Audeze: what they publish

In this database21 headphones
Figures from their own material20 of 21
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This page does not review anything Audeze makes. It counts one thing: how much of what this database says about their products came out of their own documents, and how much had to be worked out or left blank.

Where each sensitivity figure came from

ModelImpedanceSensitivitySource of the figure
CRBN200 Ω—Not published
Euclid12 Ω105.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-116 Ω99.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-270 Ω101.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-2 Classic70 Ω101.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-2 Closed-Back70 Ω101.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-3110 Ω101.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-4200 Ω97.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-4Z15 Ω98.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-514 Ω90.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-5s35 Ω90.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-GX20 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-i320 Ω110.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-i432 Ω110.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-MX420 Ω105.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-S2018 Ω93.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-X 202120 Ω103.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
LCD-XC20 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
MM-10018 Ω98.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
MM-50018 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
MM-52018 Ω102.0 dB/mWPublished per mW

Impedance is almost always printed. Sensitivity is the one that goes wrong, because a decibel figure means two very different things depending on whether it is per milliwatt or per volt — about five decibels apart at 300 Ω and eighteen at 16 Ω. The conversion is here.

  • Published per mW — 20: the maker prints a decibel figure per milliwatt, which is what the database stores
  • Not published — 1: no sensitivity figure in anything the maker published

What they print, and what it is worth

ModelAs printedToleranceStandard
CRBN20Hz - 40kHznot printednot printed
Euclid10Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-110Hz - 50KHznot printednot printed
LCD-210Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-2 Classic10Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-2 Closed-Back10Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-310Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-45Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-4Z5Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-55Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-5s5Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-GX10Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-i310Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-i410Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-MX410Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-S2010Hz - 40kHznot printednot printed
LCD-X 202110Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
LCD-XC10Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
MM-10020Hz - 25kHznot printednot printed
MM-5005Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed
MM-5205Hz - 50kHznot printednot printed

Audeze prints a frequency range for all 21 models here whose sheets have been read.

Not one of those ranges comes with a tolerance in decibels. Without a ±dB figure a range says nothing about how loud the headphone is at either end of it, which puts Audeze with the majority: of the 490 models across this database whose maker prints a range, 58 print the tolerance.

Every range stands under the same heading: “Frequency response”.

No measurement is published here — only what was printed. The whole count, maker by maker, is in the frequency response audit.

What reaches 100 dB on all 20

The hardest of the 20 to drive is the Audeze LCD-4: 2.0 mW and 0.63 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 12 to 200 Ω, which matters because the voltage a headphone wants rises with impedance while the power falls.

274 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on all 20, and the cheapest of them is the Apple USB-C dongle (US) at $9. “Reaches” means the maker’s own published power figure is enough at that load; it is not a judgement of how it sounds.

On hiss the count is smaller, because most of the industry does not publish a noise figure at all: of the 83 sources here that do, 66 stay under the threshold of hearing on all 3 of their in-ears. The one to watch is the Audeze LCD-i3 at 127 dB/V — the more sensitive the in-ear, the more of the amplifier’s own noise you hear.

Their lowest impedance is the Audeze Euclid at 12 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 1.5 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 129 of the 169 sources that publish an output impedance manage that.

These counts use figures the source makers published themselves. A product that publishes nothing is not counted as a pass anywhere above, which is why the three numbers differ so much. The collection matcher runs the same arithmetic over whatever you actually own.

What the paperwork adds up to

Almost everything this site says about Audeze came from them. That is not the normal case and it is worth saying out loud.

The rule used here is the same for every maker and is described on the manufacturer index. Every figure behind it can be opened on the product page it came from, with the document it came from linked.

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