Live testing the Audeze LCD-X and LCD-XC 2021 updates

okay we're live what's up everybody um we're gonna do a few things in this live stream i'm just gonna wait for the stream to catch up here nice to see everybody here um i want to actually first and foremost let me know how the audio levels are trying something new this time around to make sure it doesn't clip but if it's too quiet just let me know and i'll change that um and uh looks like everything is working fine i did also also want to mention that i just straight up didn't see that um there were some other audio related streams going on um and so that's why i you know postponed it for an hour normally we you know would just try and go a little earlier in the day but because you know now i know folks are you know all over the place and not all in the same time zone um but you know it's gotten to a point where there's a lot of you know folks streaming on the weekends so um in the in an effort to be sort of respectful to other people uh you know we had to delay this for about an hour but um i hope everybody had a good chance to check out that stream that i linked if you haven't uh do go check out marcelo's channel plenty loud okay awesome awesome good to see everybody in the chat there um what mike do you use this is the at2020 but i don't recommend it um yeah you can do a lot better these days um than the at2020 this is an old old microphone um okay so uh i guess what we're what i'm going to do here is talk about the lcd x here and then i also have the lcd x c you guys already probably know this xc carbon here and so what i'm going to be doing is i'm going to show you guys the measurements of these if you haven't seen them already i've already done the measurements on the uh the grass system here and um so you know and the measurement process does it is very time consuming because you can't just you know put it on the rig and then push a button and then off you go you it's a lot of it is ensuring that you are getting the right results and that your results agree with how you hear it subjectively because these these industry standard rigs yeah i mean they're not maybe they're not uh as good as the 5128 but they are at the standard for a reason they are predictive of sound quality and rated for accuracy up to 10k so at least they're predictive of of uh tonal balance you know at the very least we could say that so um what i'm gonna do in this video is i'm going to or in this live stream i guess is i'm going to show you guys the measurements of these each and then i'm going and i'll do i'll do one first and then the other and then i'm going to be building out an eq profile um now i've already got an eq profile built out for the xc carbon um and so for that one i'll just show you my eq profile um but and again it's not based on you know here i'm not just eq'ing it to the harmon target here i'm doing something a little differently and also with these it's it's very difficult to make your adjustments and and it's very difficult sort of like i guess make the make the adjustments that you make make sense with what you see in the measurement because they do sort of have a unique coupling to the side of the head in the sense that the pads here are a huge component of this a massive component to this for anybody who's unaware of what's going on here uh what happened is that sometime i think near the end of last year odyssey changed the pads on the lcd x and the lcd xc now they also changed something else i believe they did change the um the magnetic circuit someone could kind of correct me if i'm wrong about that but that's what it said in their post so there is some other change there as well but it might just be a change for the sake of you know the conjunction of these pads or it could just be a change because you know it's not just you change one parameter and then that means you maybe have to change another parameter right so it might be that that's going on but it might also be um you know that it was just a matter of efficiency and making it easier to produce so this is something where as far as the magnetic circuit changes that are involved i would just rely on that post um that i i did link it the forum thread below then i also linked uh the or i haven't linked the head five thread but that's where people that's where they originally posted it but i basically cross posted that to the forum um so i will be uh yeah i guess i guess um i'll be addressing some of that and what was actually changed um as well but there are also things that i uh your guess is as good as mine um specifically what that actual magnetic circuit change is because that is also news to me um but yeah so without further ado let me i'll show you guys the uh the measurements here marius thank you uh good to see you again given the circumstances shot of tequila instead of coffee also new lcd x versus vc wait do you mean xc versus vc because i mean like if you're looking for a close back there is there's a massive benefit to the vc and that it is late it's more lightweight and it's more comfortable so that's a tough one and man i've been really loving my verite with my new eq on it so that's a really tough call there between the two i think it's do you want a dynamic driver presentation or do you want a planar but i do think that the lcd xc's technical performance is at least as good as the vcs so you can get a lot for your money there although that one i think yeah in both cases i would do some eq but uh not everybody's into that so okay you're late what equipment are you listening slash live testing with do you mean like like amps and stuff by the way that's another thing these lcdx and xcs they hardly take any power whatsoever you can run them off of just about anything now like that's much to you know the chagrin of audiophiles who have you know high-end amplifiers and there are amplifiers where like my kai and ih6 here can't run it off that it's too at least not the balanced output um so because it's too powerful so but anyways that you know these are very very uh easy to drive and they don't really change that much with upstream equipment like sennheiser hd650s or 600s and stuff like that or even the verite um so you get a lot of detail for you know most of that like 99 of that is just you know the headphones and then whatever as long as you have a discrete amp and dac that's like a you know even a modi magni stack would be totally fine okay uh i'm going to show you guys the uh the measurements now and i'm just going to start with the lcd x here and minimize roux here okay so this is the lcd x um frequency response here and actually i should do is i should show you guys the previous one which i don't have a good in uh representation of it relative to this target because i developed this target afterwards but this is what it used to measure like so ignore the target here but just look at the you know crazy negative ear gain going on that's how i used to measure and that wasn't average i just that represented it that way um i've now moved to this method so um you can see it's it's a massive improvement overall um there are a few things to keep in mind the first is that it does look like there's some bass roll so that's what we're going to figure out in this live stream is whether or not this bass roll-off is actually representative or if this is a measurement artifact due to the measurements being done on an ear and cheek simulator not an actual human head right because there are contours to the side of the human head that aren't reflected in a ear and cheek simulator no weird like no iron cheek simulator the the closest thing to that would be the b and k 5128 like even the hats's from b k and from gross that's the other 711 couplers are not really as accurate as a a proper human head and the closest thing to a proper like a full real human head is the bnk 5128 which is like ridiculously expensive so i don't want to like you know take anything away from the 711 couplers because that's that's also what i use here and it is an industry standard or standardized rig um and this is like what people should use even right now people should use the 711 couplers like for comparing measurements right so reading for readability's sake this is what we should be using but the limitation is that it is not like if you think about the side of a human head there's like there's tissue and bone structure here whereas and that's just not available on any you know hats or ear in cheek simulator so apart from the 5128 and even then it's like i don't know if the tissue perfectly matches um but in any case uh so the first thing is the base here's the that we're going to check out and we're going to see if that matches with um well we'll use inner mics for that um and then you know there is there is ear gain here now it's it looks like it's still a little bit subdued there in the 4k region so that's the other thing i want to test um with this and i'm gonna what i'm gonna do um if you're not familiar with measurements definitely check out that video that i did on how to read frequency response because it involves understanding the difference between raw and compensated measurements these are raw that i'm showing you here um and what i'm going to end up doing with in-ear mics is i'm going to do i'm going to show a eventually show a compensated measurement compensated against the hyphen sundara which from the whatever the current revision is the reason for doing that is i need to actually ground it to an actual headphone because this target curve hasn't been extrapolated and developed for in-ear microphones and of course you're missing a major gain factor there being the ear canal and eardrum resonances you're only getting pinna and concha interaction so so it'll look totally different so you have to run those compensator to make any sense of those um and so that's why what i'll be doing is i'll be using the the sundaras measurement on my own head as the compensation for that because at the very least i know that in this region the sendara measures quite well so we'll we'll check that um but for the rest of it it looks so much better than the original than the essay original than the one from early 2020 and late 2019 so yeah we'll go through that and then after this i'll we'll dive into some q a and and talk a little bit about these changes that have happened because i think it's worth clearing up some stuff but i'm just going to check back with the chat make sure everybody is with us here yeah if you guys are confused about anything um do let me know um but i most like we'll likely will be you know just reading the chat and checking you know as we as we go through this so uh let me uh get into the in-ear microphones and then and then eventually what we'll do here is we will uh i'll develop an eq profile for it so first thing let's check the bass response let's see if this works hey there we go okay so uh and if anybody's wondering i am using rue for the software and i don't think you guys you guys might hear the sign sweep i have the desktop audio muted but you might hear it coming through the headphones because these are open back does that's a good question does does this release devalue the 2020 version of the x um yes and no um if you eq it not really i mean the question about value and like if you're going to resell it then the answer is yes because most people would probably prefer this one over the 2020 version right but as far as the value to you you would effectively be able to achieve the same sound quality because they do handle eq extremely well so no okay and for this test i'm actually taking the glasses off oh one other thing i'm going to i'm going to test during this stream is where the resonance frequency is with this i have already done that test but i'm curious to do it again um because uh that is one of the parameters like where the the resonance drop-off is is one of the more interesting parameters that if you think about like the dca headphones i saw somebody mention it in the chat there they the dca headphones um sound super dead in the sense that they have no macro dynamics now these the audizies do have decent pretty good macro dynamics right the full-size odds these so uh the question in my mind is that one unique characteristic about the measured behavior of the dca headphones when you introduce an air gap is whether or not that's not present here because if if that's the case then that's an indicator that maybe we should be looking at where the resonance frequency is to at least give some indication of of slam or at least a a measured indication i don't think we're there yet i don't think we can look at where that is and go okay this is going to have this won't but it's a possibility and that's one i want to explore uh where can one buy one of these microphones and how expensive are they i'm not i don't remember how expensive they were in in the hundred dollars not the ranges not thousands um and i had these custom made so you'd have to talk to somebody to make them uh or maybe um maybe you can buy them i'm not sure but i had these ones custom made am i talking my preferences or harmon profile so harman profile is predictive of what most people prefer so it's not about my preferences here i have my like my preferences are at least above 1k are pretty close to harmon um but i like you know i do still deviate to a certain extent there um so and especially in the the lower mids and you know that range i kind of deviate as well but um yeah so for the in-ear mics we're not going to be using harmon here um we're going to be using the hi-fi man sundara which is basically harmon at least above 1k that's really what we're looking at and actually for this one specific test i guess we can maybe hear that um i won't be we're not going to be compensating we're just going to be looking at base level that's gonna be really loud this is not uh it is my the rig here that we're using here so our gross rig is uh is um calibrated um spl calibrated but in your microphones obviously i'm just using the interface okay let us give it a shot so check from 20 hertz looks like the base is actually it i mean it looks like it does drop a little bit here but not it extends further than i thought so you could probably expect a little bit of a drop there at around 30. let's try it again same thing and keep in mind that i mean there is a very thin cable going here i don't think it's going to have an impact but there's always a possibility yeah so it actually looks like there's there's more and better bass extension um like i guess i'll hold on i'll just flip it over so you guys can see what i'm looking at here so hold on let me just uh switch this up so you guys can actually see what's going on here i saw somebody asking about um oh that's huge all right there we go so i saw somebody asking about um if they're gonna be releasing a new x openback coming in april i assume you mean for odyssey i have no idea they've not told me anything i'm not um you know i'm not aware of any new uh products the only thing that i'm aware of that they released recently was the euclid but um yeah stop no okay so this is what i'm saying this is not a gross measurement okay this this is the gross measurement okay and this is i mean if you're saying this is typical odyssey this is this is pretty good for the most part except for what's going on here that's sort of the only thing that's not ideal all right whereas if you're looking at if you're looking at this this is within your microphones which completely misses the ear canal and bass and eardrum resonance so you're not going to get um so so you can't compare this to a gross measurement okay that's the thing that i was worried about right now i'm going to compensate this so give me one second here take a look at this graph again i'm going to compensate it with the sundara measurement here if i could find it there we go yeah it's spl calibrated but not within your mics because with inner mics i have to use the um i've used the interface that's that's basically where you're getting the sensitivity but on the gross rig absolutely it's calibrated so this measurement here that i'm showing that is absolutely calibrated and calibrated not not compensated all right um it's always weird when you're doing this because you have to um you have to boost the uh i'll show you guys again i'm sure you guys can see this but i'll make it smaller so that uh it doesn't yeah intrude now the last one we're gonna throw it up there so here is i'm just going to try and increase this size here this is what we could expect the relative spectral balance to b for the odyssey lcd x so this is compensated okay and so the answer is yes it is still withdrawn there in the upper mids and lower treble and elevated in the upper upper treble slightly but not actually as much as i thought and this is relative to the sundara okay so i've used the sundara's frequency response as the compensation for this so a slightly relaxed trouble presentation here is is relative to this syndara is what we can expect and and and upper mid-range as well but as we saw here right that kind of matches where this is right so remember the cinder is very close to this not exactly but it's very close so that's kind of what's what's going on here um now what i'm going to do is i'm going to try and build an eq profile for this um i'm going to say right now though like definitively this headphone is um this is eq optional the previous lcd x like the one from early 2020 or like uh late night 2019 early 2020 that one i think would be eq required whereas this one is definitely eq optional so let me um dive into equalizer apo and seeing how it remember that remembering that the sundara does at around 30 hertz also kind of like 20 maybe 30 to 40 hertz does also you know roll off just a little bit right it doesn't have the harm and base shelf what we're going to do here is we are going to boost the base at around let's let's go 120 and we're going to boost it by about 2.5 and we we're going to add a make that a low shelf filter here right um just going to turn this on for now and go negative 5.5 now the next thing we're going to look at is the mids are pretty good here so i'm going to skip most of this stuff um the sundara is also a little bit relaxed just a little bit you know in the i guess somewhere between 2.5 and 3k well maybe like around yeah right around 2.5 k so it looks like this is two so that's fine uh mainly we want to go from about 3.5 to about 7-ish i don't really want to mess too much with this because this is also where the conch interaction is and if you start messing with that you can introduce this shimmering quality which is not good so um let's let's go with 4k for now and we'll all of course revisit this and because we may need to make some other adjustments here with q values down here for anybody who's unaware this is your q value and that is how narrow or how wide your adjustments are going to be and ideally you want them to be you want to stay on the wider side unless you are very confident um in your in what you're doing because like almost i also say unless you have a measurement rig stick on the wider side and don't go above three um because you can really mess stuff up if you go above three like adding you know narrow peaks and dips and stuff and then okay so that's 4k now 6k is also a bit relaxed i'm going to throw it up at around 6.4 so 6.4 and remember as well that these do affect one another depending on how wide the q value is so it looks like our overall increase here is four which would mean that we would have to go negative four to avoid clipping but we actually need to go like more than that which is yeah 4.1 here because they do impact one another slightly so i've got a little bit more the closer they would be or the wider the q value the more they would impact one another so that doesn't really look like what we want so that means i'm going to change this to 2 and then change this to 2 and see what we get that looks a little better doesn't it maybe we can go um 6300 see and and this goes up right that's kind of what i was talking about there and because i'm also a little trouble sensitive i'm going to err on the side of caution there we go and now there is one other thing we want i want to do here you look at this this upper treble splash sizzle air stuff i think is a little high so i'm going to try and reduce that a little bit and that does come through in the in-ear mics as well so in the in-ear mics it's looking like basically 10k 11k 12k well 13 yeah so i'll hit it kind of in the middle there we'll go 11.7 and i might need to do more adjustments in here so i'll leave a little bit of room but um just just a little bit and i'm gonna go 3.5 here just because as you go higher up those are just the see those adjustments will will uh token a wider range anyways so that looks kind of what i would want um but we don't know we always have to test afterwards with our ears okay now let's measure again if you're feeling a little cheated um marius just use the eq profile that i built for the previous one so that's the main point of this is that i have to now build a new eq profile for the lcd x 2021 yes it does measure better than the previous one but if if you just use the eq profile from the previous one you'll end up having it sound the same or pretty close you know within the ballpark of the eq profile that gets made for the 20 for the one that's in 2021 right that's really all that's going on there um now i need to once again find the compensation file for this there it is because we can't use raw measurements here and i'm going to adjust it up so you guys can see it and that's essentially what we did i might want to actually increase the volume here because we did reduce it by about um yeah 5.5 so all right so here's so this is looking good um the thing that that unfortunately happened is that this got this um 2.5 k region got boosted a little bit as well now again keep in mind that on the sundara that 2.5 k region is a little bit withdrawn so i'm not too worried about that the main thing is i don't want the 3.5 k region to be quite like that so i'm going to try and adjust this down a little bit 3800 and maybe see now that's looking not as good yeah we'll stick there and we may have to adjust 2.5 down a little bit maybe just 1.5 and see how that goes because this yeah if not for this this would look okay and keep in mind that little squiggliness doesn't matter like that's just not really at least for these types of measurements because we're not we're missing an entire gain factor which is even the most significant gain factor it's almost like this could have been dropped even more okay i i don't mind that it's boosted at 10k as much because on the sundar again the where the conch interaction is it's a bit shifted so and it is as well on this just we're getting a bit of a 10k gap so let's try it again if you don't eq then i don't think any i don't think autism for you okay oops need to boost thank you for forgetting to do that right that's not bad that is really not bad this is relative to the hifiman sundara okay so so looking at my eq profile i always have to listen to this and see how it sounds but this is what i did so i did one filter for the base one filter two filters for the mids one filter no two filters for the treble right not really that much adjustment not that many filters very simple i've just left it there i was initially worried that this was a measurement artifact but it's not this is actually there as at least on my head right um the bass drop off here does seem to be a bit of a measurement artifact although not that crazy like this seems accurate but the 30 hertz to 50 hertz region doesn't have this kind of drop-off going on so i think that's just a measurement artifact of ear and cheek simulators and head and torso simulators not being actual human heads so that's really all we're dealing with here okay so that is the lcd x profile let me just save this as lcd x 2021 i did one before already using just cross so i'm just gonna say in gears okay so that's that profile done and yeah the max that we got here was 4.4 so dropping it by five i could drop it by less i could drop it by five and it would be fine um now yeah again this is this is something that only applies to the 2021 versions of the lcdx if you're coming at this new i see a whole bunch more people in here so um and if i saw somebody asking earlier if the lcdx 2021 is available uh right now the answer is yes it is and so people have been buying it already for a while like i think it was yeah i think they switched it over near the end of 2020 um so yeah if you're buying one right now as long as the dealer's not you know sitting on a bunch of old stock it's the same thing that happened with the sundara and let me be clear you can buy it from anywhere you can buy directly from autozy you can you don't need to buy it specifically from one dealer i'm not right i recommend i'm not saying you know you know only one dealer has this i'm saying dealers that go through lots of stock will be on this version um and also if you're buying it directly from odyssey it will also be this version okay so that's um that's the lcd x let me now move to the lcd xc i'll do the same thing for that one um but and then afterwards we'll do some q a yeah i could do some music test but the music test you won't be able to hear it so i will double check that this sounds good [Laughter] because that is something that you always need to do and what i'm going to listen to i have to mute myself here you guys won't be able to hear it yeah sounds fine um again this eq is not essential not at all essential um so i can describe the the difference i guess sort of what happens here right so when you apply this to this right um it fills in this section here and because you you know it's boosted by yeah like around 5 db in that whole range right and this just gives a little bit more clarity there to you know this trailing ends of piano tones and acoustic instruments and things like that um you know if if it didn't have this bump the ear gain going on here at all like the previous ones it would have been super muffled right but because it has this this ear gain bump to a certain extent um and it's balanced out by where the trouble comes in as well it's not the end of the world that you know the upper mid-lower trouble region is a bit more relaxed so in some ways if you listen to a lot of music with like electric guitars you may actually prefer the relaxed region up here um and the whole thing it doesn't sound dark it doesn't sound muted or muffled whatsoever even without eq you know like the previous one did so that's the real advantage here um but then with this eq it fills in that range so that you know you get a lot more clarity there for certain instrument tones again trailing into pianos is a good indicator for this um i i do think you know there are recordings that are especially again in the you know rock and metal and hard rock and that kind of stuff where if you fill it in it would be less desirable because it might be a little bit more you know a little too clear there but you might not want that much of your game but so yeah i think this is 100 an improvement um and it's really just uh yeah um it just adds clarity so let's move on to the xc and i've got that saved let me just go back to hold on i'll just go back to the equalizer default here and then we'll build out the profile for that i was going to do actually like um oh you guys can hear the cops yeah i was going to do um [Music] a separate video on each of these and i might still um certainly on the xc i want to do a video xc carbon um and boy i'll do a full review of the new lcd x but um you know i figured i might as well just do this live because i'm gonna do this testing anyways so okay careful not to drop them switch it out but he was wondering what what amplifier i'm using right now it is the rebel amp oh come on by the way odyssey cables are still the best in the business okay so nothing for eq here we get rid of that and pull up the xc pretty interesting eh this is the most non-odyssey unlike odyssey tuning that i've ever seen um so let me first i guess talk a little bit about what's changed with the xc as well so just like with the x they did change the pads here from the memory foam stuff that they're using in the past um at least i think it was memory foam people were talking about that not 100 sure that it actually was um or you know what that material was but a lot of people are saying memory foam so i'm going with that as well um but so that's the first thing that they changed but then they also made at least compared to the previous one that i had they made it lighter by quite a bit so this one weighs i weighed it recently on the scale here this one weighs 670 grams like just 671 grams the previous one was like over 750 grams so that's a big deal and um so my guess maybe what they did with the magnetic circuit change maybe that was also in an effort to reduce the weight um and if anybody's wondering as well about the technical performance differences i i don't notice any um i'd have to have an old lcdx side by side with the new one but the other thing is the tuning differences are so like it's so dramatic that at least on the lcd x that um yeah i don't think like i don't think there'd be any change in the technical performance that would override the massive differences in the tuning so i think that's that's really you know it's much more about that um but to my ear at least for memory i don't think this there's any difference as far as like the you know the detail and the slam and all that stuff um by the way yes the lcd xcs somebody asked me about it the xc does slam a little harder than the um x but this is a closed back headphone so there are some i i feel like there are some advantages to that but also it elevates in the base a little more so um the main thing here is that the upper mids is like way higher than the base so it's pretty interesting so get quite a bit of distance here between upper mids and lower mids but actually let me um just in in this case for the lcd xc the the frequency response different is difference is not as dramatic as it was between the lcx and the new 2021 lcdx um at least the the lcd xc that that i had in the past so the lcd xc that was wooden that i had um you know that's uh i can show you the fruits response for that but it's uh yeah it's different enough and this one actually takes less eq but i'd still say both of them would be eq required so let me just actually find that one here it says xc um yeah so this is the previous one right with the the wooden cups so clearly this is weirder for the frequency response but um i eq'd this one and i had it dialed in reasonably well and they do handle eq very well but you know this one is way easier to eq and dial in that's really my point i guess um but you know even the other one did have some ear game too so it's not it's not like the negative ear gain that the old the old lcd x had see right so okay let's go through this now so the main thing that i and by the way just again let me know make sure the audio is all good let me know if there's any weirdness going on there um they're clipping but the the same thing here with the lcd xc that i want to test here is the bass response um i do also have an eq profile built out for this already and i'm just curious i'm gonna run that one first and if i find there's some weirdness there that i don't like then maybe i will um you know make a new one with it in your mics but i just i'm more curious than anything else um with the bass level here same thing that you saw with the lcd-x it looks like it drops off and this once again could be a measurement artifact with the ear-in-cheek simulator with you know these massive odyssey headphones right they even when you put them on the earring cheeks so they're on the hats like they um they kind of like almost protrude past where the plate is so and they don't have the plate doesn't have you know where the bone is here so it doesn't have a chance to really contour properly to the head so really that's that's what i'm checking here within your microphones um i don't mind the forwardness here at a 1.5 around 1.5 k but um if you you know there's always a risk that this can sound a little bit honky you know bordering on shout up here which again is like the last thing you think about when you think about odyssey um and then uh this is the obvious thing to fix here between like five and six k or 5.8 k that bump is definitely audible it uh it does cause it to have a little bit of that sort of percussion compression yes it is balanced out by the also substantially elevated air region at around like 13k or wherever that is um but that's also something that i would want to reduce right so um yeah so let me just run through this and i'm going to use the in-ear microphones again the most neutral close back on the market frequency response has 80 to do with sound quality 85 i don't think i can really boil it down to a number but if i had to if i had to i would i'd say that's that's not unreasonable and by the way for anybody who's wondering this is my own this is my personal lcd xc carbon fr tells nothing about the actual fr when multiple frequencies are being played simultaneously actually it does um 100 it does um and that has to do with the fact that fr at least as far as i understand it is derived is necessarily derived from um either an fft or or something that that you could also um evaluate in fft or real-time analysis which is that in rue but um that's something that i'd need somebody else to explain because uh even for me that's like into the weeds but apparently it is 100 derived from that so frequency response actually does tell you everything about that um there would be some situations like i could see a situation where if you're like if something's wrong you know you play something in in real time analysis that where it shows up you know having an effect somewhere else on frequency response but then i think you'd probably also see that in the frequency response as well so uh yes getting into the minimum phase device minimum phase device uh question yeah so this is also the other reason why um csd and um so cumulative spectral decay or impulse response and all that stuff that's supposed to show you know like ringing um or you know uh decay residents that kind of stuff um apparently that's also it's not really giving you any new information that isn't already there in frequency response because headphones are minimum phase devices now i'm i can see the i can see the arguments from both sides right where i think there might be some wiggle room is that maybe headphones are like only mostly minimum phase devices like maybe some headphones kind of violate that rule a little bit so then you might get some stuff that shows up there in the time domain and sorry let me just kind of back up there the reason for that is because time domain information is proportional to frequency response information in minimum phase devices which is what headphones are supposed to be but again that's that last little bit there what headphones are supposed to be is where i kind of say yeah there's probably room for some you know some boundaries there and uh maybe they're not 100 perfectly minimal face devices um and so that could be why that could mean that there is something useful there but um really i'd encourage you to read what um choco mel has said on this uh you know read what shawn oliver floyd toole have said about this well mainly what floyd tula said about this um and a number of other folks as well but um yeah anyways fast fourier transforms are definitely not easy material no they are not um so yeah i just want to address that one thing there um yeah so the xc apparently as well has the new um i guess an update i don't new is probably the wrong word here but an update to the um magnetic circuit um and again i don't i don't think this constitutes entirely new drivers i think this is like an update to one component of the driver um hey stuart thank you that's for wine beer and and hot beverage uh thank you i will definitely do that it's a nice reminder it's uh it's a holiday weekend so i definitely need to do that rob thank you um are they pleasing to listen to i'm if that's your question uh yes absolutely um i love the lcdx and lcd xc like this is the thing for both of these changes and with both these headphones this is this is awesome we'll get into that shortly after i finish this and we'll do some q a but um yeah this is nothing but a good change for everything for both of them and i'm very happy that they did that okay let me now do the test close enough wait i have the supply no i didn't okay good so looks like the base drop off on this one is again not the same as what it shows on the grass graph here it's because okay so this is something that people should probably keep in mind when you're comparing measurements right uh but that are across different rigs which is essential essentially what's going on here right i'm doing measurements with inner microphones and i also have measurements done on the on the grass um the information of all the information above like 700 hertz i'm being i'm being you know conservative here all the information above 700 hertz cannot be compared all the information below in theory could but i'm really only evaluating like 300 hertz and below um and that's because uh not only is the pinna different on the gross rig from my own pinna right and all the features of the actual anthropometric ear so like this piece is actually physically different um but also when i'm doing when i'm measuring with in-ear microphones it's not taking the measurement at the eardrum reference point it's taking the measurement at the ear canal entrance reference point so we're missing the entire ear canal gain factor and drum resonance that when you measure on the grass rig it has so it won't have any of this this measure this this information here now it's interesting because there are debates as to um whether or not it's even whether whether those factors are compounding in a additive sense or compounding in a multiplicative sense and my understanding is that additive is most likely what's going on uh so you could in theory extrapolate that but just from looking at it you would never be able to compare them so um essentially we need to this is why we need to run uh compensations on in-ear microphones uh i can get rid of the lcd um x there and let's go 85 all right so interesting wait did i do that right yeah send out um so yeah i mean it does look like the base um and this is what i was talking about this is exactly what i'm talking about with the with this grass measurement here because if you think about how the sundara measures on the grass which is again i'm using the sundar as a compensation the sundara doesn't have this dip the upper mids are not as far from the lower mid so it doesn't have this contour here whatsoever it's more just like a flat line all the way across and then also this particular area right here is where it's a little bit relaxed right so using when you're using that as a compensation um that explains why this looks kind of the way that it does and again we see here that the upper mids are there's there's a more significant distance here between the upper mids and the lower mids so now let me try i i'm just more curious at this point because i have developed an eq profile for this already and i'm going to run it um where is it i think that's it let's try it and same thing this is gonna be super bass boosted um because what i did is i got it to match the harmon shelf which the centaur obviously doesn't match so did i okay by the way thank you rob um i did i did see that thank you um if you have another question feel free to hit me up all right and so eighty-five plus six so i gotta go 91. there we go that's okay close enough okay so um relative to the syndara here's here's my eq for this right and actually i should show you guys this here's the lcd xc after eq so you can see i boosted the bass to kind of match this target right this is a closed back so i felt it's fine to have this sort of contoured lower midrange and then yeah i basically just got it to match the target um reasonably well not perfectly again but close enough um in some ways this is kind of close to like a 650 even in the treble not obviously in the air that's still crazy boosted so if you want to get this then this is then sorry this is the profile that you would apply um so it's not a huge adjustments but but or not a dramatic adjustment but i i have a lot of filters on this one or i say a lot not that many but still it's multiple filters so um what i'm going to do is i'm going to create another profile here and i'm going to i guess try and um get it to be reasonably close we go and um let me just get wait so just looking at that yeah so not that crazy of an adjustment mainly just getting the upper mids and lower mids in line with one another so um what we're going to do here is again relative to the syndara which does roll off on the base a little bit i'm going to boost the subbase by 2 db and we're going to fill in whatever's going on here 320 boosting that by about 3 and we'll go pretty narrow on that 3.5 and i'm almost tempted to go more was that 90 89 to 93 yeah should be at least four um and then hmm how should we handle the upper mids because the problem here is not that it has ear gain or that the upper mids are you know as high as they are that's actually good a good thing hmm oh wait sorry this is this is let me wait did i do this right yeah it is compensated yeah so another way to achieve this would be to actually just boost the entire lower mids but for the moment let me just reduce these so we're at 1.89 and yeah i think maybe 2.5 here we'll adjust that again later and then what is this here this is three right at 3k hmm it's interesting that see that the yeah okay no it does show up there um hmm almost like that peak shifted either lower or higher up interesting oops okay or is it 3k and we'll reduce that as well by two we're just going to drop that whole region a little bit just to get everything a little bit more in line and then this resonance here could probably well i'll i'll leave it for now because that stuff's like you know super up in the trouble so let's try it yeah now compensate it oops that's too high all right that's a little more in line that's ballpark still that resonance peak is way up there see the nice thing about this too is that like while let me just try this again it's going to say you know with the gross rigs they're rated for accuracy up to 10k but then they do show information above 10k but they you know we don't know 100 the peaks that that show up there the information that's just up there is where it actually is and when using in your microphones at the very least it makes that region more readable so we drop 13.91 by a little bit here and normally this is something i wouldn't advocate for like i wouldn't say you should do this because there's going to be a really narrow uh peak here and again this is using the sundara as a compensation right so with sundara we don't know if there's a null there right if there's null there then that's going to exacerbate this right so that's why like you can't like this is not as good as using a grass system right the gross systems are better this is just to test for base level mostly right so i'm creating two eq profiles here let's see which one i like better oh and of course i need to reduce this uh and then yeah i'll in my full you know video review of both of them or videos about both of them i will be making a decision as to which one i prefer so i'm gonna go five there drop that by a bit okay let's try this again so there this time i can go 91. there we go yeah drop that a little bit so yeah i mean again relative to the syndara i think this is fine remember cinderella rolls off in the base so we want a little bit more bass i think we could go even more bass there sandara has a little is a little relaxed between 2.5 and 3k so it's a little more energy here the interesting thing to me is this that shows up there and also here hmm yeah interesting and looking at this it shows up lower so i mean the other thing here that could be going on is that it's a unique coupling interaction with my head that uh both with the sundara and this because remember the sundara is not a it's it's it's a headphone right it's a and this frequency response is is from that headphone on my head so it's not a target curve so there might be some unique interaction going on there um that is causing that so i'll need to i'll need to test and see um because when you when you have the eq off you definitely hear the 5.8 peak so that is definitely there but in any case let me just do some music testing um oh there it is yeah so there's definitely some weird interaction going on there um with my head here so i'm almost willing to say that this one i mean it's definitely more accurate but um because this is a raw graph and the other one's compensated right so that's why that's confusing that's a perfect example of why raw graphs are always more useful but at the very least when looking at this one sorry let's start it up again here at the very least we can see that which hold on is this compensated let's double check i think it is yes it is so at the very least um the base roll off that you see here is not actually like that when it's worn on the head at least my head maybe you have a head that's different but um yeah this is this like basically the information here is more representative in let's say well let's say below 200 hertz um and uh [Music] yeah let's just let me just double check that because i only did i realized i only did one seating or one measurement of this so let me double check take this off and you know if we clear the calibration here as well we'll see that on number five wait number six yeah we'll see that the base is going to go down here wait what yeah the bass went down so um that's sort of what i would expect i guess something like that i had this on yeah so it does it does drop a little bit but not as much as it shows on the gross rig yeah at around 30 hertz is where you actually start to see the drop off but the overall elevation for them like even for most of the sub base is still higher than that of the sundara so yeah okay now i'm going to switch it over here to hold on a second put my glasses back on now i can actually see what i'm doing all right so um i've now got two eq profiles built out um where is everybody here and uh yeah now let's do some i guess let's just do some questions about the xc and about the x and um if you guys have any questions feel free to ask them what i've done um is i've got two eq profiles built out i'm going to be going back and forth seeing for each of them now i'll be going back and forth and seeing which one i prefer whether it was you know within your mics was better or whether with the you know using the gross rig and adjustments there was better um my instinct right now is to say that with the the all the stuff that exists in the mids and treble um and all the adjustments that i made there were probably more accurate on the gross rig on the xc just with that like 5.8 k peak there because that's definitely audible but apart from that in both cases these are massive improvements i'm just going to get rid of the in your microphone because that feels weird feel free to um i guess yeah drop your questions in there and we'll i'll be getting to them as i see them some really interesting discussion going on here um i guess before doing that i should also mention that um people are kind of like down on odyssey for um you know this change and it and i get it but i also think like you have to like the the issue isn't that they released the new 2021 you know update it's that they released that one from 2020 with the lcd x uh in the first place like that earlier one that had the really ridiculous uh you know measuring uh results i think that's the bigger issue than um you know them updating anything and for whatever reason people don't like i mean i get it because if you bought something and then they change it and they really something better it's like oh man you know i could have spent that same money if i just waited but i i really think it's like that with literally everything and for that reason i think what odyssey should do is just release these headphones with model year names attached that way you know whether or not yours is a 2020 version or 2021 or 2019 or 2022 and then you know you can have different you know measurements showing up here there because i was saying this in the in the head five thread as well every manufacturer goes through revisions and updates and changes with certain materials whether it's a supplier-based issue or just a manufacturing process change you know you've seen this you've seen this with mainstream brands as well like audio technica bear dynamic and sennheiser and focal and you know so it's a very common thing to have happen the difference is with hifiman as well i mean sundara revision right i mean i i i'm intimately familiar with what was changed there and same thing with the uh the aria as well so you know the difference as i see it is that in this case and to a certain extent with sundara as well but with the odyssey lcd x and xc more so the x the change was so dramatic that it it would warrant almost like i don't know it would warrant some sort of like version 2 or se or something like that in my mind um but again if they went with the model years approach they could just make revisions to their heart's content and then you know or you know use different suppliers or whatever and then nobody would have that any issues with that it's more so that you know people didn't know um i think that's really the the concern so i'm going to jump into the discussion here i see a lot of interesting stuff going on here in the discussion are any other odysseys getting revisions um so this is something that i'm not aware of but um at least as far as the i i would assume that there's no changes to the other odysseys as far as the magnetic circuit or circuit design anything to do with drivers i think if anything the differences would have to do with the pads and if that's the if that's the case i think most of the tuning change if not all of it is is you know the result of the pads um and so i don't know if if that's happening uh if they're getting you know those updates for the other ones but i would i would certainly hope so um because especially with the odyssey lcd4 um i know the lcd2 didn't measure that great either with the previous one with the memory foam pads but the lcd4 was particularly weird um with that same pad uh and so i really hope that uh they did that the nice thing though about the lcd4 is that i don't think there's that many of them out there in the wild that have that old pad because the lcd4 is such a high priced item not like the lcd x's where a lot of people bought them right um now again if you if you own an lcd x and you're and you're wondering you know how do i get it to sound like this again i i implore you to get into eq with that yes so you don't have to spend any money um because i know there's a lot of people who are just like i don't ever eq but you know their profiles built out i built one out you know so it's very easy to do and um you know even with this one sorry the the other lcb lcd x even with this one i you know personally i would still eq that you know um now again i sorry you guys can't see it right uh okay well you know what i mean even with the lcd x i would personally eq it just it doesn't require it the same way that the older version does so is the new revision lcd x worth the 200 premium over the lcd2 yes it is oh some some controversy going on here uh cable make makes a difference as well if it's three cables or four cables what any other odysseys get yeah okay you go through that um did the lcd mx4 get the same revision again this is something that you're gonna have to ask odyssey about because i don't have an mx4 and i didn't even have a previous one i never evaluated that headphone how do the new ear pads feel with glasses okay so actually that's a good question in general the way that the new ear pads feel is um it's interesting it they feel much more cushiony like the okay this is the zmf pad i'm holding up here the older ones they were they felt this when you did this on them they felt stiffer and it felt like like springier in a way these ones feel like you know when you push it in like yeah in general like get the positioning well they conform more to to your head it feels like so in that to answer your question with glasses these ones do very well i think better than the previous ones uh just catching up there's still the human element everything from harman fr to equal loudness curves fletcher munson i imagine uh comes from average of lots of people not from everybody what are you suggesting with that though i think a lot of people a lot of people make claims about the harmon target curve i've seen peop i've seen people make claims with a harmonic curve that are incorrect because they assumed something that i think is very easy to assume that it is just a average of people um and that's like they just that people just like you know adjusted whatever they wanted and that's they took the average of that um that's not really what happened um what happened was they had they had a very specific starting point which was uh flat measuring speakers in an anechoic chamber and because if you put those speakers into a good room um you're going to end up getting a different frequency response it's going to be a little bit more downward tilted there so if you imagine what that that measurement would be at the eardrum that was the starting point now then then what happened there was um harman research applied sean olive's target curve i think that he did in 2009 someone corrected him wrong on that um to that and then proved that uh people preferred that curve overwhelmingly you know preferred that curve over any of the other targets that existed including free field and diffuse field um and the the headphones default frequency response i did a whole video on the harmon target it's worth watching if especially if you have like assumptions about the harm and target because i had those same assumptions before actually reading the research so yeah if you can't if you don't want to read the research that video is i guess a basic overview but the research is is worth reading um as well so while i cr i'm critical of the harmon target in some aspects um it's it's a much better target curve than anything else that we have um so and and like what i would criticize the harmon target is i don't like the well first the 2018 base level is ridiculous um but that's also because of all the canadians if you look at the segmentation and the the demograph or the yeah the segmentation data but also yeah i generally don't like the this dip here at around 200 hertz i think it's fine if it's more of like a you know filled in but then also i think it rolls off in the treble a little bit so what would be a reasonable step down from the lcd x for critical listening why would you want to go down reasonable step down like in terms of how much it costs a step down from the lcdx well lcd2 um i was just trying okay yeah you guys are getting into it um is the lcgx again i don't know about any of the other odysseys i know that well apparently it's the pads that make most of the difference so anything that's getting a pad update should have a better frequency response there but what i love about this is that odyssey is definitely paying attention to measurements and they you know i mean they've probably paid attention to them in the past but i think they're really you know they're focusing on it more than that more i guess scooped out upper mid-range section that they used to have and it's nice to see them i guess returning to this if anything that's more of the way i'm looking at it is they're returning to this and in many ways though now for people who are buying new aussie lcd x's in fact new over your like like full size audi's in general for for whatever for whatever ones that had the pad update this just kind of invalidates many of the existing reviews that are out there about those headphones because that's no longer representative of what people will be buying today that's the interesting thing about it and in as a reviewer that's another reason why i want them to just come out with model years and just like lean into it hard and say yeah we make revisions every year and it's to try and improve the product the same way that you know when new cars come out there's a you know it's a model year thing right um and then people can buy based on the year and then you know it makes it so that when you're reading a review of it or you're looking at measurements of it when they publish when you publish the year for that which is what i should probably do anyways i mean i have it here um you can't see it but i have it you know showing 2021 but people should probably just you know say which version it is that they have so that they know that it's representative um how would the dakone suedes affect the sound i'm not sure i need to check that out at some point what do i use for eq i use equalizer apo but you can also use roon roon is my preferred tool for it just because the visual interface is better but the nice thing about eq apo is that it affects the entire audio output stack whereas roon does not it's just the stuff in roon um you guys talking about cables yeah i've never heard a difference in cables oh thank you very much for the five dollars i'm sorry i don't know how to say that uh that name uh what is the lcd uh lcdx bass response feel like uh i guess my question is can you feel the bass instead of hear the bass or planar headphone yeah so both the lcd-x and the xc um have better dynamics than what you get with like the dca headphones or like the hyphen nanda and aria but that is that is a trend with modern planar magnetic headphones is that you don't get that sort of physical sense of impact the way that you do with um you know electrodynamic or moving coil headphones so um and and it's it's a little bit baffling as to why because it's not measured bass response it's it's not at all um because even on the dca headphones when you eq them up like crazy in the bass they still sound super dead so oh yeah that was one other thing i wanted to test was the um was the air gap behavior i might actually actually just have to do that after the stream here because we're already into the q a session i don't how much people really care about that but that could be another parameter is um you know the resonance frequency when you do the air gap measurements but yes um to answer your question they do have a better sense of base impact more so on the xc than the x i find but um much better than um you know typical modern planar magnetics but um i would contrast that with you know still not as good as open back dynamic driver headphones or well closed back as well that punch really hard like the focals like the focal clear punches harder than than the than this even right um so if you're really looking for macrodynamics i would say go with the focal what about rune odyssey profiles yeah so when this gets released that i mean i i still think that like as much as i like reveal plus because they have you know changed the or they've made revisions so many revisions it's impossible those always have to be more conservative than would be ideal because how do you create a eq profile for all of the different headphones especially when there are revisions that are that you know drastic but yet again this this this is another thing that just points to it being such a good idea to have model years so that you could then build those model years into your reveal plus you know profiles so no i wouldn't use the odyssey rune profiles um no but i mean you could try it by all means if you like it but um yeah that's not something uh i recommend um let's see people are worried about individual hearing differences if the headphone measures flat compensated on any given rig then it should roughly measure flat to your ears depends what the compensation is like if you compensate it what that okay if you compensate it with a diffuse field target that won't sound flat to anybody's ears so it all depends on the compensation um but actually the individual hearing differences thing is also a bit of a red herring because in theory there should be quite a bit more agreement um between peop how people hear things because if you think about like the reason why let me just actually switch to hold on okay i should leave it here like this because it's easier so if you think about the reason why ear gain is essential right it's because this is where our ears are amplifying certain frequencies right so like generally here is where the pinna gain is and then the overall level is largely due to the ear canal and then this is where your concha is right so that's why it dips there so and that's that little part uh like this little part in here right so the ears amplifying certain frequencies and our brains are correcting for the amplification that our ears impart this means that if you had something that perfectly matched what your ear like measured at the eardrum if it perfectly matched what the brain expect it would expect to hear it would be elevated here right you would see that elevation um so everybody's going to have a unique ear everybody's outer and you know ear canal pin and ear canal and so the thinking might be that this would mean that people would hear to actually hear things differently but that's not really the case at least for most people i think there are going to be i think there's probably limits and thresholds to this but because the brain is already correcting for you know the gain factors that our ears are imparting um that means that for every unique pinna and ear canal you're also going to have a unique normalization from the brain the brain is going to be normalizing that regardless and so that's why you know it doesn't really matter that people have different ears now again i think that that's i say in theory there because i think there are going to be cases especially to the extremes where you know sound waves take a totally different path to the eardrum and then you get totally different gain factors um and i think this at the in the fringes and the edges i do think that um probably accounts for some of the differences in impressions but what i think is more likely is like for the reason why people have different impressions is more to do with expectations and understanding of what stuff should sound like um and if you so for example if your expectation is that something is going and then like what you like what your i guess like preference is a bit of a it's a bit of a cop out but like and that's why i say expectations because if you expect neutral to be diffuse field anything with a bass with anything that measures flat in the bass is gonna sound boosted to you and then you report that it sounds bass boosted but if you expect it to be harmon um then a flat you know flat in the bass is not going to be enough bass so really i think that's more where that um question comes into into play um and that accounts for the differences how oh thank you michael um how is the lcdx soundstage versus lcd2 they're basically the same as far as i can tell um i mean yeah they have very similar design i don't i don't hear the advantage of like some of the hifiman stuff that has the massive diaphragms um and the huge you know cups um those have better sound stage uh than these but across you know between the lcd-x and the lcd2 the sound stage is decent it's not great but also not bad um i hope that answers your question um and the very incisive and precise for the imaging i wouldn't say the most even or accurate necessarily planars generally aren't as good as some dynamics but um yeah very uh distinct uh ryan thank you very much don't have a question just saying thanks for all the reviews and content you're very welcome i'm glad you appreciate it i hope i just hope i hope this stuff is useful to you guys that's the whole point i'm wondering how you how these new revisions would affect your close-back recommendations yeah so i mean i think it depends if you want a dynamic driver presentation or a printer presentation but for technical performance this is up there with the best that i've ever heard the lcd xc and then eq'd like dialed in it's one of the best experiences you can have the my complaint with this is that it's still 670 grams whereas the uh the vc and the stelia are both like half no not half that but it's a lot less so they're in the 450 gram range so considerably lighter which is nice did i miss any of the i want to make sure i didn't miss anything how much more sensitive is the lcx than the lcd2 f i assume you mean f that's more sensitive uh yeah noticeably i like um in the lcd2 fk here's the thing most amps that are even like inexpensive can drive an lcd 2f you know it's not like an lcd4 but um and so if you can drive an lcd to f you can drive an lcd x um so i'm not really sure that i don't know what if that would influence whether or not you should exchange it exchange it exchange it like yeah i i don't know if that's really something that's worth considering there the main advantage of the lcd-2f over the lcd x is the weight you know lcd2f i could get through a whole day no problem lcd x is pushing it but yeah the lcd x is definitely more detailed lcd2 classic is nowhere near as good as the lcdx for uh detail lcd2 classic is not even as good as the lcd2f okay let's see you need a perfect adc that can measure multiple frequencies played back simultaneously you you can do that it's not about the well multiple frequencies being played simultaneously yeah you're talking about an fft or real-time analysis right if you this is actually what jude does to ensure um coupling consistency as far as i understand like to ensure that there's symmetry for how he's measuring both sides left and right and so he basically does a low res um fft i think and that gives him an indication a picture of what the frequency response is so that'll help him adjust that which is ideal i wish i could do that with but i only have i only have one and i also don't have an audio precision does the lcdx come with a personalized measurement of that unit when you purchase one new i don't think so someone can correct me if i'm wrong about that one this i didn't notice one with lcd xc but the the lcd x over there was one that was sent to me by odyssey this one was it's my well they're both sent by odyssey i guess obviously but this one is my own personal unit does this revision mean eq is no longer necessary yep but it is it is still optional and still something that you know i i do recommend and i i do so um yeah eq you know to your preference and uh yeah use the profile that i built out there how's the comfort of the new pads compared to the old ones i think the new ones are more comfortable because they and then it's also lighter in both cases they're lighter is an eq'd old revision at x equal to a new x sonically um yeah you'd be able to get them to the same level yeah but you know within you know ballpark because it's there's always going to be some room for variation because the pads are huge but yeah in theory um you'd be able to get the same kind of sound of the old one just use that eq profile that i built out uh like a long time ago i keep i keep my cables in a freezer for 24 hours cryo before listening just yeah yeah if anybody wants to really level up their uh no don't do that yeah no cables don't they don't make a difference they're i mean yes they make a difference in the sense of they're they are more convenient if you get a nicer one or you know they look nicer or you know like i love the ergonomics of these odyssey ones they're not microphonic either they also make a difference if you're comparing interconnects like interconnects make more of a difference than you know these types of cables do because with interconnects you may run into issues where there's some issue going on there's a problem with the shielding or something like that or i've had um usb cables where the connectors were dirty and essentially i mean i you know classified that as just broken at that point um and that introduced you know some some artifact you know issues like very obviously you know very obvious issues um so i think if in that sense having good quality interconnect cables like between your dac and your amp um especially if there's if you're using a tube amp you do want to use shielded interconnect cables but they're not expensive they're like 30 bucks 20 bucks you know you can get blue jean cable that's shielded so yeah i really don't i don't know if i would say you need to go out and buy you know ridiculously expensive cables i just don't think that's it you know and even if you think it does make a difference right because there are a lot of people who who do this is an interesting point actually about psychoacoustics if you think that it's making a difference and you're and it's causing you to pay more attention the question is more of a philosophical one there at that point where it's you know does it actually sound better to that person and i can see an argument saying you know that even though it doesn't change anything acoustically that yes it does actually sound better to the person who you know uh thinks it does because they're paying attention to things so much about what's what sounds good and an experience you know expressing an experience or you know um trying to communicate that um is anchored to what people paid attention to when they were evaluating and you could listen to really high-end headphones like these just as background you know music and just like not pay attention to music at all and you're really not going to be thinking about you know the differences in in technical performance or frequency response or anything else um so a lot of it is attention and if cables make you pay more attention then great excuse thank you if you could only have four headphones in your personal collection and pretend you have none now a 3k budget or cheaper for each which a 3k budget for each or 3k budget total which ones would you get and complement each other for and cover all music uh good i mean four is a is a very specific question or a specific number uh let's see a 3k budget if we're talking about like each like in total of 3k budget i would go with probably an lcd xc and then eq it just slightly uh then probably so that's like like 1200 then maybe a see four headphones is tough at that budget because i think like my advice is to spend that entire 3k on one headphone or get an lcd xc and then spend the rest on one other headphone that's sort of what i would do um yeah now if we're talking about so then those would be the lcd xc for close back and then for open backup i'd maybe go with like a hd800s or focal clear or yeah something like that um and then if if it's 3k budget for each of them oh oh i see a cheaper for each i see gotcha um in that case that becomes more challenging for close back it would be either is mf vertex closed or lcd xc uh depending on the weight constraints like if you can handle a heavy headphone um but getting the lcd xc does save you a lot of money and i mean if you're it's so interesting because like the lcd xc and the lcd x if i'm comparing them directly to the verite because i have the verite here uh but it's my variety for micro detail and microdynamics and like the trailing ends of tones i i think they're very close if i if i had to give an advantage it would be just slightly to the to the verite just for trailing ends of tones only microdynamics for instrument separation i think these do better so it's such a tough choice there but obviously the verite is way more um way more comfortable because it's way lighter um and also the verite pair is better with two bamps so that's really kind of what i would what i ended up doing hey hey marcelo thanks for stopping by man good to see you i hope your stream went well i hope that was and i apologize for initially scheduling this at around the same time because i just i totally it didn't show up in my youtube recommendations so i didn't even see that it was that you were doing it so it was not intentional solution to lcdxc wait it's get buff yeah sorry okay getting back onto this uh this question here so that would be one of them either vc vc or um or lcxc uh the other one would be um yeah i'd probably have an hd800s in there just because you got to do something to get you know uh yeah it does one thing extremely well in that sound stage it does detail well as well and it's also really light so yeah that would be up there um a third one something from focal for that punch uh i mean it's tough because 3k i mean could you stretch it to 4k because then i'd say focal utopia utopia is still just such a fantastic headphone um otherwise if you can't stretch it then yeah clear but i mean i would go i would try and get a utopia because that's pretty close and then um maybe for the last one a head audio headphone for just something totally different uh for the presentation um yeah that's i i think that's what i would do um now though personally if i had all that money i would just buy a swara and then um for one headphone and then for the other one i don't know i get a vc or something like that because you got like i like the idea of having one planar and one dynamic you know one that works great with tubes and another one that works great with like you know salt really powerful solid state amplifiers that's really what i'm what i'm into lcd xc compared to ether 1.1 c flow again like the downside with the dca stuff is that the dynam has nothing for dynamics so i mean the advantage is that they're lighter and more comfortable although that one did have a little bit of clamp force that i wasn't too into um i did i have heard it um but uh yeah no the lcxc is absolutely more detailed as well so it's it's it's it's not close on the technical performance side of things but where what what shows up there is it is a pretty significant tradeoff for you know comfort and usability for long listening sessions so but really i think the best dca headphone that i evaluated was the aeon 2 noir with perforated pads it's the same it has the same drawbacks of b have no macro dynamics but still the tuning was pretty good there the detail was good the image separation was good so and the you know form factor comfort were great as well so yeah when will you review the lcd xc the new ones comparison to be really nice to zmf and dc dca i think oh dan clark yeah uh well i mean that's kind of what this live stream is about but um yeah i i'll i'll need to do a video on these next week i'm pretty sure um so i'm gonna i'm gonna let you guys in on a secret here okay and it's a big deal and only you guys know about this so far [Laughter] and uh you know how we do like giveaways every month on this channel which by the way if you're not subscribed already subscribe so you can win in the giveaway uh well this month's giveaway is going to be an lcdx the new one of the new ones so um if you want to sign up for it i've seen a few people sign up already but we haven't made an official announcement for that yet but we will be doing it um next week it just sort of it was the easter weekend kind of just threw a wrench into the plans a little bit um for getting that out there but yeah so we'll be doing a giveaway uh this month for the lcd x and i'll do a video on the differences between the the update essentially and in a more condensed fashion for what we talked about here but essentially you have all the information that i will be talking about in that in those videos um and um yeah if you guys want to sign up for that giveaway um the link is already there or the the not the link but the page is already up so it's headphones.com pages slash giveaways and um the uh yeah the form is already is already available all right let's uh i'll i'll do another 15 minutes here and then uh and then call it so yeah more questions let's go who here has one headphone seven headphones did obviously change their pads seems like they have less cushion that's what that's what this has been all about yes yes they have did the lcd xc isolate well not as well as the um aeon ii noir and not as well as the celestia either um or the radiance but better than the hd820 and so yeah i'd say it's somewhere middle of the road as far as isolation goes it isolates well enough for my situation where you know i i don't i don't live alone and nobody can hear you know when i'm listening to my to my you know ridiculous black metal now i'm my serious audiophile music um i'll see xc ananda og clear for 990. oh oh g clear for 90. well xe is closed back the xc it's it's been possibly my favorite headphone experience in the sense that it's a close back there are real advantages to it like just i know crin hates closed backs all closed backs so uh and to a certain extent i agree there are limitations there but the advantage of a closed back is that you don't hear you don't get the intrusions um all the time now personally i prefer open back but i still think that you know this with eq is just like on another level for the experience and the remember headphones it's a very personal experience it's a more you know isolated experience compared to speakers at least and for that the advantages of the closeback really do resonate with me you could replace all those uh i know what those four i don't know what sota choices are but i like the gl 2000 suggestion no the gel 2000 i i i think it's just it's one of those things where if people don't know what stuff's supposed to sound like or they don't have a reference point then something like that can actually sound really exciting because it has this extra upper treble air that enhances the perception of detail and so if somebody's like for example if you're if you're not sensitive to the percussion compression issues um that show up there with that headphone that dms also noticed i i mean it's compression 5k compression um but i call it percussion compression because i notice it most strongly on like you know snare drum hits simple hits and stuff like that where basically the the resonant harmonics are out of balance there if somebody isn't sensitive to that at all because they don't have that as the reference point for real life then you know they're not gonna be bothered by it that's not a bad thing at all i think it's totally fine like you know that could even potentially sound pleasant to somebody but um no i i don't think uh the gl2000 is a particularly good headphone uh before eq after eq it sounded like a you know slightly more uh depth focused syndara which is great getting into lots of questions here it's awesome um hey what's up sheldon good to see you do you think that if dca puts out an ether three it'll be any good they seem to be making some improvement with the a online but the ether lines being dormant for quite some time yeah yeah i want them to i want them to succeed because i like their they have really interesting designs like they're the physical mechanical design is really interesting um but the ether i i need to still hear the ether ii with the different pads but i also think fundamentally they need to change their approach to their planar diaphragm designs and just their whole designs and like all their what they're doing i don't think they're going to be able to achieve you know the you know the the macro dynamics that people want with their current design philosophy but you know i think it's one of those questions of you know when push comes to shove also you know what's weird is some people don't even hear that at all like they don't notice or care about the lack of dynamics like if you look at like the stuff that um amir from asr recommends all the time all of it is dca stuff so and all of them are super dead sounding so i just like some people are just not discerning for that quality and other people are really discerning for it like for me it matters a little bit it doesn't matter as like that much but it does matter um and for somebody like max settings that he cares about that like on an equal level with detail so whereas like you know metal 571 and android and myself you know we definitely care about detail more than that and other people don't care about any of those they just care about timbre their timber heads and they only listen to the hd580 so so yeah um if i buy a special edition of an ether flow will dc personally come and punch me to make up for it yes oh god utopia on top of the line two bamp versus saswara says vara the detail on this as far as just like on another level like yes the utopia the utopia i would even argue punches harder but man that the safari is next level headphone is probably my end game it would well i could see it being an end game for somebody just make sure you have a lot of power in your amplifier high current is what you want there really high current um similar to what you get with the planar like the inefficient planars um but yeah the weight on the headphone is the only issue for me with that one and there's some weird feature down in the like lower mids with that one but um not on all because the the one that i value didn't have that problem so i don't know uh let's see i haven't heard the lci4 not yet just mounted in the ceiling i need to catch up here guys any competition to the xc under 2000 no so auto z isn't the odyssey headphones are not super competitive when it comes to frequency response but they are hyper competitive for technical performance um for the 2f not the c lcd x lcd xz and lcd4 i haven't heard the three though well not i heard it like a long like years ago but so i don't know what the what's going on with the c right now or with the business three but um the like i guess the mainstay um well-known um lcd full-sized lcds have insane technical performance that outclasses pretty much everything else in their price brackets but they don't always achieve that that same kind of level of competition or competitiveness with their tunings as is evidenced by this whole conversation but that's also why i think you know the people who are getting into this stuff it really does benefit you to learn how to eq um and um and actually the reason for this is often missed i think is that headphone design involves trade-offs and odyssey has almost well not in every case but traditionally they've leaned hard into they've aired on the side of not um designing for frequency response you know for good measurements they're designing much more for um you know technical performance and so for example you would be probably be able to get the free this frequency response to even more closely match this target by using some sort of acoustic treatment that may have the negative consequence of blunting the detail in certain ways or blunting the dynamics in certain ways and i think odyssey doesn't want to do that that's just my suspicion and so because of that this is like kind of the best of both worlds you're getting the probably the best technical performance for the price at all of those intervals lcd 2f lcd x lcd xc and lc4 um just with you being the one who has to do the eq usually less so now with these this revision but uh yeah does resolve listen to baby metal not if i don't have to are the focalisa better than the sundara no well it's an open back headphone syndara the legion is closed back so no there's always a caveat of for a close back right oh there's lot lots of chatter about the lots of folks chatting about the dc headphones oh dennen ahd9200 or autistic xc for metal music easily the xc for metal but again eq it please like boost the bass on that on the xc um and then drop the just wait i'll have the profile posted up on the forum but um yeah for metal because it is so much stuff going on in the in the recordings it's all like complex is the wrong term here because not all metal is complex but there's lots going on and in order to get perfect like better clarity for all the different pieces that are going on these high performance planars are always going to give you a better sense of image clarity and distinction and decisiveness than similarly priced dynamic driver headphones um so you just get a better overall sense of clarity there so i do recommend it control during busy passages is what i've called it before how does xc compare to the stelia yeah i give the technical performance edge to the well it's it's just planar versus dynamic and in a way but i would almost give the detail edge to the xc closed versus open planner versus dynamic there are a lot of differences solution buy both yes well i mean i i got to caveat that a little bit i think if you're gonna buy a high-end headphone it's generally better to go for the open backs than close backs because as everybody's pointed out and and you know correctly i think there are many limitations to close backs but the traditional use of headphones would have been you know to isolate you from you know when you are not in an environment where speakers are you know usable so um yeah in that sense i there and there are also some counter examples like where the close backs are better than the open backs so like i think the vc is probably better than the vo yeah steli is solid good good performance there it's nice because it's also really comfortable i have one here actually it's uh yeah i like it um what's the most comfortable headphone for long listening sessions still probably the audioquest night night owl or nighthawk i also really like the the the verite with the um suede name the ve2 suedes also hd800s super lightweight how does the revised lcd x now compared to the ross and rad zero well quite a bit closer actually um so the weirdly the lcd-x actually has more ear gain than the rad zero does at the two to three k region uh less at the 4k region so that's kind of the main so ross and the rad zero is smoother here the lcd xc is smoother here um i think the red zero is a little a little bit more bass a little more a little more but yeah it's a lot more competitive now would you recommend the lcd x or focal clear mg i think i'll i would take personally i would take the lcd x over the vocal clear mg but if you want if you really want that dynamic punch and impact then the clear mg would give you that more so than the x the x is good at macro dynamics for a planar because many planers are not especially the more modern ones um so i just think it depends on which qualities you're you're looking at again i personally preferred the original clear but uh yeah depends on what you're looking for you've heard abyss is coming out with closed backs that'd be interesting if alcohol comes out with utopia close back well that's the stelia kind of it's a different tuning but yeah and odyssey with new improved lcd for close back imagine that yeah could you imagine an lcd4 close back 1500 grams i bet no just kidding but yeah that would be pretty crazy i just yeah they got to make that stuff lighter um same with the abyss like they got to make it light more lightweight than that 630 grams i think for that the big one something like that 640. yeah it is it is lighter uh the lc xc is lighter as well um i'm not sure about magnetic structure but the circuit is different apparently but also keep in mind that the pad material is completely different like the actual foam material is completely different so that can have an impact on weight resolve doesn't turn around because he doesn't want us to see his tone's neck exactly yeah i mean i you not everybody's going to be into eq so if you're not into eq i would say you know you could probably find headphones that like would have a better default frequency response than these but these are also now at the point of eq optional not not essential are there any more surprises coming from odyssey be honest i am being honest i have no idea they do not tell me i'm i don't work for odyssey so i can't i have no idea um i have you know the the interactions that i've had with sankar have just been about like these two and um and the euclid that's it hey quinn thank you um this has been so incredibly helpful thank you well thank you for that uh yeah i mean i i hope this stuff is helpful to you guys um maybe i'll do a poll for like the next live stream live testing session for what headphones i should you know try out for that yeah i i should be actually evaluating some e-stats pretty soon here i see your comment there buddy stats um i'm hopeful to try out the 009 if i get a chance hi tail from inner fidelity here i miss that guy how do you know if you're dead inside good question it's more just a general state of well-being or lack thereof lcd-x vocal clear or xenophotium for metal edm and synthwave lcdx i focal clear would be good for that as well i think so with theo tour that's more that would be more my pick for like my like the serious audiophile music like you know a classical and acoustic it's got a more spacious presentation and it's more about timbre i think um lcd x for that for the control during busy passages but i bet would be my recommendation but maybe somebody doesn't want that so it's all up to you which qualities you're looking for i don't know i've never heard a grader that's been any good do you recommend an amp with the x or is it cheap audio interface good enough probably good enough i mean as soon as you have a separate piece like a dac amp combo or something like that that's that you've taken outside of your computer or whatever you're trying to you know run the whatever the source is you know you're you're that's generally going to be good enough for these because they don't take a ton of power you could run it from a phone if you wanted to or well maybe that wouldn't be ideal but you know what i mean right like you don't need a lot was there an lcd five that was shown at a shang shanghai headphone show i i didn't even know about that honestly guys i know nothing about any uh an upcoming thing the only thing i knew about was the euclid as i mentioned which actually i should have reviewed the euclid out soon okay two more questions i feel like high feminine would make a good close back too not unless there was something wrong with the r10p that i tried um have you actually heard the denon d9200s i found them to be far superior to lcd xcs xc's with eq although they were they were the previous version out of these yeah it depends on the it depends on so many things with that um i have heard the 9200s briefly not i haven't had them here for review um but no uh i do not think they were on the same level for technical performance but when it comes to the question of tonal balance then yeah maybe maybe i need to get one in for like actually spend more time with it though that's the thing you could say the same thing is probably true for the uh the vc all right the vc has really good technical performance as well and you know i would need to have it side by side with this to be able to tell which is more technically capable but this is like half the price of that so how much do these weigh these are 670 grams 671 for these ones yeah i i also noticed the treble unpleasantness of the star field um i i don't think it's not 18k where the problem is like for me my hearing starts to roll off there at around 17k i think it's actually lower than that i think it's closer to 15k but there is a there's definitely a resonance up there on the starfield yeah and like it's funny i was talking to metal 571 about this and he's like man i'm not bothered by the trouble at all and i'm like and both chrono and i were like yeah that the treble is like a bit too intense but so yeah not everybody's going to notice that because for a lot of people their hearing kind of rolls off in the upper air regions i actually don't know how much the d9200 is what is sota sota but thank you marius always good to always good to have you in the streams what did they weigh before they weighed uh well the the one with the wooden cups that i had before was 750 over 750 grams like between 750 and 7 760. something something like that i think it depends on if you weigh it with the cable or not yeah okay guys uh i'm gonna call it uh for the stream thanks to everybody for tuning in and i hope this has been useful i will publish this information up on the headphone community forum if you guys are looking for it and you want to see my eq profiles but then also i'll be doing a video reviews i guess of both of these or like i guess update videos um next week and then so it's gonna be a little bit of an audizy autism month um not intentional it just happened to be that way uh but then also yeah we're giving away we as in headphones.com are giving away an lcd x with a 2021 update so um definitely uh sign up to win this if you weren't here when i mentioned that um yeah it's on the it's on the main giveaway page on headphones.com but uh yeah until next time i will sign off bye everybody

Channel: The Headphone Show

Views: 38,003

Keywords: headphones, headphone, headphones.com, high end headphones, audiophile, best headphones, top headphones, most expensive headphones, headphone reviews, iems, iem review, amp, dac, audio, sound, audeze LCD-X 2021, Audeze LCD-XC 2021, Audeze LCD-X, Audeze LCD-XC, audeze lcd-x review, audeze lcd-xc review, audeze lcd-x mixing, audeze lcd-xc carbon, audeze lcd-xc, headphone review 2021, headphones recommended asmr, best headphones 2021

Id: kpGYlCewseo

Length: 124min 30sec (7470 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021