Audeze LCD-2

Legendary Planar Magnetic Headphones

The Californian company Audeze appeared on our radars a little less than ten years ago and in such a short time managed to gain a reputation as almost the coolest and most advanced headphone manufacturer. Moreover, similar epithets in their direction with the same frequency fly from hardened sounders, and from experienced music lovers who have tried more than a dozen expensive headphones. The foundation of the company's future success is the advanced premium LCD-2 headphones with isodynamic/planar magnetic drivers. Their driver is a thin membrane, on which a flat voice coil is applied, and all this is placed in a powerful magnetic field. Strongly exaggerating, this is something in between electrostatic and classical dynamic drivers.

Outperforms most audiophile headphones

Let's not beat around the bush and start with the sound. The high level of Audeze is felt immediately without any preparation, the need to “warm up” the headphones or get used to them. Their main coolness lies in the ability to be cool in all aspects, whether it is the arrangement of instruments in space, the drawing of bass, the transfer of the dynamics of live instruments or the nuances of vocals. Take any popular audiophile headphones, pick out their best quality, and then listen to the LCD-2. And with a probability of 99%, the Audeze model will either be on par with them, or a little better. Seriously, they don't have any flaws at all. But what is most striking is their ability to give out a huge amount of “everything” so that this “everything” is flawlessly connected to each other. It is also one of the few headphones that masterfully moves the listener into a virtual room with musicians, as if you were listening to music live. There is no feeling that you are sitting in a closed box. Naturally, you need to listen to them paired with a good headphone amplifier.

Big and heavy

There are only two things that confuse us in the Audeze LCD-2. First, they are large and heavy. The design here is very well thought out, but it can be tiring to keep such a 600-gram colossus on your head for a long time. The ear pads are also huge, they completely cover the ears, which is why after a couple of hours they start to sweat, as if they were closed headphones. Otherwise, you can’t find fault with the design — everything is assembled with high quality and reliably, they sit comfortably on the head, it feels like pure premium. Just look at this combination of bamboo inserts and black metal. The second problem with the Audeze LCD-2 is their price, the official price of $1200 is not for every audiophile. But there is good news — looking at the number of people who want to get hold of planar magnetic headphones, Audeze engineers released a lightweight version of the Audeze LCD-1, which turned out to be lighter, more convenient and almost three times cheaper. And most importantly, they have retained almost all the nuances of the older model's sound. Sound engineers, musicians and audiophiles are thrilled again.