Anyone who compared the lcd5 with the HEKse?
HEKse is a bright af headphone that murders my ears with treble while LCD-5 is smooth as butter in the treble, they present sound very differently lol
I am thinking about my next upgrade (from lcd-x, elex, 600 etc) and looking agt LCD-5 and Susvara among others. For LCD-5, what would be some good enough (say 95% enough, but maybe not the best) solid state, fairly transparent AMP/DAC? Something suitable for desk use, nothing massively big. Currently, I have Element II as my amp/dac. any advice?
I have the Burson Soloist 3XP and think it pairs very nicely with my LCD-5
Generally speaking my recommendation is something neutral to warm, ideally a powerful class A.
I power it with Denafrips Ares II DAC and HeadAmp GS-X mini amp and it’s marvelous. Also tried the Burson Soloist 3X Performance which was great but a little less to my liking.
It also worked well with a RME ADI-2 DAC FS but more on the clinical side. That might work depending on the type of music you listen to.
I’m sure the Schiit Jot 2 will be nice with it. When I heard it on the Bryston it was also great but a tad dull.
I’ll be trying a ifi iCan Pro Signature later this week.
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I know my GSX Mini / DENAFRIPS Ares II rocks my 4z nicely; good to hear they work well with the LCD5 also. I need to do the firmware and driver update on the dac, always put it off maybe I will get around to it someday. Sounds great just the way it is so not real motivated to fool with it honestly. I sure would like to audition the LCD5 so I could compare to my 4z, which still sounds so darn good I often wonder why I would spend a bunch of money to update it really.
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Might try a Hugo 2 for a smallish sized integrated amp / dac solution. Guessing it would drive a LCD5 OK, prolly someone on here could elaborate some.
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I should think a Hugo 2 could get good sound out of an LCD-5 with no problem at all; hopefully you’ll get a chance to try it out!
I love compensated FR graphs like this, it really helps dialing in EQs.
What dac are you using with the soloist 3xp for LCD-5?
can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by the clinical side please? I am okay with dead flat sounds from amp as long as it doesn’t impact headphone’s performance otherwise.
I have the Bifrost 2
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I would suggest trying out the lcd-5 first on the element. Then decide what kind of sound you’d like to tilt the lcd-5 to after spending time with it. In other words, ask yourself what you would change or what you don’t like about the element sound-wise. Then base your decision around that, and you’ll be rewarded with good synergy right from the start. Just my 2 cents…
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To my ears when I moved from the RME as an amp to the GSX as the amp with the RME as a DAC and then later added the Ares as the DAC it just became more musical along the way - a bit warmer tone, a little wider soundstage, treble rolled off just a bit maybe?, timbre more natural. I might lost a bit of the quickness but the 5 is so fast it doesn’t really bother me.
It also might just be my ears and new gear bias…
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Anyone tested the LCD-5 with the Little Labs Monotor? I´m looking for a small-ish amp with balanced (xlr) input. Around $1000. No need for a dac.
Are there any other good alternatives out there? The LCD-5 has pretty low impedance and sensitvity. I’m a mixer and like features like a mono button and so on. Thanks
I had the LCD-5 driven from a Topping A30 Pro (balanced input but single topology, does have XLR output) and it was absolutely fine. You can get better sound quality but it’s definitely in the diminishing returns realm. I don’t know what you would consider as “small-ish” but the Burson Soloist 3XP isn’t too big and can be found for under 1000 used easily. Singxer SA-1 would also be great for less than 1K
I have the relatively small and <$1K Monoprice Liquid Gold X (a relicense of the Cavalli LG design). I’m finding that this amp is lights out with planar, any planar. It’s quite powerful and has relatively high gain…so it would be ideal to use it with a DAC whose output is closer to the nominal 2.0 volt output standard that one of the higher output DACs.
This amp really lights up my Final D8000 (relatively high efficiency planar) as well as my ZMF Ori (power hog planar).
Cool! I’m looking for transparency. Since I’ll be using the LCD-5 for mixing. Maybe the Topping is great for that? What’s the best transparent amp out there? At any price. Are there any point in buying a expensive one versus the Topping?
Not if you care about measurements and nothing else, no. I dunno if that’s a mixing requirement or not.
Would recommend a Benchmark AHB2, most transparent and best measuring amplifier to date, have one myself and will not sell it….ever…and if used with a dac with volumecoktrol it can drive any headphones without a sweat!
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