the necessary dual four-pin mini-XLR connections at one end and a 4.4mm TRRRS balanced plug at the other.

Anyone who’s familiar with Audeze headphones will find the next statement comes as no surprise whatsoever, while those who aren’t should be made aware of a SPOILER ALERT! – the LCD-X are profoundly capable headphones in virtually every respect. If it’s insight into a recording you want, the atomic-level details of an individual instrument or a full ensemble, or a direct and unequivocal account of a singer’s prowess (or otherwise), these headphones are among the best pound-for-pound propositions currently on the market. If it’s present in a recording, no matter how minor, how transient or how oppressed by other elements of the same recording it may be, the Audeze will identify it, contextualise it and hand it over for your consideration.

Their eloquence is unaffected by the genre of music you play, and they are remarkably easy-going about the specific height of the resolution of the audio files you listen to. Having said that, though, there’s no doubt the LCD-X are at their most startlingly impressive when given a big file of a minimal recording to deal with. Something like Nick Drake’s Which Will [Island] as a 24bit/96kHz FLAC file, for example.

Immediately direct

There’s a directness and an immediacy about the way the Audeze describe the acoustic guitar that’s the sole instrument in this recording. They combine the effect of the strings (their material, their gauge and the intensity with which they’re played), the body of the instrument (as a frame and as a sound box) and the singular technique Drake employs (the eccentric tuning and resultant cluster chords in particular) in such an unequivocal way that the guitar seems present as an object rather than just as a sound.

Drake’s voice, too, sounds present in a way that’s far from common. As ever, his singing is quiet and completely without projection, and the LCD-X give his baritone warmth, personality and an emotional articulacy that will surprise even those who’ve heard the performance numerous times before.

An overt gear-change to a 24bit/96kHz FLAC file of Szun Waves’ Exploding Upwards [The Leaf Label] allows even greater scope for the Audeze to demonstrate their clarity, transparency and winningly rapid low-frequency presence. There’s depth and extension to bass sounds, but no overhang and certainly no slurring around the edges… and this unarguable fidelity applies throughout the frequency range. The top of the frequency range is crisply managed and, again, detail levels are seemingly limitless. And just as in the Nick Drake tune, the midrange reproduction here is articulate in the extreme – when the saxophone modulates into coarseness, the LCD-X modulate with it. But they are so judicious, so faithful and so alive to the minutiae of the recording, it’s possible to visualise the whole process of playing rather than just the ensuant sound.

The Persuaders!

The soundstage the Audeze create, while not the biggest a pair of headphones ever created, is absolutely solid in its imaging – and consequently it’s among the most persuasive around. It also enjoys considerable height, which is unusual if not unheard-of. The big dynamic upheavals of Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony wrangling Stravinsky’s Euntes In Mundum [SFS Media] as a 24bit/96kHz WAV file are dispatched without metaphorical sweat being broken, and the harmonic variations apparent in Nils Frahm’s piano during Small Me [Erased Tapes] are made so obvious they’re basically in Technicolor.

Downsides to Audeze LCD-X ownership are remarkably few, and they’re all physical rather than auditory. These, as should really be apparent by now, are big, heavy headphones and they won’t suit the smaller-headed among us. The luxurious amount of padding around the ears made my head sweat much more quickly, and much more readily, than most headphones can manage – and I don’t think I’m alone in finding excessive ear-heat quite off-putting. And, um, that’s about it.

Unusually for a headphone with aspirations towards the recording studio and the mastering suite, the Audeze LCD-X are remarkably easy to live with (in the sonic sense) on a day-to-day, ‘just listening’ sort of way. Which means that it’s hard to suggest a more educational, more enlightening or more, yes, entertaining listen at this sort of money.

Technical specifications

• Type over-ear, open-back planar-magnetic headphones
• Drivers 106mm ultra-thin Uniforce planar magnetic
• Frequency Response 10Hz–50kHz
• Impedance 20ohms
• Sensitivity 103dB /1mW
• Distortion < 0.1% @ 100dB SPL
• Accessories 1.9m single-ended cable with 6.3mm termination
• Weight 612g
• Price £1,149

Manufacturer

Audeze

www.audeze.com

UK Distributor

KS Distribution

www.ksdistribution.co.uk

+44 (0)1903 768919

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