Thanks for the reply!
I was reading about the RNHP today and was very attracted to the reviews (and I also love the way it looks). That plus a DAC does put its coast a bit higher than I was planning but I have the budget to push a little higher. When you say the RNHP is picky about headphones what do you mean exactly? My other headphones are (will be) the argon mk3 and Sony MDR-7506 besides the LCDX.
Previous LCD-X owner here. I listened to a shop at this headphone during the end of 2019 as i was looking for a pair for electronic music reproduction. I went there with my macbook pro and my RME ADI 2 DAC using the internal amp. It sounded great really for the purpose. I finally listened the deepest detail in bass domain. I didnt use any EQ . I found my headphone for sure.
Then i started to save money and I bought a new pair at 2020, the latest revision. I unboxed it, plugged it in and it was the worst headphone i ever heard. I just was so dissapointed, something it was off, no bass with a bump in 850hz to 1k and so much air with artificial midsā¦ I started then to experiment with 5 band parametric EQ and really became a different headphone and close to one that i remembered (but not the same for sure)
After that i bought the RNHP to drive it, as i was thinking that maybe this amp will give it some help but the bass became like muddy and the bass detail was missing again. The rest of the spectrum improved but just a touch. Any other headphone from my collection came to life with RNHP but LCD-X was notā¦ It sounded its best with RME internal amp and proper EQ.
I sold it and bought and AFC with a Mojo for travel purposes as i couldnt justify the LCDX unit variation, mids with not correct timbre and weight. It really hearts to spend a speaker money to a headphone and be a lottery. And if someone doesnt want or know how to use EQ its really a risk.
I dont want to influence someone not to buy it but i had to write my experience. The best is to listen first and buy the specific unit if its fine.
Good luck 
Youāre welcome!
The RNHP is a bit power limited - specificially current limited - which means it can struggle with many planar-magnetic headphones. The LCD-X is an exception to that rule because it is relatively easy to drive for a planar. In audio, we also talk about āsynergyā, which basically just means how well indiviudal components work together. Like soundstage and imaging, synergy really canāt be measured with the measuring equipment currently available but can very much be heard by a listener. The RNHP synergizes really well with a few headphones - LCD-X, Focal Clear, and some of the high-impedance Beyers come to mind - but is considered to be merely ok with many other heapdhones. Good chance the RNHP would really struggle with the Argon, for example.
Your KA 6 interface can serve as a functional DAC until funds recover enough, assuming you spend money on an amp right now and get a DAC a little further down the road. In the price ranges weāre talking about here itās usually a good idea to prioritize spending in the order of headphone, amp, then dac anyway.
Now you are scaring me, haha. My LCD-X arrive on Tuesday. I bought them used (they are from a 2019 batch) and the guy that sold them to me had nothing but good things to say about this set butā¦he was selling them and who knows what his taste is.
That said, your description of the first pair you bought is pretty much why I went the LCD-X route but Iāve read a wide range of experiences making me think yes there is a lot a QC issues.
Also your experience with the LCDX and the RNHP sounds very different to say WaveTheoryās description but maybe that comes down to the unit you had.
What headphone do you use these days?
Edit: You have the AFC. Is that the AEON or the AKG?
I have also been flirting a bit with Lcd x.
But in the end I decided on the Lcd 2 c.
Because supposedly you can hear a bit more out of it than with the lcd 2 c, so I couldnāt quite justify the extra price of the lcd x. I might keep this option open for an upgrade.
Apart from that, I am totally happy with the lcd 2 c.
And it runs extremely well with the Singxer Sda 2 C, which has exceeded my expectations.
Except for Hip Hop, itās really great.
Apart from the Singxer Sda2 C, I can also offer the Questsyle cma400i as a dac/amp, or the used Cma6000i or the Questyle twelve.
These should drive the Lcd X without any major problems and without having to make any major sacrifices.
Your idea of priorities is helpful to consider. Thanks!
Oh its definitely the unit i had, the issue that i described with RNHP! I dont want to scare you really, it was just a bad moment i had during the journey.
I have the Aeon flow closed yes. My daily drivers are the Aeon Flow open with RNHP and an HD650 with and OTL tube amp/RNHP for solid state. AFC sounds best with RME internal amp. Somehow the RME has cleaner bass which is usefull to electronic genre tracks that i am listening to like dub reggae, ambient dub and dub techno. Those genres suit best the RME/AFC combo. The rest are served through the rest headphones and RNHP. This amp is quite an improvement over the RME amp in many aspects. Its expensive for the improvement you receive but for sure its there. I value weight and timbre and after listening to multiple headphones below 1.2K price range, i concluded these 3 but this is my subjective opinion of course.
One day i wish i would have the LCDX sound that i heard at first with an Ether 2 weight. I believe that it will happen during the evolution of headphones.
ENOG 2 Pro does not have USB input. Just so you know. I have a pair of LCD-X myself, and I really recommend using EQ to bump up the upper midrange as well as adding more sub bass.
LCD X has gone through a number of revisions. You may just need to track down the variant that you were listening to.
I received my LCD-X today and have spent the last 5 hours listening, eqāing, and comparing them to my other headphones. Just wanted to give my first day impression and maybe update again later. This is my first set of high end headphones that I mostly bought with the intent to mix on and listen to music as a reference set of cans. I am listening to it on a old interface (Komplete audio 6) and a old headphone amp (Fiio e09k) that I will be updating in the near future.
People are right when they say this headphone needs EQ. I used the reveal plugin in equalizer APO but felt the change was just too subtle so I added a few other slight adjustments which were an extra boost around the 6300-12500 range and a boost to the sub. This made things less tin like.
I also tried the fixed band Harman 1990 adjustment I found here and that was a pretty good adjustment just by itself. As of now I am sticking with that.
The first hour of listening, I must admit, didnāt blow me away. It was only in comparison to my other headphones that I could really appreciate what the LCD-X was bringing to the table. I now understand what a flat articulate headphone truly sounds like but I am a little surprised of the cost of this headphone to get into this realm.
In comparison to my Sony MDR-7506 the clarity is night and day and its shocking I used them for so long to mix music and listen to music now that Iāve heard them against the LCD-X. When comparing against the T50RP (only modded with upgraded pads) the difference has shown me a lot. The T50RP (soon to be upgraded to Argons) have a clear v shape and come off very warm in sound. This comparison also really highlights the articulation and flat response of the X. It also reinforces for me how fun and nice the T50RPās are! Damn I love that headphone and hope I still love it after it becomes an Argon. The way the T50RP colors to sound, lets the bass kick through, and creates space in the mix is a really comfortable place to be. That and the actual comfort of the T50RP with upgraded pads and lighter weight just makes it a joy to wear after wearing the X for an extended period of time.
That brings me to comfortā¦I would give these a 5 out of 10 for comfort. They do what they can but when in contrast to lighter softer padded headphones they just canāt compete and actually make switching to another headphone a joy.
In general the LCD-X is a very analytical headphone (which is exactly what I wanted!) it has a pretty neutral sound across the board. The bass isnāt as punchy and present as I was expecting after reading reviews but it is present and punchy on tracks that emphasize bass (and after a little EQ boost). At first I was a little disappointed about this but now I appreciate it because it seems more accurate to the recording from song to song rather than trying to bring something out that maybe wasnāt as strong in the mix. The highs do seem a bit lackluster even after EQ. This is the one area I wish there was a bit more presence in general, maybe this has to do with my amp? (which I am surprised about because I like a darker sound).
I think the X will be great for mixing and mastering and look forward to putting it to use. I also now know I like the contrast of a warm āfunā headphone to trade off against the analytical sound of the X. Now I just need to find the right Amp and Dac to upgrade too!
Some songs I used for comparison.
Jim James - Hide in Plain Sight
Flying Lotus - Zodiac Shit
Fela Kuti and Ginger Baker - Lets Start (live)
Klaus Johann Grobe - Discogedanken
Black Willow - Loma
Question for you guys.
I am using a .flac file played in VLC and running an EQ I like for the LCD-X in Equalizer APO. Then in the DAW I work in (Ableton Live) I have pulled in the same .flac file and added the same EQ settings to my master track using only Abletons internal EQ. I expected there to be a difference in the EQ in Ableton but the difference is much bigger than I thought. The sound out of Ableton is a lot more rich and the EQ feels much more dialed in.
I think this is being caused strictly by the quality of Abletonās EQ because when I remove the EQ from each, APO and Ableton, the .flac file sounds almost identical. This was a long way to ask if there is a higher quality EQ I could be running on my system besides APO or do you think there is something else going on I am not considering?
Ableton would get kicked out of the market over night if they underperformed in sound quality.
Thanks for posting these EQ settings. I just loaded them all into Peace APO and A/B/Cād them against the Harman 1990 I found here. Unfortunately there are not Q settings for the Harman.
The Harman maybe sounds the most flat but really lacks low end and depth while the Sonarworks sounds a bit too muffled, but the Crinacle (12) sounds really good! The Crinacle feels like there is more space and separation and the low end sounds more detailed. I think it will be my new go to.
Listening to Budos Band - Natureās Wrath and other songs
Only question is what is number 2 supposed to be? You have it as 44 Hz but I entered 144 Hz, maybe 244 Hz?
Got these today and initial impressions are they may be my favorite headphone so farā¦
Iāve got HE6seV2, Arya, Clear, HD600, and LCD-X atm.
Bass detail is incredible, Iām hearing sounds I havenāt heard before in tracks Iāve heard countless times.
Still early going my gut reaction is sell everything but these and Arya.
Iāll do more listening over the next few weeks and see what happens from there.
Headphones.com did a livestream yesterday and Andrew was wearing the LCD-X. He let slip that there may have been some sort of revision to the tuning of the LCD-X that will result in it sounding better to more people right out of the box, and that fewer people would need to EQ it. He wasnāt able to comment further, and said to watch out for a mention of the change online from Audeze. If this is the case, Iād look at getting another set after selling my last ones, as I found the FR to be really odd and didnāt want to have to worry about EQ profiles.
I know many prefered the FR tuning of the X closed. I wonder if they got closer to that. I have a slightly older, before the metal grill version and i know one person here has a pf X. I feel like audeze is getting like vineyards with vintages.
They also did mention with an Audeze rep that they seem to have a bit of things coming this year, aimed more towards the higher end. So lets see!
So I decided to pick up the LCD-X again, as Iām using a free trial of Roon and wanted to see if I could do anything with EQ to make them sound better. Iād previously owned the LCD-X, but despite their many virtues just couldnāt quite get used to what I perceived to be a heavily recessed upper-midrange.
The version Iāve got now is the latest revision of the Creator Package that comes with what Audeze describe as their āEconomyā travel case, which is actually a pretty great storage option that isnāt too large and looks pretty cool.
This new set that I have sounds nothing like my first pair. The midrange recession is gone, and theyāre actually now the opposite - a little bit shouty and bright. The bass is slightly leaner, and they sound overall far more neutral than the first pair I had, which were very dark and chocolatey. I donāt know if this is part of it, but the pads also feel different - theyāre not sitting against my head in the same way, the foam feels lighter and more springy, and while they look thick enough, I have the sense of them being shallower.
I just thought Iād flag this up, as I did hear that Audeze may have revised the default tuning, though this could also be another example of how different samples of this headphone can vary. This is a very significant variance though - it sounds like a totally different pair of headphones to me.
Iāve asked Audeze for the frequency response graph for this sample (which Iāve seen elsewhere they can provide for you if you send your serial number).
I picked up a pair of these in a trade a few weeks ago and Iāve been very pleased with them, even without EQ (July 2020 mfg date). I like them so much that I was watching LCD-XC postings on eBay and snagged one of those as well (late 2020 carbon fiber cups).
My dilemma now is which of these do I keep? Iāve somehow justified to myself that I can keep 3 kilobuck cans if theyāre different enough and Iāve already got the Arya occupying 1/3 slots. That leaves LCD-X/XC as 2 & 3 but I also just bought the Clear Mg Pro after selling my OG Clear that wasnāt getting enough playtime.
Iām leaning toward keeping the XC, assuming I like the Clear Mg, because their default tonality actually reminds me a lot of the HE6se V2 that I recently sold. The Roon preset EQ for the XC makes them sound very similar to the LCD-X, maybe missing a touch of soundstage and a tad of bass oomph surprisingly, but pretty close overall. Also, it would be nice to have a closed-back sometimes.
Maybe the Clear Mg Pro will fail to āwowā me, but just based on looks alone it will be hard to give up. I actually already ordered a custom matching cable for them 
I thought the OG Clear was great but the LCD-X unseated it as my #2 because of dat bass. Itās not overwhelming in quantity, but the quality is bananas. The LCD-XC is very close.
I still canāt decide, (because when do I need a closed back?) but Iāll keep listening to both and then pit them against the Clear Mg Pro and make my (final?) decision. The Arya arenāt going anywhere
(Iāve also got T60RP Argons being converted, about 7 weeks into the wait.)
In a busy house i would love a closed back. As long as my ears are ok with the slight extra pressure.
Audeze has come out with more info regarding the lcd-x and xc revisions. There was info on it in the head-fi forums.