Audeze LCD-S20 Closed review

Bulvious, massive and wired – these are types of features that you are actively looking for when buying a headset. However, I don’t mind on the closed Audeze LCD-S20 trade. This is not a pair of headphones to be worn on a bus or chat over discord. They don’t even have a microphone. No, LCD-S20 is used to sit and get involved in your favorite game or album and enjoying the tonal glow of magnetic drivers.

On sale in professional musicians and producers LCD-S20 is somewhat beyond our ordinary comfort zone for PC games. However, what makes them great for recording a song in the studio also has the benefits of playing on the PC. Namely, flat magnetic drivers with SLAM technology and excellent sound insulation.

LCD-S20 resembles Audeze Maxwell. They are a pair of headphones that we rate very high, and many members of the PCG hardware team utilize their daily controller, and I will return to comparison with them later in the review. The LCD-S20 has the same floating band structure with three adjustment levels, designed to maintain all 550 grams of these mainly metal headphones except one place on the head. It also works quite well, even when I wore them for most of the work day.

Only a few bits in the box: headphones, 2.5-meter headphone cable with a 6.3 mm socket and an adapter from 6.5 mm to 3.5 mm.

Let’s talk about a slam or a symmetrical linear acoustic modulator. In this way, Audeeze improves the bass reaction on flat magnetic headphones. Audeze talks about the benefits in the blog post, but it reduces to ensuring a powerful, exact bass reaction as a careful balanced act between several things, including the collection of pressure, diaphragm voltage and performance. Slam helps to minimize the accumulation of pressure, which makes it easier to balance everything else, and allowing Audeze better tune the bass reaction to its pleasure.

Slam, surprising, is not a vague concept. A uncommon thing in audio. You can properly See SLAM on LCD-S20. These petite gaps on both sides of the gear ring between headphones and earmuffs? This is a slam – the beginning of the Earcup channel and flat magnetic driver himself to alleviate the pressure. You can see it better by removing magnetically attached Earpad, as can be seen in the pictures below.

Image loan: Future

Image loan: Future

Slam was adopted on annoying Audeeze, CRBN2 headphones. Only insolent $ 5,995 per pair. You will be grateful for hear that you would only pay a fraction of this for LCD-S20, for USD 499. SLAM is clearly not a costly implementation-LCD-S20 is only $ 100 more than the popular and nice main mainstream mm-100. Although I wonder what price we will see that they will end in the long run-he considers that the current price is “introducing” website.

As a result, the bass reaction to LCD-S20 is quite striking to utilize the technical term. Although you expect falls, it is much more controlled and less clear. Listening to some of my favorite drums and basses, I still have the impression that I prefer the submarine at the back of someone’s reprimanded Honda Civic feel bass. However, transparency through the lower response resources is quite spectacular if it is not particularly powerful. I had to raise my Schiit Magni 3 to high profit to really push LCD-S20, despite their low impedance. This is probably inheritance to their lower sensitivity at 93 dB/1MW compared to 98 dB/1MW per mm-100. I recommend a fairly robust amplifier to make it secure with them.

Unlike most flat magnetic headphones on the market, LCD-S20 is closed. Wide, flat ears that tend to distinguish flat magnetic cans and energetic drivers, replaced by enormous dome patterns. Earlier I compared them to the Los Angeles Griffith observatory on both ear and I stick to this visual assistance.

Picture 1 With 3

Lack of ventilation or mesh at the rear Earcup causes the driver to box, blocking the sound leak. The disadvantage here is a smaller sound scene and more tough reproduction of the neutral tone compared to the open project. Although you can prefer a darker tone of closed headphones-I have to admit that I prefer headphones with an open defender-they have one crucial benefit.

The closed defender offers a much higher level of sound insulation compared to an open defender. It is a passive ability to block unwanted noise from the outside world before reaching the ears and vice versa (preventing sound leaks). In this case, this is what LCD-S20 is running to recording. You don’t necessarily want to hear everything around you when you get out of yourself. It is more crucial to focus on what is happening in the headphones, and this can often be real in PC games.

The addictive and insulating properties of closed overthrow are great for solo games. Recently, I played in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and entering the depths of the city for a dog with a samurai sword, and a bad attitude is much better thanks to the brightness of Chooms talking in a nearby yard or music hitting the street, or shells delaying over the head. It is quite good to focus on more competitive games. I decided that in the final it is good for sound positioning and I could easily understand clear steps and shots from a distance of the distance. However, I had to implement a prudent microphone to talk to Discord.

Picture 1 With 3

The LCD-S20 is also the only headphone set that I have worn for many years, which allows my partner to creep on me without even trying. My partner put a cocktail on the desk when I wrote this review and it scared me to death. I played it chilly; She had no idea.

It is absorbed in playing games or listening to the latest music. Planar Magnetic is a great way to experience the sound most of the time, and Auduze knows how to do good, but more, and I talked about it in a separate piece, Good Sound insulation compared to the mediocre energetic noise cancellation is day and night.

In the case of traveling yes, Anc makes sense, but in the case of computer games, the passive features of LCD-S20 make it much more widely effective in blocking external sounds than most energetic systems on game headphones. Even with the Alienware 16-51 area at my side, trying to disperse me, LCD-S20 kept me in his own ecstatic bubble, unaware of the confusion outside. This, if you want to block the sound of your laptop for games, you can look for a pair of headphones or a headphone set, which is easier to drive-as I mentioned earlier, you really need a dedicated amplifier to make the best utilize of LCD-S20.

In the case of players who want to isolate themselves from a boisterous environment, LCD-S20 is my favorite way to do it. Even completing Acezone A-Spire for blocking all unwanted sounds. Although LCD-S20 has immovable competition from its own ranks: Audeze Maxwell offers a similar shape and construction, wireless functionality and a lower price. There is no SLAM technology, and wireless connectivity does not offer the same OPH as a dedicated DAC/AMP through a wired connection, but it is a very tempting offer for a PC player. Probably more than professional LCD-S20.

Although there is something for players AND Audiofils with LCD-S20. Noise insulation, depth and sound range, detailed bass reaction and a type of long -term comfort you get thanks to the seriously massive Earpadom. For deliberate listening and pulling games, he provides everything you can ask for, although its price will see that he will give up only a high -class configuration, even more than a couple of more affordable Audeze Maxwell, and I would still bend towards open projects for most audiophiles.

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