Introduction

Audeze's release late last year of its new flagship, the LCD-5, was the talk of everyone in the headphone community, irrespective of whether you were in the market for an end-game set or not. The eye-watering $4500 also meant very few could afford it but that did not stop a huge number of you from reading my review either. The interesting thing is the LCD-5 is actually a co-flagship set as far as Audeze is concerned, given the California-based audio brand had surprised everyone a month earlier with it's debut into the electrostatic headphone world with the aptly named CRBN. We covered the tech used in this cool new head-fi addition previously, and I was personally vested to at least listen to the the CRBN at the earliest opportunity given my decade+ experience working with carbon nanotubes, that are also used in the CRBN's drivers. I also appreciated how the original motive behind Audeze's entry to e-stats was helping solve a major comfort issue in the MRI diagnosis world and the CRBN was a happy coincidence as a result of the technology trickling down to us consumers too.


If you are wondering what electrostatic headphones are, and how they differ from typical dynamic or even planar magnetic headphones, the main takeaway is they are driven using an electrostatic force as opposed to an electromagnetic force. The aforementioned primer on the CRBN discusses this more and the e-stat world is generally associated with one brand—STAX—that's been doing it so long that the currently-adopted bias voltage of 580 V for driving modern e-stat headphones is commonly referred to as STAX Pro bias. All this is a long way to say that typical headphone amplifiers are not capable of driving electrostats and you need specialized sources that, in a smaller market, tend to be either inexpensive but less-than-desirable or costly as in the case of the Headamp Blue Hawaii Special Edition pictured above with the CRBN. For those wondering, the BHSE starts at $6495 (before applicable taxes and shipping) and goes up to $7995 for the upgraded model.

Needless to say then that a combination of CRBN + BHSE, which easily crosses $10k, is not for everyone. I already expect to see people scoff at others who might be in the market for something, without giving regard to disposable income/hobby preferences alike. Indeed, when Audeze was enquiring about my own interest in reviewing a CRBN, it came with the unmentioned condition of being in possession of a good enough source to not hold the headphones back. CanJam London came to the rescue, as I attended this two-day event at the end of July this year and was able to listen privately to a few different e-stat headphones—including two different CRBN samples—as well as four different e-stat amplifiers that are also referred to as energizers. The BHSE was easily the best among these sources outside of the $30k HIFIMAN Shangri-La Sr. amplifier, and even here, I would argue the BHSE did better. Headamp then offered me a good deal on the show floor unit that I ended up purchasing with my own money and that led to a chain of events resulting in a few different e-stats in the house. Given the CRBN was why I even went down this rabbit hole, I simply had to start my electrostatic headphones/source coverage with it! Thanks to Audeze for arranging a review sample for TechPowerUp as we begin this review with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications