As an Audeze LCDi4 owner, I feel outraged by your mention of LCDi3 inside a timbre thread (just kidding ).
I made my mind that three things that are usually considered cons in most headphones reviews (and things in your chain that makes them more apparent) are usually a sign of headphones with better timbre (at least when it comes to overtones): sibilance, cymbals that make your ears bleed and the ones deemed as bright. I just didn’t know why, but after a 4 month online piano tuning course, I realized they make really easy to hear the beats used as reference for tuning unisons and they sound really more like the real experience.
In iems, I feel silicone tips are better than foam tips for timbre. And I won’t get into the snake oil territory of cables, but among a few I have tested, I do feel there are better ones for timbre when I tested some. I mention this because better timbre does not mean like a real piano is there, as for example, I’ve experienced a improvement in timbre with worsening stage that is also part of the feels like you are in the same room of the recorded piano.
I feel your outrage. But I started this thread, so I gave myself permission. I can’t say that I haven’t been LCDi4 curious, but can they be that much better? And since there are few IEMs that I can really tolerate for any period, can they be worth it to me? I fear trying the usual TOTL IEMs as I find so many uncomfortable, and it’s not easy to get a pair to try. I feel that buying with a full intent to send things back if they aren’t perfect to be rude.
What silly cone tips do you like? I’ve tried most of the ones that I can find that fit. Usually they are not snug in the ear or else they are quite uncomfortable. You know how the LCDi3/4 iSINE line is - they are happy to fit without a seal, but if you do that, you completely lose bass definition.
While I’ve been using the Cipher cable, I found better definition - although not perhaps a timbre change when I drove them with the standard cable using the FiiO and Roon’s Audeze preset. I have James at Hart Audio making me a silver cable for them to try with this combo (balanced). In the past, I have noted a slight difference (SLIGHT SLIGHT ALL OF YOU WHO KNOW I’M NOT A CABLE GUY) with a silver cable.
The tips I use are from acoustune, I use them with 64 audio Tia Fourte Noir, I did not test other ones with the LCDi4. I get your feeling of returning things, buy as I live in Brazil returning is often not possible or too expensive to make things worse, I usually have to buy gear without testing and without return guarantee. I recently tested an audioquest diamond usbc to usbc cable thinking it would be my endgame solution, but that one was too expensive and the performance with my gear was so ordinary that is the only gear I have ever returned. It is the most expensive I tested. Cable is really a dangerous territory, I try not to get to much involved and I test more things that are not overly expensive (except for the AQ I just mentioned) so that I can try more than one and stay with the one my ears prefer (or change when I want something different). I think they are an expensive way of eq’ing things (which most people just think as the wrong way), but most of the cases I can’t achieve by myself to the same results with eq. I may write someday some subjective experience with cables in a cable thread.
There was a time that I really enjoyed the LCDi4, I used them as my full size (I sold all my previous gear to get the LCDi4 and the Fourte Noir at that time). I can’t say how much difference there is between them and the LCDi3, the LCDi3 launched just a little after I purchased the LCDi4, I remember feeling bad because the LCDi3 is easier to drive and I just bought for one reason: open sound, big image, light and comfortable seemed perfect to be used with digital piano. At the time I don’t remember to see the negative review I see nowadays and how the eq in cypher cable is almost mandatory. In my experience, I would suggest to not try the LCDi4 and use the extra money to test other things. I bought the Acro CA1000 with just the LCDi4 in mind as I would have the ability to eq it to its glory, but now I ser I’m too lazy to eq (and I think you have to make a really good eq to make it worth, as eq in the AK seems to affect the sound negatively).
To Polygonhell’s thesis, I think it may be simpler, and less cognitively challenging, than that. We obsess endlessly on the music, the recording, and the reproduction of those sounds – the “send” part of the equation – but tend to forget altogether about the “receive” aspect: our internal gear. Anyone who has had their hearing tested has seen the graphs produced, plotting the capabilities our own cranial equipment. I know that after misspent decades playing in bands, schlepping for bands, hanging around bands, and listening to bands, my original equipment has been roughly treated and no longer performs anything like it did when I bought my first copy of Sgt Peppers.
So if there is undeniably enormous variability in how humans receive and actualize the sounds hitting their eardrums, it is remarkable that we reach any kind of consensus at all about what sounds “best.” The answer, I am convinced, is they all sound best to someone.
As for the original point made waaaay up-thread by @pennstac about the particular challenge of reproducing the piano, I can only agree. It is maddeningly difficult to find a reproduced piano that comes anywhere close to the real thing. MUCH harder than with any other instrument I can think of
).