You heard of the saying "Your loss is my gain"? This is the first thing that came to mind when I saw over 15 separate listings for the Audeze LCD-5 in the Head-Fi classifieds section the day I wrote this review, most of which seem to have been listed within a week or two of March. The average asking price for the LCD-5, and keep in mind these were mostly all barely taken out of the box, was $3,300–$3,400—a whopping ~25% down on MSRP already. Sure, it's technically used, but these are headphones people bought expecting to get a flagship Audeze bass-slamming set; most probably heard the mid-forward tuning and almost immediately decided to give up. Nothing I will tell them will change their minds; there are many who simply can't fathom the concept of EQ even if Audeze itself has first-party profiles for it. These make the LCD-5 one of the best bargains in the high-end audio world today, but then the question as to why all these people buy the LCD-5 in the first place only to sell it shortly after arises.

The LCD-5 was announced in September of last year, and made its debut at CanJam SoCal—the first major in-person audio event to be held in a long time. Audeze was on a roll then with six new models released in 2021, each building up to the true planar flagship that is the LCD-5. There were photos and videos of queues of people waiting their turn to listen to the LCD-5 then, with word of mouth quickly spreading in the audiophile market and the first LCD-5 batch selling out even before a proper review from a media presence that wasn't Head-Fi had been published. Audeze also wasn't sampling the LCD-5 for a while, rightly allocating production units to paying customers who had shelled out $4500 based on very little available information. Then came the first round of reviews, and they were all extremely positive, further building up the fervor for those waiting, and prompting yet more to pull the trigger. Somewhere along the line, people didn't realize that frequency response measurements for open-back sets are far more revealing than the generally flat line in the low and mid frequencies indicate, and the pinna gain followed by an inconsistent treble response didn't quench the thirst.

Imagine then that you are a brand-new owner of the LCD-5, putting on the provided gloves and taking out a beautifully engineered set with patent-pending technologies and a whole new design to address the long-standing complaint of Audeze LCD headphones being heavy, which has led to several "Audeze neck" memes. The LCD-5 is ruthless in shaving off weight wherever it can without compromising on the seal, which is why the ear pads are still glued on, and the initial couple of batches shipped with headbands that have an increased clamp force bordering on the uncomfortable. Then came the multiple documented cases of the cable connectors physically coming off the ear cups, which revealed that they are also glued on inside. By now, several people had received their LCD-5 orders, and those owners quickly realized that what they wanted or expected was not what the LCD-5 offered out of the box. We now get back to all those like-new LCD-5s on sale, and why I will try to convince you that these are worth purchasing after all if you are in the market for a flagship set of headphones.

The tonality of the LCD-5 is generally very good and gets great with EQ. If you are the type to build your own PC, run benchmarks, and fine-tune hardware through, at times, careful trial and error, performing EQ on headphones is extremely simple. Granted, the vast majority of people here are not going to be buying $4,500 headphones anytime soon, and if you have to choose between paying $4,500 towards a down payment for a house or a car that suddenly costs much more due to various ongoing reasons, obviously go that route. Even the $3,300 asking price on the classifieds, and I dare say ~$4,000 from dealers for new sets sooner than later, will have many scoffing at even the concept of paying that much for audio gear—we have millions of unique visitors from various fields of life after all—but the small fraction of people who gain genuine pleasure from audio and spend hours at a time listening to music will have something else to say. Then there are the working professionals to whom this is a business expense. I am not going to convince anyone that multiple thousands of dollars are good value for headphones, especially when you would be urged to spend more on sources and music to make the most of it. I am just saying there are clearly people who have reached a point in their life where the money spent on audio gear brings them more satisfaction than it would others who, say, buy an RTX 3090 Ti and build an expensive PC around it.

To those who are contemplating the LCD-5, be sure to understand the challenges, which are pretty much all easily addressed. Audeze has tackled the clamp force issue already, and current batches should be fine as far as the cable connectors go. Customer support is also exceptional—I can vouch for them taking care of you if you have any issues. Tonality is a few filters and a software toggle button away from being customized to your preference, or you could wait for the incoming Roon/Reveal+ profiles that may even already be available by the time this review is published. It's really the soundstage that is somewhat lacking in a few cases; however, it is what makes this a competent monitor in other use cases. Your brain will also initially face layers of information you may not be expecting, such is the nature of this highly revealing set, but it all begins to make sense soon thereafter, and other headphones will seem low fidelity by comparison. The Audeze LCD-5 is highly innovative and competes with the very best in the world after some initial work, and if you are ready to accept that, you won't be left wanting. It can meet the lofty expectations set forth by all the marketing talk from Audeze, and in that regard, I am able to recommend it with the mentioned caveats in mind.