The scenery unfolds around me. The audience fills the field below. The band enters and starts playing. The music fills the air like I have never heard before. The LCD-1 easily walk right over my previous reference, the Sennheiser HD580. (But they should, as they also cost a bit more). They play a much more involving tone.

 

Being a bit analytical on these, there is plenty of bass, although the headphone is on the bright and calm side compared to what can be had on the bassy side. But when it’s not enough, the LCD-1 has replaceable pads. I tried some leather imitation pads from an old Pioneer SE-205. The bass became massive. Not my cup of tea at the moment, but easy to do and easy to reverse. (If I had one more pair, I would probably use leather pads on the other pair.)

 

The strong side of these headphones is how they throw the music out around you, and fill the air with every nuance of it. It makes Jarre’s Oxygene a fantastic experience, placing me in the midst of the performance, with music playing in archs all around. They are very musical, which is what I also love about my vintage orthodynamic headphones. They pull off a marvellous trick, to have deep bass, sparkly highs, air, and at the same time throw that headstage around. My vintage orthodynamic headphones cannot do all these things at the same time. And they are fast. There is no mixing up the instruments, even with fast messy music like Death From Above 1979 or some track by Lightning Bolt.

 

Don’t be fooled by the modest look of these headphone. They can be compared to placing a huge strong racing engine into a small Volswagen Beetle. The huge planar magnetic drivers perform magic with my music, and the Audeze team has done a great job tuning them. I hope that these will never break.

Review by Jonas on  Head-fi.org

 

(Originaly posted in 2009 and reposted in the new site