With headphones like the LCD-2, LCD-X, and LCD-4, Audeze defined a pretty distinct sound: largely neutral, but also thick and weighty. LCD-4 in particular was famed for how its seemingly linear bass could create massive slam and dynamic impact. Despite being discontinued, LCD-4 remains at the top of many people’s lists of best ever headphones, so when LCD-5 released, many people were expecting a new and improved LCD-4, but Audeze went in a different direction. LCD-5 traded the weight and impact for heightened clarity and extraordinary detail, and the brand continued in that direction with their next release, the MM-500. LCD-5s is a recalibration of the LCD-5, and the marketing seems to indicate that it’s a shift back to the thicker, weightier sound of classic Audeze headphones. Is LCD-5s the true successor to LCD-4 that many of us have been waiting for?
Build and Design
Whether or not the sound harkens back to Audeze’s older tunings, the build and design is more in line with the LCD-5 and MM-500, with a more modern build that trades the old Audeze heavy metal frame for a lighter, more comfortable design. LCD-5s improves on the LCD-5 with a softer overall feel, and more articulation available in the various adjustments. Visually, LCD-5s looks pretty similar to LCD-5, but adds a bit more color, with stronger copper accents.
The package is nearly identical to the LCD-5 package though, with the same case, premium cable, and adapter set, giving your XLR and 6.3mm connection options. Gloves are also included for handling of the headphones if you want to avoid getting any smudges or scratches on them. While I can imagine using the gloves if you want to keep your headphone investment in pristine condition, these are very sturdy, durable headphones – though the resin rings around the outside scratch a bit more easily than wood.
Overall, the physical and visual changes between LCD-5 and LCD-5s, but are the sound changes more significant?
Sound
Right off the bat, LCD-5s is my favorite Audeze tuning to date. It presents excellent clarity and resolution that’s similar to the original LCD-5, while dialing back a few key frequencies that could make some voices or instruments sound harsh or shouty with LCD-5, while also adding weight and extension to the bass, including a small bump in the subbass that does a lot of heavy lifting for your perception of low-end frequencies without overpowering the mids or detracting from the world-class clarity and separation that LCD-5s provides.
In the bass, LCD-5s delivers deep extension and excellent subbass response, with good rumble, along with a natural sense of impact and punch. There’s excellent texture and presentation of low-end details, with a highly accurate bass that offers just a hint of extra grunt.
The midrange is where LCD-5s shines strongest. The timbre is exceedingly natural, presenting a lifelike sound to instruments and vocals, and the sense of separation and layering offers a sort of studio desk insight into the performance, without ever dipping into more clinical sounds.
LCD-5s has treble that extends nicely with no sense of veil, and crisp upper-end delivery. The smallest bits of detail and articulation are all there, and the soaring highs of violins or electric guitars are immaculately delivered to your ears.
LCD-5s presents a realistic feeling soundstage, that’s three-dimensional and expansive without feeling exaggerated or unnatural. Instruments and voices have a lifelike sense of weight and position in the space, and the interaction and blending in the space around each musical element feels natural, transporting the listener into the space.
LCD-5s is relatively easy to drive, and can run very well off even the most basic of desktop amps or interfaces. Some of the more impressive elements of the bass extension and dynamics are definitely lost with lower powered devices, and LCD5s seems to scale up almost infinitely. Sure, it sounds great with my mobile setup of a FiiO M21 and iBasso PB6, but it’s mind-blowingly good with the Burson Conductor Voyager and Cayin HA300mk3.
On a classic jazz recording like Miles Davis’ “So What” from Kind of Blue, LCD-5s puts you right in the room with the band. The piano is crystal clear and you can hear the subtle hints of reverberation around you. The bass is textured and lifelike, blending nicely with the impact of the kick. The cymbals has a clear natural resonance, filling the empty space around you, and the trumpet is filled with nuance with LCD-5s presenting a dynamic performance that cuts through the rest of the mix.
“Erosion” by ivri starts with waves of noise surrounding the listener, while piano starts to build, and the vocal finally cuts through the mix before the rest of the band comes in. LCD-5s lets you almost float in the ambience of synthesizers and pianos, with the wispy vocals guiding you forward until the full band enters, grounding you with the heavy weight of the bass and impact of the drums. LCD-5s also delivers the emotion and sense of desperation in the vocals as they struggle to overcome the rest of the band.
LCD-5s’s bass performance and physicality are nicely demonstrated with Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.” The kick hits clear hard and clear and the rimshot snare has a strong snap. The spare instrumentation fills in around the vocals, giving you that feeling of space and three dimensionality: even without crossfade or any other tricks, the music feels like it’s coming from all around and in between, demonstrating LCD-5s’s excellent soundstage and imaging performance.
Comparison: Meze Elite, Audio-Technica ADX7000
One of my favorite recent open-back releases is the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000, a headphone that delivers hard hitting bass and sparkly treble with a moderate V to the tuning, and one of my favorite $4000 planar magnetic headphones of all time is the Meze Elite, which sits in a similar wheelhouse as LCD-5s, with somewhat of a warm-neutral tuning. While LCD-5s leans more towards a true reference sound that either of these, can it deliver audiophile enjoyment on the same level?
In addition to having three different tunings, these three headphones also have three different design philosophies. Audio-Technica seems to not care too much about the visual design so long as the headphones are comfortable and functional. Meze puts a luxurious combination of visual design and comfort near the top of their priority list. Audeze lands somewhere in between, with a functional build that’s comfortable and visually appealing, but doesn’t quite deliver the same level of craftsmanship as Meze. Overall though, LCD-5s feels the best to me of these three. It’s the heaviest, but as long as you’re not too bogged down by the weight, the stability is a little better than Elite, and the general feel and materials are better than ADX7000.
In terms of the sound, ADX7000 presents the most classic hard-hitting “fun” tuning of the three. It lacks the deep bass extension of LCD-5s, but hits much harder in the midbass. Elite is more similar, but focuses more on warmth and emotion over clarity and precision. However, there is a little bit in the highs of Elite, that provides a little more definition and some extra sparkle that LCD-5s doesn’t provide, giving it a crisper high end. ADX7000 also has a touch of that extra crisp-feeling in the highs, but doesn’t feel quite as refined as Elite.
Overall, LCD-5s presents the strongest balance, with accuracy as the priority, it still manages some fun – though I do miss the harder hitting bass when I switch back to it. If you have EQ available though, you can dial in exactly the right quantity of extra bass or treble as you’d like to match Elite’s crisp highs or ADX7000’s punchy bass, while still maintaining the general precision and technical performance of LCD-5s.
The Bottom Line
LCD-5s is a return to form for Audeze. After the more pro-audio focused tuning and design of the original LCD-5 and MM-500, LCD-5s strikes a balance between studio accuracy and engaging musicality, with some subtle tweaks to the LCD-5 formula that help them deliver what are quite possibly the best headphones that Audeze has ever made.
