Yes. I read that you need to have the old lucid mode (right switch) on for the 1/4 inch jack to work.

My experience is you will get music but it will be off...for example in Kind Of Blue, Cannonball sounds like he's playing in the back hall.  Same with a Paul Desmond CD....either Desmond or Jim Hall were outside the studio.  On stereo recordings you definitely notice but on Mono there is no change....I think.  Mark.

The only recordings that I seem to like consistently with New Lucid Mode, are small group jazz without busy drums...cymbals.  For example, Chet Baker in a drum-less trio...Trumpet, Bass and Guitar...are pretty cool.  But I found new lucid mode to be too much in most circumstances. Now that I have a Balanced Silver Widow Cable for my Audeze headphones, I usually don't use any lucid modes. Mark.

I can definitely tell the difference when old lucid mode is on as opposed to when it is off.

I am answering my own question with Steve's words.  :)
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The reason I'm posting here this evening is to talk about lucid mode and single-ended headphone cables.



The taboo design has a floating output stage, meaning that the negative speaker jacks are not connected to ground like is typical in 99.9% of amplifiers.  This is what makes it so Taboo, and what makes possible it's Lucid Mode feature.  



A single ended headphone jack has only three wires, not four.  That means the grounds for each channel are tied together.  Since the Taboo will not tolerate this, the ground for the headphone jack can only come from one channel or the other.  To get around this issue, the ground is tied into the lucid mode switch so that lucid mode itself can create a virtual ground for the headphones.  That means that original lucid mode must be ON at all times for proper operation of single ended headphone cables.  Turning the switch off will cause the virtual ground to vanish leaving one or the other channels without a ground.  This will cause strange things to happen sonically, which includes the experience I quoted at the start of this post.



It's really very simple.  Keep Original Lucid Mode ON when using headphones that employ single-ended cables.  Original Lucid Mode is a natural and accurate frequency based cross-feed that you would usually want to have ON anyway - with virtually all headphones.



Otherwise, get yourself a balanced cable for your headphones, that way the grounds of each channel are separate at all times, just like loudspeakers... which is partly why balanced sounds better than single ended cables with the Taboo Mk III.  



I will be writing a paper on New Lucid Mode soon, as it can be used as a tool to evaluate the quality of many recordings.  Because it works by revealing information hidden in the recordings that is out of phase from channel to channel...  rendering it silent to the ears... it lets one evaluate how much phase angle discrepancy there is between the various tracks before they were mixed down to two channels.  In my paper I'll explain exactly how that works...  but the result is simple.  Audiophile recordings that were done with purist practices and are free of excessive phase distortion between tracks caused by microphone placement, electronics and effects busses, will sound absolutely stunning without New Lucid Mode turned on.  Then when New Lucid Mode IS turned on, you will hear almost nothing change.  On the flip side, hearing a big change when New Lucid Mode is used is indicative of a less than great recording and if analyzed, shows much of how the recoding was mixed and mastered.  Of course fake or digital reverb effects common in main stream recordings are not going to sound good with New Lucid Mode turned ON.



Hope these insights increase your understanding of the Taboo which in turn increase your enjoyment of it.  This is a very serious listening machine for very serious headphones and very serious recordings. And thanks to New Lucid Mode, half of the 80% of less than great recordings can now be heard as though a mastering guru made the recording.  Certainly increased the size of my serious listening library!



Thanks,



Steve Deckert.