RD-R - rhythmdevils modded LCD-R reviews and measurements

Rhythm - since you have a bunch of pads around and I'm sure you've tested them all by now - can you give some insight on a straight factory Audeze Pleather -> Audeze Leather (with mesh cut) comparison? Did Audeze go with the pleather for economics or are there sonic qualities? The pleather pads are softer than the leather, so compression and seal are slightly different. Pleather gives an almost on-ear coupling with the fazor system. By-design? Maybe... (IMO)

 

I haven't actually tried the pleather Audeze pads except on the LCD-R briefly because it's so painful due to the fazors.

But I can say that with other LCD models, the 2021 leather Audeze pads do not work with the dust material cut out. Resolution increases, but they get a peak in the upper mids.

 

Over on H-F, a gentleman swapped to the leather and was able to gain the comfort and enough space to keep the fazors off the ears. They sound fine with the pleather, but after enough time, they are warm and the fazors creep closer.

 

I got nice 3D printed venting tubes in for the LCD-R and will be loaning them out soon, you might want to hear them before buying expensive leather Audeze pads, just saying...

I'll loan them to LCD-R owners first, then a general tour with the Jottenheim A.

 

That would be me. The fazors are borderline touching when placed perfectly but the tiniest bit off center and they touch my ears.






I kept the mesh screen on and it certainly has helped in terms of comfort for longer listening sessions.

With the older pleather LCD-R pads, I thought I'd put it on my HE6SEv2.

 

Hmmm So Tempted to send you mine to mod. Is the Mod reversible ?

 

It’s not designed to be reversible and I can’t imagine wanting to reverse it. But I do have enough stock parts to reverse a few pairs.

 

Tempted to send mine in to mod as well but with such a limited run, I'm just going to stick with just the pad swapping

Would love to get a hand on those honeycomb grills you use. I asked Arctic Cables to see if they would consider making them as they now have made HiFiMAN grills.

 

Don't do it.

Different orthos need different things. Some need to be more open, some need to be damped more. Even though the Audeze grill is not on the back of the driver directly, it still restricts airflow and thus damps the driver. And the golden metal mesh inside the stock grill further restricts airflow, further damping the driver. Just removing the gold metal mesh does bad things to the way the driver is moving and the sound - just loosens everything up in a bad way. Slower and hazy. So an open grill would be even worse. there's a reason my modded LCD-R has the stock grills and golden mesh intact.

Also, that dust cloth on the leather earpads severely cuts down on resolution. I would cut it out.

 

Thanks for the advice. I've taken it on board and went ahead cutting that dust cloth on the leather ear pads. Do you recommend doing so on the other stock Audeze's (LCD-4, LCD-4z, LCD-X, etc.)? I won't ask questions about any other mods as I understand it'll be a conflict of interest.

 

No. You do get more resolution but they’re tuned to have that dust cloth in place so you actually wind up with a peak in the upper mids that’s harsh. Quite harsh. But I guess if you like John Grados you might like it.

The LCD-R was tuned with no dust cloth just the metal mesh in front of the driver so it works with the LCD-R.

I have no dust cloth on any of my modded Audeze’s just the metal mesh but I’ve changed earpads and done a lot of acoustic changes to re-tune them so it works.

 

RD-R Impressions

I’m very grateful to rhythmdevils for kindly lending me his two modified versions of the LCD-R, the RD-R mk I, which Marv reviewed above, and the newer mk II, which I don’t think has been written about yet. I had the good fortune of being able to spend a month or so with both and to compare them with my stock LCD-R.

The two modified versions, together, are quite different from the LCD-R. All three have some common qualities, among them an appealing combination of a fast, lively but also smooth sound, one that’s really immersive and engaging. The two RD-Rs, though, offer substantial improvements over the original and fix some of the few things I didn’t like about the LCD-R.

While the two RD-Rs have more in common with each other than with the LCD-R, they are also appreciably different from one another. I have a slight preference for the mk I model but I could see many, if not most people preferring the mk II, which is more impressive thanks to its superior resolution, transparency, and speed – it’s a very fast-sounding headphone with an impressive transient response, and I say this as someone who has the Raal SR1a.



Preferences and caveats
I’m in my mid-40s and have suffered some hearing loss. I can’t hear much above 14 kHz. I’m sensitive to too much emphasis in the upper-mids and lower-treble as well as fussy about wanting headphones to be free of congestion, veil, and a closed-in headstage. Excess warmth bothers me, especially when there’s too much mid-bass humpiness, and I grouse a lot about a lack of treble air. I lean more towards the HD 600 than the 650.


Setup
Most of my listening time was with a Mac Mini with Roon (Qobuz and FLAC/ALAC files) via USB -> Yggdrasil A2 (balanced) -> Jot A.

I prefer the Jot A’s bass shelf to be on when listening to rock and electronic music; for classical and jazz, and other music with acoustic instruments, I keep it off.

I haven’t tried my own LCD-R or these headphones from other amps because I don’t want to risk damaging them.



LCD-R impressions, for context and perspective
I got my LCD-R used last April. I liked them from the outset but had something of an unusual experience with them: they had certain characteristics that were less appealing, but the overall sound was so pleasant, magical even, that I deliberately avoided listening critically to them, fearing that by putting my finger on their flaws the spell would be broken. I took this to be a sign that the LCD-R were doing lots of things right but not ideally.

What they do very well is to offer a pleasingly smooth sound, one that comes with a lovely combination of good resolution, for the price (they’re not on the level of the LCD-4), excellent speed and nimble responsiveness from the drivers, with nicely responsive transients, very good microdynamics, and a decent amount of punchiness. They’re invitingly mellow, engaging headphones.

What they do less well mainly has to do with the bass presentation and, as a consequence, their tuning. The bass doesn’t extend very deeply and could be more robust. It has some good mid-bass punch but that emphasis makes the LCD-R a bit too warm for me, edging towards being slightly muffled and congested (or “intimate,” to put it more politely). Making matters worse, the bass isn’t tight enough, which means that while it has some nice tonal qualities, it’s too indistinct and woolly. It sounds almost veiled. Because of all this, the LCD-R aren’t as open and spacious in their staging as I’d like. The overall experience, then, becomes one of being attracted to the headphones’ qualities but being slightly disappointed by these few flaws.

The RD-Rs fix these problems and make a much better version of the LCD-R.



A note on rhythmdevils’ mods
I’m clueless about modding headphones but I gather from Whitney that he

• swapped the stock pads for perforated ones
• introduced a novel venting system between the pads and the baffle
• removed the fazors
• modified the damping system to improve the driver’s performance
• made other changes to the acoustics of the headphones, switching the mesh covering the driver for a more acoustically transparent material, which make the headphones much more open sounding and airier – especially with the mk II version.

Comfort
I don’t usually mention comfort but the ear-grater fazors were painful and left marks on my ears, so I’m glad they’re gone. The stock pads are unpleasant, too – they’re made of some kind of synthetic leather and they don’t breathe well. I’m also not keen on their texture. The alternative pads rhythmdevils uses are really lovely – plush and soft without being overly squishy, and perfectly comfortable for long listening sessions.


RD-R mk I
These sound, in a word, exquisite. I hear them just as rhythmdevils describes them on his website. They have a wonderfully light, highly-responsive and delicate sound, one that’s akin to the speed of electrostats even as they also pull off the neat trick of having more impact and weight than Stax headphones. The mk I are beguiling: I’ve not heard headphones like this before.

They also have something of a tube-like quality. For as fast as they are, and in spite of the more neutral tuning, there’s still a slight hint of warmth and, with it, some slight wetness, which helps prevent the clean and snappy transients from coming across as too aggressive. Even better, with these qualities there’s also a holographic quality to the staging thanks also to the more open and spacious presentation.

The mk I have none of the intimate, congested, muffled sound of the LCD-R; instead, the sound is spacious and very open and quite airy, much more so than any Audeze, ZMF, or Sennheiser headphone I’ve heard outside of the HD 800 series. The staging also offers slightly more depth; vocals are a bit less upfront, not right in front of the eyes, as with the LCD-R, and instead they project slightly farther and wider (but not by much). There are also improvements with the RD-R mk I when it comes to imaging, layering and separation over the LCD-R.

I’m not quite sure what accounts for it or how I can describe it adequately, but the mk I offers a beautifully atmospheric sound. I think this is something to do with the staging qualities combined with the responsiveness and speed of the driver as well as good microdynamics and the pleasing tuning.

The warmth is dialed back significantly. I’d call these pretty neutral headphones – recognizing that defining absolute neutrality is chimerical – but the mk I are not in the least bit sterile or flat. They’re slightly euphonic, leaning ever so slightly towards the warmer side of things.

The bass is much tighter and, as such, comes across as much faster. It no longer sounds sluggish or, as Marv notes above, out of sync with the rest of the frequency spectrum. What’s cool, besides the more precise and clean bass, is its greater heft. The bass is now more impactful and tonally richer and more satisfying. I’m not sure if it extends deeper – it may – but the bass still doesn’t reach down very low into the sub-bass region.

The treble also comes across as even smoother than the LCD-R’s. I hear some edginess or roughness in the LCD-R’s treble at times but with the mk I, that’s gone.

The changes in the tuning mean the mk I has a little less of the sweetness of the original. I think that sweetness owed something to the contrast between the LCD-R’s warmth and its slightly forward, smooth treble combined with the clean, fast transients. Now, with the mk I, the absence of the warmth means that the sweetness is less apparent as a contrast but that the mk I are smoother even as the transients are faster still. All of this, I suppose, contributes to the mk I’s delicate, light touch.



RD-R mk II
The second version is more impressive than the first. It’s quite different. It’s faster. It’s more transparent, meaning that the sound is less colored, more neutral, cleaner, and more resolving. (I understand the acoustic material over the driver is more acoustically open than the mk I’s). It loses some of the euphonic, delicate, atmospheric and sweet sound of the mk I but is just as smooth, perhaps even more so. And, most significantly, the transient attacks are faster, more precise, and cleaner, as in less rounded, and approaching those of the Raal SR1a (which I have, and I compared the two headphones). The mk II is more angular than the rounded, gentler mk I. There’s also slightly less warmth and wetness to the mk II, getting closer to a studio-reference presentation while not being as clinically incisive as the SR1a.

All this is comparative, then: the LCD-R is on the slightly warmer and more gooey side of things; the RD-R mk I is neutral/warm with some subtle wetness.

At first, I thought the mk II were more aggressive and fatiguing than the mk I. But I don’t think this is the case – just that, by comparison, they’re not as delicate and are more energetic or, at least, faster. They may have more treble emphasis. Higher-frequency metallic instruments like cymbals or triangles in orchestral pieces sound cleaner and zingier than the other two versions. This may instead owe something to the transients, though, as I noticed that snare hits are snappier and crisper, too.

I think macro- and micro-dynamics are better from the mk II. They’re more percussive and offer a stronger contrast between louder and quieter passages. Microdynamics are also excellent. I was listening to some well recorded piano concertos and could hear distinct but subtle, complex, and varying reverberations from the piano’s body.

The timbre of acoustic instruments comes across very well with the mk II. Pianos sound convincing. Double basses have the right sense of hollowness to them and come across as nicely woody. There’s some decent bite and blare to brass, with excellent textures and almost a grittiness to the sound, which makes them sound tangible and realistic. (I want to emphasize, then, that the smoothness I’m describing doesn’t mean there aren’t rich textures; it’s not smoothed over). The trumpet, in particular, is excellent but not too piercing, although it sounds a tad thin. String instruments sound good too, with a nice amount of bite. Guitars have a lovely sweetness to them, and you get really clean strikes to notes.

Spoiler: Some Direct Comparisons of LCD-R with the RD-R mk II

Some Direct Comparisons of LCD-R with the RD-R mk II

(Note that for classical music and jazz, the Jot A’s bass shelf is turned off)

Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, Previn/LSO
LCD-R: a bit warm and closed in, stuffy almost; not the best separation or sense of space and air; rich and thick; strings could have more bite; lower brass dominate to some extent and lack definition; lively; the flute is only just audible over the orchestra. RD-R mk II: less warm, more neutral; lower brass not so boomy or prominent, better defined and delineated; lighter sound; mid-range more open, less stuffy; much better separation and space, each instrument has its own room to breathe; strings reach a bit higher; flute more audible; there’s a more delicate sound. Much, much better.

Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Petrenko, Trpceski/Royal Liverpool
LCD-R: same differences in tonality; bass is muddier but this makes for more thump, as in more slam, but not by all that much. RD-R mk II: much faster, individual piano strikes are more distinct, individuated, and precise; much quicker, more lively transients, making it sound much more engaging, also making each instrument stand out more precisely, which gives the impression of hearing more detail; more open and spacious.

Schubert, Piano Sonata 21, Kovacevich
Compared to the LCD-R, the RD-R mk II is faster, more responsive, snappier, with more precise and clean and clear piano strikes, which make the overall sound less hazy, more distinct; there’s a kind of mellow, soft, blurriness to the LCD-R by contrast.

Shostakovich String Quartet #8, Fitzwilliam String Quartet
Coming from LCD-R, the RD-R mk II has much better separation, each instrument is more distinct; violin has more bite and more of an edge to it, meaning not sharper but more textured; the overall sound beyond the violin is sweeter, more pleasing; more room for the instruments to stand out; the cello has better reverberations, they’re more distinct; sounds more complex, less of the muffled lower end.

Mozart, Requiem, Marriner/St. Martin in the Fields
From the LCD-R, the RD-R mk II is as above re. tonality and staging and transients; better microdynamics, more responsive to subtle changes; with the LCD-R there’s a bit of grain/peakiness in the higher frequency vocals at times, almost like sibilance (I hear it with several headphones on this recording), not so with the RD-R; smoother, then.

Wagner, Walküre, Solti/Vienna
LCD-R: not much crackle or blart with brass instruments (i.e. too smooth), nor sparkle with strings; a bit flat; a bit indistinct, too, not quite muddy but not pristine or clear, either, as though details are being masked or missed or, better put, glossed over, but not in a glarey kind of way. Not the best depth. RD-R mk II: a good deal more sparkle, timbre of brass is a good bit better but still not the crackliest presentation, it’s a bit thinner now, tonally, but more textured; better decay for soprano’s voice, better sense of room acoustics but not better depth; overall, more lively and responsive. The treble’s less rolled off.

Cannonball Adderley, Somethin’ Else
LCD-R: cymbal brushstrokes are no good, they’re all blended together in a hash; trumpet not very piercing, also a bit wimpy and thin/ever so slightly reedy; alto sax is ok, a bit sharp and peaky – not a great listen, really, a bit flat, could be smoother and cleaner. RD-R mk II: much less stuffy; cymbal brushstrokes better but still not good; the double bass is much better, more separation from the band, with a richer, woodier, more hollow and reverberant sound to it; trumpet more realistic, brighter, extending higher, brassier-sounding; alto sax is reedier, more recognizable as a woodwind instrument, and is less sharp; cymbals are cleaner and more zingy/metallic; with better space, you can get a better sense of room acoustics with the RD-R, especially with alto sax, for which I thought I could hear some reflections off the walls.

Mingus, Black Saint and Sinner Lady
Question of how well it handles the complexity: LCD-R a bit muddy and indistinct, lower brass hard to differentiate; RD-R mk II is appreciably better but still not ideal; cymbals are also more prominent, almost to the point of intrusive on the RD-R mk II.

Miles Davis, Lift to the Scaffold film score
RD-R mk II: timbre of trumpet doesn’t sound quite right, not crackly enough, as though oversimplified – this is a problem with both these headphones; LCD-R, interestingly, is a bit sharper sounding, less sweet, more sour/sharp, a bit more aggressive, grainy perhaps.

(Now, with the bass shelf on)

Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah
From LCD-R to RD-R mk II: faster transients make for a slightly better delineation of individual notes and strums, more clean and clear sound; more delicate, especially the vocals; not as sharp (tonally) or rich sounding - lighter, airier, which make for a better presentation

Mamas and Papas, Dream a Little Dream of Me
RD-R mk II: vocal more airy, lighter, subtler, softer, more pleasant, sweeter; overall sound less congested and muddy; better separation; cleaner sounding, more open; faster transients make it livelier, more nimble

Radiohead, The National Anthem
From LCD-R to RD-R mk II: bass is deeper, richer, more solid; the ondes martenot is much clearer and more forward, has a lovely ethereal sound to it; cymbals are better, less shushy, more zingy; still a bit muddy but that’s the song, to a certain extent; more open and spacious; still struggles with complex passages.

Nicolás Jaar, Space Is Only Noise If You Can See
RD-R mk II’s bass is cleaner, tighter, more focused and more prominent; it’s stronger, has much better definition, and richer texture; not sure if it goes deeper.

Hans Zimmer, Blade Runner 2049 film soundtrack
RD-R mk II’s bass hits harder, more authoritative, bit more slam (maybe), not really deeper, just stronger.

Trentemøller, Chameleon
The RD-R’s bass is appreciably tighter, faster, better defined – and doesn’t feel so lacking or mushed together.

Conclusion
I’m conscious of these impressions being overly positive. I’ll throw in a few disclaimers, then. My frame of reference is within the context of the LCD-R. Purr1n’s comments in the LCD-R thread need to be borne in mind: while special, the LCD-R isn’t a giant slayer; it lacks the technical abilities, e.g. resolution and other qualities, of the LCD-4. Much the same could be said for the RD-Rs, although they do shift the LCD-R’s performance closer to “totl” headphones.

As importantly, I’m enthusiastic about the rhythmdevils modded versions precisely because they fix what I don’t like about the LCD-R. They also bring out certain qualities that I value, such as greater speed and resolution, a more open and spacious staging, and a slightly tube-like, euphonic and holographic sound. In other words, while the RD-Rs edge the LCD-R closer to the performance of superior headphones like the LCD-4, they do so in a way that’s reminiscent of the speed and light touch of electrostats or of the Raal SR1a’s exceptional transient response. And they have their own, unique qualities.

These are the first rhythmdevils modded headphones I’ve heard. I really like the tuning, which is nicely balanced and neutral in a way that’s not lifeless or clinical. The tuning really is remarkably pleasing and free of sins of commission, so much so that I’m also very much looking forward to hearing the RD-X and RD-4.

In and of itself, I really like the RD-R mk II. I think it reflects the qualities of ribbon driver headphones like the SR1a better than the LCD-R does (recognizing it’s not a true ribbon driver). If you prioritize speed and resolution, the mk II is for you. For me, though, the RD-R mk I is the more appealing version thanks to its more ethereal, lighter, sweeter sound. I think I like it so much, in part, because it’s so different from any other headphone I’ve heard even as marries the speed and ethereal beauty of an electrostat with the impact and substance of an orthodynamic.