Audeze LCD-S20 Closed-back review

Bulbous, weighty, and wired—these are the sort of traits you would actively look to avoid when purchasing a gaming headset. Yet on the Audeze LCD-S20 Closed-back, I don't mind one bit. This isn't a pair of headphones to wear on the bus or chat over Discord. They don't even have a microphone. No, the LCD-S20 is for sitting back and engrossing yourself in your favourite game or album and enjoying the tonal brilliance of planar magnetic drivers.

Marketed at professional musicians and producers, the LCD-S20 are a little out of our usual comfort zone for PC gaming apparel. However, what makes them great for recording a track in a studio also has a benefit for PC gaming. Namely, planar magnetic drivers with SLAM technology and superb sound isolation.

The LCD-S20 look a lot like the Audeze Maxwell. That's a pair of headphones that we rate very highly, with multiple members of the PCG hardware team using them as their daily driver, and I'll get back to comparisons with these later in the review. The LCD-S20 shares the same floating band design with three levels of adjustment, designed to keep all 550 grams of these mostly metal headphones off any one place on your head. It works pretty well, too, even when I've worn them through the better part of a work day.

Only a couple of bits in the box: the headphones, a 2.5-metre headphone cable with a 6.3 mm jack, and a 6.5 mm to 3.5 mm adapter.

Let's talk SLAM, or Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator. This is how Audeze improves the bass response on its planar magnetic headphones. Audeze talks up the benefits in a blog post, but boils it down to delivering a powerful, accurate bass response as a careful balancing act between a few things, including pressure build-up, diaphragm tension, and efficiency. SLAM helps minimise pressure build-up, making it a little easier to balance everything else, and allowing Audeze to better tune its bass response to its liking.

SLAM, surprisingly, isn't a nebulous concept. A rare thing in audio. You can actually see SLAM on the LCD-S20. Those little gaps on either side of the toothed ring between the earpads and earcups? That's SLAM—the start of a channel circumventing the earcup and the planar magnetic driver itself to relieve pressure. You can see it better by removing the magnetically attached earpad, as you can see in the images down below.

Image credit: Future

Image credit: Future

SLAM was adopted on Audeze's upsettlingly high-end headphones, the CRBN2. Only a cheeky $5,995 for a pair. You'll be thankful to hear you'd pay just a fraction of that for the LCD-S20, coming in at $499. SLAM clearly isn't an expensive implementation—the LCD-S20 is only $100 more than the popular and pretty mainstream MM-100. Though I do wonder what price we'll see these end up on in the long-run—Audeze notes the current price is "introductory" on its website.

The bass response on the LCD-S20 is pretty thumping as a result, to use a technical term. Though if you're expecting ear-wobbling lows, it's much more controlled and less pronounced than that. Listening to some of my drum and bass favourites, I'm still left feeling I'd prefer a sub in the back of someone's souped-up Honda Civic to really feel the bass. Yet the clarity through the lower reaches of the response is pretty spectacular, if not particularly powerful. I had to punch up my Schiit Magni 3 to high gain to really push the LCD-S20, despite their low impedance. That's likely down to their lower sensitivity at 93 dB/1mW compared to 98 dB/1mW on the MM-100. I'd recommend a pretty beefy amp to go with them to be on the safe side.

Unlike most planar magnetic headphones on the market, the LCD-S20 are closed-back. The wide, flat earcups that tend to distinguish planar magnetic cans from dynamic drivers are gone, replaced by large domed designs. I've previously likened them to the Los Angeles Griffith Observatory on either ear, and I'm sticking to that visual aid.

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The lack of any vent or mesh on the rear of the earcup has the effect of boxing the driver in, blocking sound leakage. The disadvantage here is a perceived smaller soundstage and a tougher go at reproducing a neutral tone compared to an open-back design. While you might prefer the darker tone of closed-back headphones—I must admit, I tend to prefer open-back headphones—they have one major benefit.

Closed-back offers much greater levels of sound isolation compared to open-back. That's the passive ability to block unwanted noise from the outside world from reaching your ears, and vice versa (preventing sound leakage). In this instance, this is what makes the LCD-S20 adept for recording. You don't necessarily want to hear everything around you when belting out your best. Focusing on what's happening inside the headphones is more important, and that can often be true of PC gaming too.

The immersive and isolating properties of closed-back are great for solo gaming. I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty lately, and getting into the depths of Dog Town with a samurai sword and a bad attitude is made that much better by the clarity of the chooms chatting in a nearby yard, or music thumping on the street, or bullets winging overhead. It's pretty good for focus in more competitive games, too. I found it to be good for positional audio in The Finals, and I could easily make out distinct footsteps and gunshots from quite a distance away. I needed to roll out the discrete microphone to get chatting in Discord, however.

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The LCD-S20 is also the only headset I've worn in many years that lets my partner creep up on me without even trying. My partner placed a smoothie on my desk as I wrote this review and it scared me to death. I played it cool; she had no idea.

It's engrossing for playing games or listening to the latest music. Planar magnetic is a gorgeous way to experience audio most of the time, and Auduze knows how to make a good one, but more so, and I've spoken about this in a separate piece, good sound isolation versus mediocre active noise cancellation is day and night.

For travel, yes, ANC makes a lot of sense, but for desktop gaming, the passive qualities of the LCD-S20 make it much more universally effective at blocking outside sounds than most active systems on gaming headsets. Even with the Alienware 16 Area-51 by my side, trying its best to distract me, the LCD-S20 kept me in my own lil' happy bubble, unaware of the ruckus outside. That said, if you want to block out the sound of your gaming laptop, you might want to look out for a pair of headphones or a headset that's easier to drive—like I mentioned earlier, you really need the dedicated amp to get the most out of the LCD-S20.

For PC gamers who want to isolate themselves from a noisy environment, the LCD-S20 is my favourite way to go about it. Even topping the AceZone A-Spire for blocking out any unwanted sounds. Though the LCD-S20 has stiff competition from its own ranks: the Audeze Maxwell offers a similar shape and construction, wireless functionality, and a lower price tag. It doesn't have SLAM technology, and wireless connectivity doesn't offer the same oomph as a dedicated DAC/amp over a wired connection, but it's a very tempting offer for a PC gamer. Likely more so than the professional-leaning LCD-S20.

Though there is something for gamers and audiophiles with the LCD-S20. Noise isolation, depth and range of sound, a detailed bass response, and the sort of long-term comfort you get with seriously massive earpads. For purposeful listening and immersive gaming, it delivers all you could ask for, though its price tag will see it resigned to high-end setups only, even more so than a pair of more affordable Audeze Maxwell, and I'd still lean towards open-back designs for most audiophile listening.

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