Audeze Artists 2025 Grammy Winners
The Audeze Artists of Metropolis Studios
Andrew Scheps has spent over 35 years in the industry and is a 3x Grammy award winning Mixer/Producer/Engineer/Label Owner/Software Developer whose credits are ridiculously long and star-studded.
Lee Ranaldo, musician, visual artist and writer, co-founded Sonic Youth in 1981. He played in Glenn Branca’s early ensembles and symphonies, 1980-1984, and has been active both in New York and internationally for over forty years as a composer, performer, collaborator and producer, also exhibiting visual art at galleries and museums worldwide, and publishing several books of journals, poetry, and writings on music.
June 19, 2020
"Audeze, based out of Orange County, is an audio company with a very particular focus. Not concerned with speakers or amps or earbuds, it instead focus on a headphones, and ones of a very specific kind. It’s cans use planar magnetic drivers (as opposed to conventional dynamic drivers), in order to achieve a greater range of sound than other approaches can match. The result? “Extremely low levels of distortion and very high-fidelity over the entire frequency range,” according to Sankar Thiagasamudram, the co-founder & CEO. “It’s a very clean-sounding headphone.”
"The difference, however, is in how much movement happens. “It’s not just driving the soil and large coil, it’s driving across the entire surface of the diaphragm,” said Thiagasamudram. Because the film has a larger surface area, planar magnetic drivers require two larger magnets (instead of just one small one) on either side of the diaphragm."
“The advantage of planar magnetic [headphones] is that you plug it into almost anything,” explains Thiagasamudram. “You can plug it into a traditional headphone jack and you don’t have to have a special amplifier.” With electrostatic headphones, you need a special high-voltage amplifier, which in addition to adding a (substantial) extra cost, it also means electrostatic headphones aren’t portable."
"You’d be forgiven for thinking that planar tech is new, but the very opposite is true. Headphones that operate on the principle have been around in some form since the 1920s. But Audeze’s triumph isn’t inventing the form, but rather perfecting it. It has turned to modern manufacturing techniques so that it can cast and make its own films. “Instead of chemical etching we used lasers, for example,” explained Thiagasamudram. This has enabled Audeze to make its films extremely small, thin and durable. This is important because the thinner the film, the faster the diaphragm moves, creating a cleaner sound. Audeze also developed its own variety of magnets specifically for this usecase."
"As far as how Audeze’s new LCD-1 and Mobius headphones, Thiagasamudram says that there’s a lot of trickle-down from their higher-end headphones. It uses similar types of film and the same types of magnets. They’re not going to sound quite as good as its really high-end headphones, of course, as a lot comes down to the thickness of the film. Thinner films are better because they move the diaphragm faster, but they’re also more difficult and expensive to make. But if you appreciate good sound, the LCD-1 promise to be a noticeable upgrade from the standard pair of over-ears you’ve been listening to for the past few years."