I know less than everyone else here about this new LCD flagship. But I take note of the comments about tuning.
I have a perception, partly based on experience & partly on reading reviews/comments–that there is a trend among TOTL planars away from bassy, warm, organic sound, and towards higher resolution, brighter, leaner, faster sound. A few examples:
-
Recently I owned, then sold a Kennerton Odin “Thridi,” their former TOTL planar. I bought it because it was described (in essence) as the last of the slightly warm, bassy planars. Indeed, the 3 flagship Kennerton planars that followed are all routinely described as more detailed, less warm, less bassy, and higher in resolution
-
I had, then sold the original Meze Empyrean. Its tuning was prototypical TOTL planar circa 5 years ago: bassy, somewhat warm, and moderate resolution. It has since been superceded by the new, more expensive “Elite” variant, universally described as less warm, more accurate & details, with more treble energy
-
I have the original Final D8000, Final’s TOTL circa 2017. It is definitely a higher resolution planar than many I’d heard, but also retains slight warmth, bassiness, and musicality. It has since been superceded by the D8000 Pro, universally described as less bassy, less warm, more detailed.
-
This same trend has long been underway at Hifiman, where the TOTL (sitting above the warm, bassy, musical HEX v2) was for several years the HE1000. That’s one of the brighter, more tipped up planars I’d ever heard. It has since been superceded as their flagship by the very expensive Susvara, often described as having a high resolution, tipped up sound.
None of this is good news for me. I seek the same qualities in headphones (regardless of driver type) that I once did from big 2-channel speakers: a music-first, slightly warm, bassy, organic sound that more closely tracks what I hear in live music in real spaces.
It appears the long-time standoff between musical sound vs clinical/accurate sound continues, with the latter gaining ground in headphone audio, just as it did in speaker audio. I know it’s possible to “marry” these 2 sonic profiles–to have a high resolution, clear treble transducer that is also highly musical (Exhibit A is the ZMF Verite Open). I just wish there were more such hybrid-sound options among the big/bad planars du jour.