Testing Reveal+ with the Audeze LCD-X (2021)

Based on the previous page, we know that Reveal+ includes the studio measurements, which may or may not be of interest to you depending on the use case. What will be relevant is whether your specific Audeze headphones have a profile or not, which begins with Audeze providing Embody an EQ profile based on how a typical LCD-X (2021) deviates from a set target. The extremely tiny bass shelf here indicates it might be generated automatically based on the Audeze target, but the company does work with several renowned music artists to generate profiles and DSP presets for its headphones. For example, you can find Roon presets for the CRBN and LCD-5 co-flagships here. These are developed by Bob Katz and Gary Cole and give you some of the experience without Reveal+, which offers the studio environments, and personal HRTF profiles, of course.


Embody also provided this EQ file, which is an EQ profile for the LCD-X (2021) that also accounts for the physical coupling in addition to being acoustically tuned. It is far closer to my own preferred EQ profile for the set with a slight decrease in the mids, raising of the upper mids for pinna gain, and decrease in the 6 kHz region slightly before playing it by ear for the rest of the treble frequencies.





The last piece of the puzzle, and what is actually under my control, is the personal HRTF generation. I have always wondered how good these could be if it depended on a single photo from a generic phone's front-facing camera. There are so many variables involved, also as you can of course choose to take a better photo. I knew at the time of my LCD-2 Classic and LCD-XC reviews that the taken photos were less than ideal, so I asked Embody if they could help test this by separately generating the HRTF magnitude plot based on photos I sent them, which made for the secondary function of testing profiles based on different people's ears, too. As such, I have above two sets of photos for two people including myself. Photos were taken using both a phone's rear camera and the same dSLR setup I use for review photos, including those on page 2.

Next to them are the respective HRTF magnitude plots, which are one 3D frequency domain slice out of an entire ensemble taken for each point in the pinna recognized by Embody's algorithms and generated as a MATLAB file. Embody was kind enough to send me the raw files too, and let's just say I understood why they require cloud computing for faster processing. This creates what is essentially a fingerprint for each person (or "earprint"?), and note how my HRTF plots are identical at the same frequency domain for both the dSLR and phone camera photos, which indicates that the methodology to generate this data accounts for image quality too, with a better quality image no doubt providing more data points for a better HRTF plot. Indeed, this showed with the second person's photos. Not only was the HRTF significantly different looking, but hair in the way of the phone camera photo was picked up by the algorithms and made its way into the HRTF. The moral of the story is that the phone camera photo used is not as big a factor as making sure your right ear is fully visible, in focus, and unobstructed!


At this point, I realized I had never obtained the HRTF plot for my very first submission using the phone front camera, which is certainly the least effective of the three camera setups involved. But I had profiles generated for all of these in Reveal+ for a total of five including the four new ones here and the original one from last year. The first three profiles seen above are all mine in order of phone front camera, dSLR, and phone rear camera, with the latter two for the second person. Reveal+ gets priority over Embody IVS when it comes to some Audeze features, including when new headphone profiles are added. The LCD-X (2021) was included at the time of testing thus, and placed as a separate item from the previous LCD-X. The LCD-5 and CRBN are still not in there, but it's only a matter of time before Audeze EQ profiles and DSP presets are generated. Another useful feature Reveal+ has over Embody IVS, at least as of the time this is written, is the Aural Map toggle button to separately test the effect of everything but the personalized HRTF as opposed to the full monty.

I have on two separate occasions discussed how this plug-in brings established studio environments wherever you are, which can have a major effect on anything you use as the source. Indeed, I tried it with JRiver on my HTPC connected to a 5.1 set of speakers and every single studio sounded different, as did the different monitors of a single studio when selected. But we are primarily here to delve into the HRTF audio personalization with Reveal+, and A/B testing with the Aural Map slider was best done with the new LCD-X on my head. See, I found the Audeze LCD-X (2021) to be the least expensive set of headphones to distinguish between what would otherwise be subtle digital filters and EQ profiles, such is the resolving and transparent nature of this set. It was thus easy to test the various options in Reveal+ too, and there's not only a big difference between having the generic HRTF or my own, but the different HRTF profiles, too. I then got my hands on a few different mixes of the same song courtesy a colleague in the music industry who had played around and mixed on his older LCD-X, which was also a good opportunity to test the use case of Reveal+ to see where the LCD-X (2021) comes in handy in deciphering between different mixes and providing feedback on some versions over others—think of toning down some piano key fundamentals in favor of the acoustic guitar by even 0.5–1 dB in a wide shelf in the upper bass and mids for better balance—and ensure that mixes sounded exactly as they would on the newer LCD-X (2021) vs. older LCD-X using the two different Reveal+ profiles. I am happy to report flying success in both scenarios, so job well done by both Audeze and Embody in meeting the set goal for the pro audio world.

Then it was time to test the different profiles as well as gauge their effects from an audiophile's standpoint. There were essentially three different profiles, or one in total for me across all three submitted photos as the other two are of the second person, where it should have only been one owing to the hair obstructing the ear. Neither of those two latter profiles were to my liking at all, and I surely had a look of disdain on my face as I almost immediately changed the profile to one of mine. There might be a small difference between profiles 1 and 2 or 3 for me, which is perhaps where the front camera was showing its weakness, but it's minimal compared to the overall effect any of these have. Turning off the aural map places Audeze's EQ preset in the chain only, which is a minor improvement over the stock LCD-X (2021) tuning as female vocals now do not sound hollow and the mids are even more transparent. It doesn't change the technical performance, which is a good thing, although ultimately aspects that are personal and best handled on an individual basis. This is key to why personalized HRTFs are so much more effective—I definitely saw improvements across the board. There was a tiny bit more bass response, but with faster decay and better transients than the LCD-X on its own, and I swear the soundstage opened up more, too. I understand these are mathematical models working their magic on me, but it works! Reveal+ made the Audeze LCD-X a much better fit for me than it already is on its own, which is what ultimately counts. If it helps, person two found their dSLR profile far more appealing too, which goes to shows that the personalization with Reveal+ worked very well there, too!