Youāre fully entitled to state your opinion. However, instead of starting and stopping there you went and started arguing that your setup is just fine for the clear. Multiple people with experience say itās not at all, and you keep saying it is.
Normally I would say that this is the case, but as weāve been saying again and again, you are not hearing the Clears the way they were designed / intended. Signature-wise you may be able to tell approximately what you like and donāt like with the stack you have, but without a good enough stack you cannot accurately judge the headphone. Therefore, your conclusions are flawed and unhelpful to people looking at the cans seriously. Detrimental, if anything. The only relevant information on the Clears that you have provided is that the Atom is nowhere near sufficient to run the Clears and that the Clears go for a neutral signature with a potentially metallic sounding top end.
Iām definitely not the end-all-be-all of headphone reviewers or the arbiter of truth in audio, but this is really stupid.
Audio measurements are mostly unhelpful. DACs that measure poorly can sound phenomenal and DACs that measure well (and use it as advertising) can generally sound bad. Measurebaiters are a real issue.
Sigh, then stick with the D50 forever. Or get a Geshelli DAC if you like measurements so much. At the very least itāll probably sound better than the D50. I can state for a fact though, that DACs matter. Especially as your equipment gets better (more revealing, more details, quieter backgrounds, quicker transients) DACs make more of an audible difference. You are highly unlikely to hear a significant sq difference between low end dacs with low end headphones unless you listen really hard. A lot of what youāre hearing with the Clear being lifeless is almost entirely to do with the DAC. The amp is not helping at all either.
Can confirm Iāve spent quite a lot more on DACs, as have quite a few people on the forum. We do so because we hear a difference. All I can say without being mean.
sigh
Youāre gonna have a really bad time with the LCD-X if you use the same stack, just telling you now. A safer bet would be an Ananda or DT 1990. Those are pushing the limits of what the stack should push ok.
Also, the sundara and he-400 (both of which I owned for a long time) should run fine off the stack. I personally would never do it (as I donāt like the sound sig of the stack at all), but you arenāt doing a disservice to those cans with that stack. The HE-500 should be fairly similar. The LCD-X on the other handā¦
Iāll say it again, go buy an HD800 instead. That fits your stated preferences. Though, again, your stack wonāt drive them well. However, this time around you wonāt have a can that you dislike the tuning of.
