"Not Representative" - Curiosities on headphone variance, from measurements to restocking fees.

On the heels of Tyll's latest Aeon review, I'm pissed off.

No - I'm not upset that MrSpeakers produced a stellar product and that Tyll published a lovely piece extolling its virtues... I'm frustrated by suspicions that my time with another production Aeon is not representative of the headphone's prowess.

For the uninitiated, please see:
https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/mrspeakers-aeon-over-ear-sealed-planar-magnetic-headphones

Notice Tyll's thoughts on variances between pre-production and production units? Is anyone else a little bothered by the frequency quality-control is used to explain differences in measurements and reviews lately? Other examples also come to mind, like: LCD-4 / Utopia, Atticus / Eikon, and the Z1R.

Now, for some background... My friend and I have been in the market for end-game closed headphones and have gone through extensive auditions with the usual suspects (PM-3, T5p, Aeon, LCD-XC, etc). After these trials, we've also ordered the Atticus and Eikon with hopes of finally settling on a set. And, while this is a "money-is-no-object" affair where we gladly eat any restocking/shipping fees, we've lucked out on having local distributors with showrooms to minimize some of that.

But, with Tyll's article, I can't help wondering how common it really is for customers to receive products which aren't really representative of the manufacturer's intended sound...

Can someone help me understand some of the challenges in headphone manufacturing and assembly which give rise to these scenarios? And, what are the opportunities to address them, from both vendor and customer perspectives?

 

It's really not that complicated... It costs money to develop and make things. But you need to sell things in order to have money to develop the things. Repeat. Large scale production is not easy, and it requires a hefty investment in resources/equipment/etc. Making changes afterwards is also not usually easy, and you need more resources to implement it. So sell off the first production run to acquire said resources, reinvest to make the changes, repeat. It would be wonderful if you could get it perfect the first time, but that never happens.


edit: shrinking this down because it's going off on a tangent
Virtually every product that has progressive updates will go through this. The reason people have been getting on Mr Speakers' case is that it has happened quite a lot with his earlier products. This in itself is only half the issue. If he would just admit that there are rolling upgrades through the product lifecycle, people might be miffed but they'd get over it (it's a fuzzy line because then people won't buy the product and will keep waiting until it's "final", which hurts the bottom line)... but the problem is that every time someone criticizes something, he goes into defensive mode and says they have a defective or early production unit. Then shortly after releases a "fix" (which he may or may not charge for). It becomes a bit of a "the boy who cried wolf" scenario. He also has seemingly protected sponsor status over at head-fi as oftentimes negative commentary will be deleted, which increases suspicion by those who pay way too much attention to this silly hobby.