Hi cacatalysis, thanks for the good words.
I would say vinyl would do the trick, because I have a number of SACD versions of favorite music and it most always eliminates the glare miraculously, so
I am pretty sure this is a digital phenomenon, some artifact picked up and passed along by the dynamic phones. In fact, that is why I get SACDs when I can.
Yep, dynamic glare is a good term for it, and I wish all the headphone companies would address this issue, and see on these forums the huge number of complaints about
brightness. I think that is why Audeze has been so popular and grown so fast, because they did design their phones to be less bright and glary and still keep detail and definition.
With the world going digital, dealing with digital glare should be a top priority.
(Examples well known around here are HD800s, T1s, top Grados, HE6s, and others.)
Like I say, the LCD3 (and LCD2 rev 2) have been the best in dealing with this, but still I had to resort to (1) a Brimar 6NS7 NOS tube, and (2) a legendarily warm Shunyata Anaconda VX power cord on
my cd player, along with (for now) a Q-audio cable on the LCD3. All this does the trick, and the glare is down to infinitesimal amounts on many redbook CDs or gone completely on others.
But there is still some room for improvement overall.
And all detail is preserved, so I don't think I am losing definition or things are rolled off. I'm still going to play with cables and my power conditioner some more.
It's still a mystery to me why some Staxes work so well in this area, and maybe someone around here who agrees with what I hear can chime in here.
And although it's been 15-20 years, when I had Koss ESP950s, I don't remember them being bright, even with early CD players.