Sennheiser Veil

[Gualtar Pennington]

For many years I've used the Sennheiser HD600 phones. It's an old model, released in 1997, but in quite a few ways it's still an audiophile-class dynamic transducer. Later models such as the HD650 or the HD800 have addressed some of its perceived weaknesses, while allegedly introducing issues of their own, depending on who you ask. There's still disagreement as to which is the top player in this game, but a lot of people will still reach to their 600 cans when they need accurate sound reproduction - and I'm one of them, although I consider myself open-minded.

But some years ago a new major player appeared, spearheading the second big wave of planar technology. The company is called Audeze and their first important product, the LCD-2, made a big splash. Using a new (actually, resurrected from decades ago) technology, and with a sound signature of their own, they were bound to stir up controversy. And sure enough they did. I was intrigued.

Recently I was able to do an A/B comparison of these phones, my trusty old HD600 against a shiny new LCD-2, thanks to Audio High at their store in Mountain View. Their test equipment is excellent and Eugene runs the show in the demo room with aplomb. The bake-off was done on the Chord Red Reference CD Player with the Chord CPA 5000 Reference Preamplifier.

The opening song, No Man's Land, is a snappy piece of synthesizers / sequencers woven mesh of sounds. The rhythm is focused and never lacks any energy. There's reverb aplenty, but the sound is not exactly airy - there's still a good dose of grit therein.

This was also my first ever encounter with Audeze, after years and years of listening to this song on Sennheiser (HD600 and HD280) and Grado (SR-125 and iGrado). And immediately I thought - yeah, I can hear "the veil". Or can I? It's... subtle, just barely there, but there's clearly a difference. Whereas the HD600 shine and sparkle (and the Grado fizz and pop and boil all over the stove), the LCD-2 just show you the soundscape and go "what you hear is what you get, duh".

Oh, there was no lack of detail with either phone. I don't think there's any sound element that you can hear with one, that you cannot hear with the other. That was the remarkable thing. You don't lose any information with either device. But they have somewhat different characters.

As expected, the LCD-2 did very, very well with the bass. It's not the hugely bloated, muddy, ugly bass of some mass-produced Beats or Bose phones or whatever. But it's not the thin, slightly "theoretical" bass of the HD600 either. It's just a flat response, but it stretches out forever and ever and ever, deep into the deepest rumbles down below. You can feel too, not only hear, the synthetic percussion in the LCD-2.

By this point, I was already not thinking anymore in terms of "Audeze veil", but rather in terms of "Sennheiser sparkle". Sure, the HD600 just shines at high frequencies; but I was beginning to wonder if that shine is a bit of an added polish. In other words, the accuracy/realism absolutist in me was starting to doubt that the more forward treble in the HD600 is actually the more accurate sound.

Oh, the HD600 does reverb just great. Sure it presents a wealth of texture and detail. But (and I still hesitate to put it this way, and please forgive the blasphemy) are they basically cheating? I still don't know; this is my completely honest answer as of now.

Meanwhile the LCD-2 was handling the hefty, warlike drums on this album (and, indeed, the whole sound, across the whole spectrum) with authority and unmatched transparency. In fact, "authority" is a word that comes back again and again when thinking of the Audeze sound. There's just nothing loose in it. Those massive, high-power magnets manhandling the breezy nanoscale membrane in the transducers might have something to do with it.

Maybe old Sennheiser heads might scoff here at me saying that the Audeze are "transparent" at high frequencies. I know what you're thinking, because part of me thinks that way too. But the question that occurred to me here was: have we all been "brainwashed" by the Sennheiser sound? Are our brains now fine tuned to that sparkle? In my case, it's probably worse, because I've also been accustomed to the fizzy, electric, bright Grado sound.

I had real trouble distinguishing the two phones at mid-frequencies, where the voices are. There are clear differences everywhere else in the spectrum, but not here. Sure, their respective characters remain, with the HD600 airy and "theoretical", and the LCD-2 immediate and "real". But beyond that surface, the fundamentals are the same - excellent reproduction of lush, expressive vocal sequences. Everything else I've said above remains true for most songs on this album, so no point repeating it.

You see, among all nations the Irish know best how to party. You can hear it in their music. And when they grab the violin and play some fiery jig, it's impossible to just sit down and listen. You've got to get up and dance. Or just tap, whatever. That's how I feel when listening to that song - it's such a direct, honest expression of plain joy in its dynamic form. When I'm on my death bed, go ahead and play it, and I'll get up and wobble around before expiring.

All parts of that song never come together properly on the HD600. Don't get me wrong, it's wonderfully detailed, I can hear everything with great clarity. There's no part that's obscured or muddled, and all instruments simply shine. And I don't care. It's like looking at a bug under a lens.

And then I've switched to the LCD-2. Dear Lord, what have I done. The sound of the big drum is coming out of the freaking floor! The band is here, playing in this room! Hold my beer, cause I need to get up and dance.

I don't have a good explanation for it. It's not like the LCD-2 are "bright", or "colored", or "forward-sounding". They're totally not it. They're not optimized for the "experience", they're optimized for accuracy. And they fly in formation with the HD600 all through the stratospheric skies of electronic music. But pull them down on the earth of some fine Irish pop music, played from the heart, and what a difference that makes. Yes, they're still analytical. Yes, they're still detail-oriented. But all those different sounds converge into a single body, and that body has a soul - and some good muscles too, for handling the drums and the bass guitar.

This was me stacking the deck in Sennheiser's favor. Harp sounds? Reverb? Crystalline percussion? No bass to speak of? That's HD600 territory, so I put them on for a refresher. Yeap, there it is, the old familiar sound. So let's switch over to the newcomer.

The overall character of the phones is still there, of course, but the "veil" is gone. Or perhaps my brain was at this point de-conditioned from years of listening to Sennheiser. The LCD-2 did very, very well. In any transducer, the initial attack in the sound of plucked strings is very brief, very energetic, very complex, and hard to handle. The LCD-2 had no problem dealing with it. I could hear everything. It was very detailed. It sounded both accurate and pleasing, and without support from any hefty bass to give the Audeze a leg up on competition.

I could go on and on in the way of analysis, but that horse has been thoroughly beaten elsewhere and is dead and buried now. Instead, here's a little joke that occurred to me during the test. This being a joke you shouldn't take it too seriously. But part of me sort of sees things this way now.

The HD600 is like a character by Charlize Theron. Refined, smart, sophisticated? Sure. A little frosty? Um... maybe. But attractive anyway? Oh, hell, yeah. Beautiful in an analytical, detail-oriented sort of way. Nothing quite escapes her attention, everything is registered and processed upstairs. And she can indeed dazzle, turning the glamour on at will.

The LCD-2 is like a character by Daniel Craig. He, too, is plenty smart. Sophisticated? Oh, yeah, he can play that game, too. He may not wear as many sparkly gizmos as the previous character. And he has a sort of Russian deadpan expression on all the time.

But he can be very down to earth and practical. No nonsense, no bullshit. What you see is what you get. And mister "Bond, James Bond" can also punch you in the face, kick you in the chest, throw you down on the floor and stomp all over you. He has the muscles to manhandle the biggest baddies, no problem. He doesn't mess around - and, when he's in the room, there's no doubt where the center of authority is.

I've listened to Beethoven's Symphony No.9 "the Choral" (interpreted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe - an excellent performance both artistically and technically). And while the Ode to Joy is resplendent on any high-end transducers, the LCD-2 excels at building up the foundation - the sound has a material heft that's not easily found anywhere else.

This is not simply about "bass response", although that's clearly part of it - not how emphasized the bass is (because it's not emphasized at all, it's the flattest you've ever heard), but how deep and deeper, on and on it goes. But that's not all. It's the deadpan, organic, non-jittery slam that these transducers deliver with rapid sound variations. "Authority" is one way to put it, but without any fake sharp edges. You can hear the instruments as material presences, not just disembodied voices.

Frequency response is not the whole story. In Foobar2000 I've fired up the MathAudio Headphone EQ plugin and attempted to "flatten" the frequency response of the LCD-2 as I hear it, using the sweep function. The results were a bit strange (which is why I've said this can't be the whole story):

That's just me mucking around with it for 20 minutes, and it's not perfect, there are ways to make it sound flatter. But for a pair of phones that have been described as "a little dark" it's curious how you have to depress the response in a few places in the mid-high range. The tall peak around 8 kHz is where a lot of shenanigans happen and it's just a vague approximation of the many ripples you can hear there. The last peak in the high frequencies is just me not being 20 anymore.

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