Introduction

We have covered a few Audeze products and technologies recently, be it with the review of the LCD-2 Classic that prompted us to work on a new setup dedicated to over/on-ear headphones, which debuts today, a primer on the use of CNTs for the company's first electrostatic headphones, and, more recently, a review of the impressive Euclid planar magnetic IEMs competing with many closed headphones. But how competitive is it really? Thanks again to Audeze, we can now find out whether at the same price point, the money is better spent on closed-back over-ear phones courtesy this review sample of the LCD-XC arranged from the company for TechPowerUp!


As with the more popular LCD-X open-back headphones, the LCD-X is Audeze's bread and butter for mixing engineers and recording studios, to be used as monitoring headphones. These are thus part of the Audeze LCD Reference series, and I thought the photos above quite fitting as such. There have been a couple of major updates to the LCD-X and -XC late last year, so much so that I am referring to the review sample as the LCD-XC (2021) to distinguish it from previous iterations. This review also goes over the use of Embody's Immerse Virtual Studio, which formed the backbone for Audeze Reveal+ 2.0 we saw put to good use with the LCD-2 Classic. The two items together promise to be a formidable combination for studio monitoring and taking the room used out of the equation to provide a high-quality studio environment wherever you go. We will see how well these expectations are met in this review which begins with a look at the headphone specifications in the table below.

Specifications