Gramophone Dreams

Manufacturer's Comment

Editor: Thanks to Stereophile for bringing the joy of headphone listening to its audience. We deeply appreciate Herb Reichert's review of the Audeze LCD-4 and The King headphone amplifier in the December issue, along with John Atkinson's Follow-Up measurements in this issue. Herb: "I can enthusiastically declare that Audeze's The King is one of the two or three best all-around headphone amps I have heard. . . . and by all audiophile measures, the LCD-4s must be rated Class A, superb, the state of the art."

Regarding the measurements, The King headphone amplifier tested (serial no. K3301003) was made in April, and our senior engineers visited Bascom King shortly afterward. The goal of our visit was to increase The King's gain and power with a resulting improvement in signal/noise ratio. The first thing we decided on was to change the grounding scheme, and that improved the SNR immediately. While the more powerful version of The King is not yet in production, the improved grounding scheme was implemented in all production amplifiers after our visit with Bascom.—Sankar Thiagasamudram, CEO Audeze