Just had the Audeze LCD-2 Padauk arrive yesterday

[Deltrus]

Hey there folks, thanks for checking out my post. I just got the legendary LCD 2 and wanted to get some thoughts out there and maybe some feedback. Maybe I am overthinking things. Maybe I am doing too much reading and not enough listening, but I just want to make sure I am having the experience I should be. The way I've had these headphones hyped to me over the years by both friends and just the internet in general, I guess I was expecting... more?
I come from the old Sennheiser HD598, they are finally kinda falling apart. Well, have been, I just saw the b-stock sale and was finally comfortable with the idea of the spending required to get these. $600. Still a lot for me, but an easier purchase to make than $1k+, I realize I could get the 2C, or some others, but something about the LCD-2 pair was calling to me. I almost got some Sundaras recently, for the record.

I've also always been a big fan of speakers, while I don't have the fanciest setup, I was raised by a dad who always enjoyed his music and also love listening to real-life instruments, so my goal is "how similar does it sound to the real thing?"

My friend said the amp I have (the old Schiit Asgard 2, still going strong!) is more than enough for these new headphones and I have the Modius DAC for that (the Modi and Modi 2 died... starting to think maybe they died because I kept them sitting on top of the Asgard 2 years back, not really sure). The Modius has something though that I am so thankful for, BALANCED XLR OUT. Dealing with ground loop isolators and such always made me question if I was losing any audio quality, but man, the static/electric noise I would get in my speakers was tremendously annoying. No more! Speaking of, for speakers I have the original Presonus Eris E5 studio monitors (Amir reviewed a set that is a newer rendition and I guess I just am convinced Presonus went down in quality) and with them the KRK 10S subwoofer. The dream some day is either a pair of Adam Audio A7X (heard em in person and was blown away how the horns in, for instance, the Star Wars main theme sounded) or the Genelec 8030C, we'll see where life goes.

I guess the point of this post is, would you just suggest I just listen to these, then go back to the HD 598 and see what I think? I've EQ'd both, following people's suggestions online, because I suck at it, in all honesty. I don't want to say they sound bad or anything, they do sound good, but I guess I was expecting the jump that I experienced years ago when I went from an old Intel 5200 dual core and PNY 9800 GeForce to an Intel i5-2500k + 560 Ti on my gaming workstation. The difference in everything was staggering. I could turn graphics up. Higher consistent framerates. I could now record game footage even, imagine! Everything was better, substantially so. Maybe the 598 with a DAC+AMP was that jump in the first place and now I am going from a current gen graphics card to a higher-tier of the same generation? Does that analogy offend anyone?

For music I enjoy a mixture of classical to more recent orchestral (think OSTs for games/movies) to classic rock and to very specific metal, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater. I have a lot of old FLAC/WAV audio files that I ripped onto my PC from CDs over the past 10-15 years, opting to stay away from mp3. I do have a YT premium subscription and while I know YT downsamples audio, it seems they've been slowly moving away from that, I'll share some uploads that I like to imagine have decent audio, if you want to give them a listen and judge for yourself. I did also get a subscription to Tidal per my Swedish friend's suggestion (he's the one who always hyped up Audeze to me) and Christopher Tin's library on there sounds fantastic on any of my audio equipment honestly, the speakers, the 598, and now the LCD 2.

Anyways, just looking for some thoughts, ideas, advice, anything you got for me works. Sorry, I tend to rant and rave when I type, but I hope I got my point across. Guess I am just trying to convince myself $600 was worth it. Maybe it was and I don't realize it yet. Maybe I am paying for the local (to the country) customer service. Maybe I am trying to support local brands *coughs, looking at Schiit - maybe. If you made it this far, thanks for sticking around, I know my writing style doesn't always work for some folks, it just feels the most natural to me.

 

[A Surfer]

When adjusting to a new sound signature it is best to just use the new headphone exclusively for a week or two to allow your brain to acclimate. Then you can better decide if you like the signature.

 

[kemmler3D]

Maybe the 598 with a DAC+AMP was that jump in the first place and now I am going from a current gen graphics card to a higher-tier of the same generation? Does that analogy offend anyone?

Actually that's probably not a bad analogy. The 598s with EQ probably were not missing a lot of raw capability compared to the LCD 2. Without EQ they will sound fairly different but with EQ the difference will be subtle.

To put the analogy back into GPU terms, before you went from low settings, 1080/30, to 4K60, now you are comparing 4K60 on high settings with different AA and motion blur settings. Maybe some differences to be found but not night and day anymore.

 

[Merkurio]

This reminded me of my own story...

I bought the LCD2C at launch for the special price of $599 (back in, what, 2018?). It was one of my most important realizations and disappointments in the hobby before I fully embraced the objectivist approach I have today.

I had already owned some interesting gear before (AKG K701, Beyerdynamic DT1990, KRK KNS-8400 and a few others), but I remember that back then the cult around Audeze was really strong in the various audio communities I frequented. That inevitably led me to go for the LCD2C when they were announced, especially because of the almost mythical reputation of the non-Fazor LCD2 and how attractive the price was—almost half the cost of a regular LCD2 back then (which was still a pretty big expense for me at the time).

When they arrived (since I live outside the US, the import process took a while), they really met expectations in terms of looks—they were just as, or even more, impressive in person than what I’d seen online, despite being the most affordable LCD2 model. But when I listened to them for the first time, everything fell apart; good bass and sub-bass, but mids (especially vocals) that sounded like they were inside a box, and treble that definitely didn’t help to balance things out (and the impression didn't improve over time at all). On the contrary, the discomfort from the weight became very apparent as days and weeks went by, not to mention issues with the screws on the yokes coming loose... Oh, and I was using a Schiit Magni 3 at the time, which drove them perfectly fine.

Back then I didn’t know much about parametric EQ, and there weren’t as many resources available as there are now (the oratory1990's preset list already existed, but the LCD2C weren’t included back then, and he was already warning that they had a lot of unit-to-unit variation). The turning point came when I decided to buy an HD600 I found on sale on Amazon, I’d never tried any of the 600-series Sennheisers before, and when I heard them for the first time, my entire “audiophile” worldview changed forever. I found them absolutely superior in everything compared to the Audeze except in the bass response, while being infinitely more comfortable and with no apparent build issues.

From there, many things changed and I learned a lot about psychoacoustic targets, the potential of EQ (I even tried the Reveal plugin with the LCD2C, but it still didn’t quite convince me) and audio science in general. In the end I sold the Audeze and kept experimenting with other gear, but the HD600 became that kind of benchmark for everything I bought afterward—even though I don’t own them anymore (though I did go through the whole 600 series family after that).

Now, looking back, with what I know about EQ and how I can tailor sound to my own HRTF, I’m pretty sure I could have made those LCD2C sound amazing with time and patience, like almost everything I’ve tried lately with personally crafted EQ. But those 600 grams of weight simply can’t be equalized, nor the quality issues (its buyer even told me a few years ago that one of the drivers failed, unfortunately).

In the end I have to be grateful that their terrible stock tuning opened my eyes (and ears) about the price-to-sound-quality relationship in this hobby, definitely $599 wasn’t too much to pay to steer me in the right direction.