Fit and Comfort

Now we get to the new headphone testing setup, which comes semi-customized based on my needs. What you see above is the Audeze LCD-XC (2021) put in place on a headphone stand that is actually a set of two artificial ears complete with soft-molded human ears and a couple of different adapters to act as the top of the head. This has been mounted on a tripod, which also showcases how headphones would look on a human head with the ears here spaced apart ~20 cm from each other. As with basically all planar magnetic headphones, getting a good fit and seal is crucial, which the three-point contact system on each side coupled with the yoke rods and support strap aid. Those with wider heads may find the optional longer yoke rods handy, and Audeze also clarifies that only those with a narrow and long head may want to contact customer support about getting a shorter support strap that is otherwise not sold directly through the company web shop. With all this considered, the stock configuration that ships out will weigh ~677 grams.

This is no doubt going to be a lot for many and even a dealbreaker for some. The switch from wood to carbon fiber cups reduced the mass of the LCD-XC, which topped 700 g before. There is also an optional carbon fiber headband, which supposedly helps distribute the weight better, but I can't really speak on it more since I have no experience with the same. The new ear pads are going to be divisive, with a lower fill density some have complained about in terms of their ears now hitting the Fazors inside, and others, including myself, having no such issue. It could be sample variation with the hand-assembled ear pads having different degrees of fill, but I thought the new ear pads, be it the leather or leather-free versions, were extremely comfortable with the tapering design working well as described before. You may still need to take a break from time to time, which is always recommended anyway. There is higher-than-average clamping force with this steel headband, but mostly to better seal the ear cups for the bass response in particular. The more you use the headphones, the better the ear pads will seal against your head, and the more the head band "breaks-in," reducing the clamping force just enough to suit your head geometry as well.

Audio Performance

Audio Hardware

Planar magnetic speakers are not new tech by any means, but Audeze has survivor bias in its favor as it has become mostly synonymous with planar magnetic headphones today. Pretty much all headphones and speakers today use dynamic drivers, often present in set sizes adopting the popular cone geometry you see more readily in an external set of speakers. These drivers have a diaphragm more often than not, with a voice coil attached to it such that any provided input vibrates the diaphragm rapidly to generate the sound output. If segments of the diaphragm vibrate at different frequencies, you end up with harmonic distortion and unwanted resonances.

Planar magnetic drivers aim to provide a uniform driving force across the entire diaphragm to reduce said harmonics. Audeze does this with its Fluxor magnets capable of generating enough magnetic field strength to exert more force on the diaphragm, which is in turn extremely thin at under 2 µm—less than half the thickness of the one in the more budget-friendly LCD-2 Classic. This results in higher efficiency drivers as well because you get so much more output, and more consistent output at that from the diaphragm vibrations for the same energy fed to the magnets. There is something else to point out when it comes to driving these planar magnetic headphones. The voice coil is directly placed on the diaphragm, meaning there is a fully resistive rather than inductive load with the voice coil (and hence diaphragm) resisting the current through it equally irrespective of the operating frequency. This generates as close to a flat impedance curve as possible, making it far easier to pair these with a larger variety of DACs and amplifiers rather than being a power-hungry set.

At just 20 Ω of impedance and a sensitivity of 100 dB/mW at the eardrum reference point, the Audeze LCD-XC is extremely easy to drive in practice. Many can get away with a decent phone, but you would be losing out on the potential of the LCD-XC at that point. If you are using these for studio monitoring, you no doubt already have a preferred source. Others profess that tube amplifiers add to the warmth of the LCD-XC signature in a pleasant manner, but I am more of a solid-state amplifier person and used these with a JDS Labs Element II as well as a more expensive Topping DAC/amp stack just to see if there are perceivable differences—none that I could tell. I also quickly tried out a more entry-level JDS Labs Atom stack and even that was sufficient in delivering a satisfactory result. Keep in mind that the stock cable terminates in a 1/4" (6.35 mm) plug, so you might well need an adapter if your source does not natively support it.


Before we move on, I want to also talk about what else you get for the price besides the planar magnetic drivers and tuning. Burn-in/break-in is more of a thing for headphones than IEMs, with the headband and ear pads changing to fit your head profile fairly quickly. Many also believe in the drivers needing to be broken in, which generally isn't something I buy into. Regardless, Audeze has an actual burn-in rack at its facility in California where every single LCD-XC is subjected to nonstop music at least overnight; as of a few months ago, Viva De Funk by Joe Sample & The Soul Committee. As a fan of jazz and soul music myself, I can relate to that Audeze engineer's tastes!

Frequency Measurement and Listening

I will mention that I have a general preference for a warm neutral signature emphasizing a slightly elevated bass and smooth treble range with detailed mids and good tonal separation. I also generally prefer instrumental music over vocals, with favored genres including jazz and classical music.


Now we get back to the new headphones test setup, which has a set of two custom in-ear microphones for the two channels. These microphones closely adhere to the IEC711 class, but have been tweaked to be more reliable in the >10 kHz frequency range that was the issue with my previous setup, which is still very good and will continue to be used for IEMs and earphones. Two soft silicone pinnae are installed on the sides separated by a distance to match my head, and multiple "height" adapters have been 3D-printed to allow for further customization based on fit and head size/shape. Each set of microphones has an XLR output I separately adapted to 3.5 mm, so note that the cable setup in the final photo above is just done for cable management—it is not representative of the actual testing. A 3.5 mm audio jack associated with the right channel also enables recording, as well as real-time monitoring, and potentially audio demos if I am satisfied with the output.

This artificial head simulator feeds into a reference USB sound card, which in turn goes to a laptop that has ARTA and REW running and the headphones connected to the laptop through the sound card and/or a separate DAC/amp if needed. I begin with an impulse measurement to test for signal fidelity, calibrate the sound card and channel output, account for floor noise, and finally test the frequency response of each channel separately. Octave smoothing is at the 1/6th setting, which nets a good balance of detail and noise not being identified as useful data. Also, the default tuning was used for testing, and no app-based settings were chosen unless specifically mentioned. Each sample of interest is tested thrice with separate mounts to account for any fit issues, and an average is taken of the three individual measurements for statistical accuracy. The raw data is then exported from REW and plotted in OriginPro for easier comparison.


[Update] I have replaced some of this section, which was using a less-than-satisfactory measurement protocol, with a new graph from an updated setup. You can find the raw data to compare against on this page.

What I can tell you is that I am not really a closed-back headphones person, with IEMs quickly doing the job for me in regards of providing a good fit, isolation, and increased portability while out and about, as well as in a shared work environment. I got burned by the Sennheiser HD820 and generally prefer open-back headphones in the $500+ regime. I acknowledge that there is a use case for high-end closed-back headphones, however, with companies coming out with more four-figure sets than ever before. With a good fit, which is more likely now on the LCD-XC (2021), you will notice plenty of passive isolation. This is certainly more in favor of the listener, with small leak points at the screws on the ear cups that can be somewhat audible to a person next to you. This isolation is what you are buying the LCD-XC for over the LCD-X, which otherwise outsells the LCD-XC easily. You do not need to have the volume cranked up high here, so certainly start off low on the amplifier.

Audeze has a target curve of its own based on the Harman curve and Fletcher–Munson equal loudness contours. The goal with the LCD Reference series the LCD-XC belongs to is to get as close to the target that is accurate for studio-monitoring purposes. The recent updates done to the LCD-X and LCD-XC are such that the LCD-XC benefits more, coming out even closer to the target curve than the LCD-X had been. This is why I was extremely surprised when I first listened to the LCD-XC (2021)—I was expecting a warmer profile with the closed ear cups, but received more neutrality instead. This is also why the target audience should be considering the LCD-XC in this price range. It's not the warmer sound profile of the LCD-2 Classic (2021) and instead far more analytical to where even my barely-trained ears could pick out differences in different sounds. Using these with Audeze Reveal+ or Embody Immerse Virtual Studio is at this time still not the best experience owing to the changed tuning, but the likes of Creative's Super X-Fi and Sonarworks' SoundID currently at least do a good job with the higher degree of customization in creating a custom profile, following which the LCD-XC has the potential to be a formidable weapon in the hands of audio engineers to detect recording flaws and mixing errors. As such, I can appreciate that the LCD-XC (2021) can do the job it has been designed for, and fairly well at that, but with the caveat of pairing it with the right tools and knowing that each sound engineer may have a different reference sound target in mind. Being aware of the relatively brighter tuning here, especially compared to most other Audeze headphones, will help account for it, too. The increased weight is certainly rough, but the carry case, lower impedance, average sensitivity, and reference tuning all work synergistically towards this goal. There are a couple of minor exceptions we will get to below, though.


So how does it actually sound when simply listening to music? After all, a significant portion of the client base are not audio engineers or mixing artists. The LCD-X or even recently launched LCD-5 may be more appealing to professionals in general, especially with the LCD-5 shedding some ounces for a more comfortable experience over time. The bass response is going to range from satisfactory to plenty adequate depending on your preferences, with a drop at ~25 Hz. Sub-bass response is not a dominant feature, but these taking so well to EQ owing to the low distortion means you may go up or down 5–10 dB in the desired region without any perceived drop in sound quality, and this is where all the arguments about whether doing or needing EQ is a negative thing for headphones come in. I would not say the LCD-XC (2021) needs EQ, which ultimately can ruin the monitoring use case if pushed too far. But if you want to get some rumble in these carbon fiber jungles for sub-bass and bass elevation, who am I to stop you? Just one thing—note the spectrogram above? The Y-axis is resonance time in ms, blame REW for making it difficult to grab the actual raw data here. There is an awkward resonance at ~27 Hz I see more often with open-back headphones, so seeing it on the LCD-XC was the awkward part, and it lasted over a second. I don't know if the construction or tuning itself is the reason, and it may well be the seal itself since we are still dealing with a planar magnetic set of drivers here. But I would go with a sub-bass spike ~10–20 Hz and a mid-bass shelf ~100 Hz with the likes of Equalizer APO if you do EQ here. There are some decent EQ presets for the LCD-XC (2021) if you want to try something else you would then fine-tune based on your needs.

For my specific wants, the bass response was plenty fine. Here is another example of the frequency response graphs not fully revealing the macro-dynamics of the sound signature on your ears since the low-to-mid bass response is higher than you would think based on the graph alone. In fact, any EQ boost in the lows can make this a punchy monster to where you may want to move your head up and down in tune only to realize that these cans weigh a lot and bring you back to a resting position. The transition to the mids is extremely smooth, with the default response making for minimal bleed of the bass into the mids proper, which gets a small recess for male vocals and instrument range and tonal separation. I would generally describe this as a neutral-bright tuning, especially as you go further up, wherein the mids then start to rise even before things have settled down, and this is probably the only point where I would personally EQ things down. The inner-ear resonance compensation is quite high relative to the recessed mid point, so much so that some music genres can feel shouty. Pop music and female vocals get too energetic in particular I felt, so a mix of male and female vocals may seem to have been mixed incorrectly, which is what I was referring to above with the LCD-XC (2021) for music monitoring. As long as you are aware of this, it can be accounted for.

The other issue I have is that 6 kHz peak, which clearly shows up in the spectrogram. I don't really report on harmonics here, but did generate some second and third-order harmonics from the LCD-XC (2021) which overlapped quite a lot with the raw response around this region. As someone who listens to classical music a lot, I especially felt the fundamental instruments, such as violins and piano keys, clash with the harmonics from cymbals and saxophones. This is made all the worse because of the perceived trough right before, which also shows up in the frequency response measurement here. There is an analogue of this past 12 kHz with another big drop ~10 kHz followed by the spikes preceding the eventual drop from the limits of the microphones themselves, but there isn't much presence in this region subjectively, and it is testing the limits of the microphones' objectivity as well. What it comes down to is the LCD-XC (2021) being a set of Audeze headphones that could do with a better transient response and treble tuning, which can be handled somewhat by EQ depending on how sensitive it is to your work or listening preferences.

I mentioned in the review of the LCD-2 Classic (2021) how it had a very wide soundstage, which ended up being more a case of less context at the time. I have since listened to many other headphones that best it in this regard, including some that cost quite less. The LCD-XC (2021) is certainly more expensive, and closed-back at that. The reason I was so curious about the material used on the underside of the ear cups is because it clearly plays a big role in retaining an excellent soundstage here, especially considering these are closed-back headphones. This comes in handy for monitoring as much as it does for simply enjoying music, with sufficient range for orchestral music to operate inside the ear cups without feeling crowded whatsoever. The LCD-2 Classic (2021) did get hazy with imaging, which somewhat spoiled that part, but there is no such issue here. In fact, this is where I was reminded again of the Audeze Euclid closed-back IEMs which also cost the same as the LCD-XC (2021) and do very similar in this regard, lending more credence to my personal belief that IEMs can replace closed-back headphones for more people than you would think. Unfortunately, I do not have many other headphones in this price range at this time, especially closed-back ones, to compare against since I downsized my collection prior to the trans-Atlantic move. Just remember that a good seal is way more important with the LCD-XC than what you are feeding it, so take your time and get that right first.