Why do TOTL headphones cost the same as TOTL speakers?

We plugged headphones into the preamp or integrated amp. Maybe this is why, if it is true, I characterise the HD600 sound as like old-fashioned hifi, listening to Dad's Tannoys.

Why I'm here: "f**k off and use headphones if you want to listen to that music."

We make mistakes in life.

I thought cables were where the hifi shop really made money?

I'd like to throw in a thought about plastic. It is under-rated. "Could have been made cheaper in plastic..." Really? And how much does the tooling for the injection moulding cost? It is only true for larger-quantity sales.

And then there is plastic prejudice. If there wasn't, then maybe there would be more engineering to find plastics+additives with ideal acoustics qualities for the part. OK, I don't have a clue, I'm no engineer... but isn't it a possibility? But fancy metals and wood (Ahhh...woood...natural!) always trump yuck-it's-plastic, especially in the snobbier areas of consumer goods.

I'm fairly sure of one thing plastic though: there are those that break easily and those that don't.

 

I haven't quite found this to be the case. When I mention to my wife how much a piece of personal gear costs she starts saying "Why can't you spend that on speakers that we can ALL listen to". She also has the (common) view that open back headphones don't make sense because she believes the primary purpose of headphones is isolation.

This also might be just me but I prefer really good speakers at low volume, below kids wakeup volumes, over louder headphones

 

I identify with this a bit. I've got a massive soft spot for speakers since I associate vintage Pioneer CHONKY boys with my granddad and his living room where I used to sleep sometimes, but they're more furnishing and tied, sentimentally, to a place.

Headphones and IEMs are travel partners and friends. I might have shared a story before about how the original micro iDSD saved my butt with its power bank functtionality because my phone was dying and I needed map navigation around midnight or 1am in an unfamiliar city at some point (still within my area but this was a spot known for abductions so...); managed to hail an Uber and contact people to let em know I was alive. This is why I was a bit hesitant to let it go even when it was made heavily redundant. Sold it anyway for money, but it went to a very close friend so I might still say hi to it now and again.

Probably unhealthy to personify gear. Hmm.

Portable things travel and can carry more interesting stories. Definitely not saying that furnishings with more permanence e.g. pianos, sofas, chairs, or speakers can't be ascribed a similar intensity of emotional investment, but that's more a matter of lifestyle and personal balancing it seems.

Also headphones can be shared with friends too. Had a Chord Hugo on loan from the same friend whose ZDT jr died on my watch and I brought it to uni alongside his HD800s and my HP-3s to let people try some stuff out. Might have turned a few people onto better audio then, and it's a fond memory shared with friends.

Ok that's a segue. The rest of this thread is very much fun to follow along with besides being informative. I do think that ultimately the cost of goods will be what the idiotic market will bear, and until people may forego minor trinkets like aesthetics or lore or (as pertinent to Asian markets in a fashion) gross displays of ostentation and wealth purely for the prestige it confers, for pure sonic excellence, the trend will only skew upwards.

Do NOT take advice about pragmatism from the guy who's likely spent more on fountain pens and inks than audio gear.

Open back headphones do make some sense in shared living situations where you're unwilling to be a bother to others (how loud can you crank HD600s again???) but may benefit from some environmental awareness, as in the case of pets fighting, someone maybe breaking into your home, or a fire breaking out. Speakers would be grand from a visceral engagement perspective but perhaps less so from those whose preferences are more in line with loud and pugnacious verveing of music.

 

I may not be treading any new ground here, but I think a lot of "what people are willing to pay" comes down to a perceived level of performance.

I would wager that a Verite Closed costs @zach915m a lot more to build than a Focal Stellia does, but yet Focal can sell the Stellia at the same price as the VC based on the perception that they are in the same ballpark performance-wise.

I also highly doubt that the build cost of a Utopia is 2.93x that of a Clear MG, nor is the build cost of a Susvara 8.58x that of an Ananda.

When I hold a set of ZMF cans I can feel that their price is justified based on the incredible craftsmanship. Holding a Focal Elex in one hand and a Utopia in the other, I honestly wouldn't be able to come up with a valid reason why the Utopia demands an extra $3700. Sure, the Utopia sounds better, but there's not a lot of difference in the materials used.

I'm sure Focal's response to that would be R&D and QC. Maybe that's a not such a load of crap, but when private companies say things we have almost no way to call them on it if they're lying.

This is why I think it's vitally important that we support companies like @schiit rather than the Harman Internationals of the industry.

 

R&D costs is a really hazy thing to me. It's a fixed cost and it's contribution depends on how many units you sell. In a DAC the part with the highest R&D cost is likely the DAC chip itself (or maybe opamps) and that only cost $6.

For a boutique company it can be a significant cost but for well established brands I suspect they are using it as a justification to charge more.

 

I actually agree with this general sentiment of having things everyone can listen to. Of course this is an individual decision but in my mind, this increases perceived value.

This was actually one of the reasons that when I wanted to spend significant money ( might not be a lot for others, but it was significant for me) on audio, that I elected to spend it on floor standing speakers. My partner is not into gear but she definitely enjoys music on the speakers now. This is in stark contrast to my headphone gear which she does not use at all.

 

I 100 prefer listening to speakers at a lower volume than listening to headphones. this is a tradeoff I make every night. Living in an apartment, I never go very loud, but I do listen quieter in the evening and I gladly make that choice instead of using headphones

 

There's something quite nice about listening at lower volumes. Some things pop out in ways that are interestingly more convincing that you're actually hearing the mix, and not the limitations of your room, or system. I made a thread somewhere about it, but i'm feeling lazy (and listening to the latest Avalanches at ~65-70db right now, so I can't be too bothered to search, LOL).

 

Accounting creates some weird distortions that inflate some prices and deflate others. They can define pricing in a market.

What you're suggesting is a lot of 'cost' is allocated to Utopia, so it needs to be priced high to be seen as profitable inside Focal. On the other side, Sennheiser can sell their IP in the HD600/HD650/HD6XX at low pricing because the accountants have written off the R&D and are focussed on BOM costs. Cheaper prices generate sales volume.

The affordability of the Hd6xx then defines where a whole lot of competitor prices have to be set. Think Sundara.

Looking ahead, Sennheiser will likely do something similar with the HD800 series. Their first attempt with HD8XX flopped, but they can try again. An $800 HD800 will collapse the performance headphone market. The inevitability of that, or something similar, creates even more incentive for Focal & Co to get more $ from consumers while they can.

Of course, ORFAS and glamor focussed consumers will still pay up for well marketed / shiny things. But those fickle & fashion markets aren't really about R&D.

 

Comparing the performance and prices of two completely different markets is always a ridiculous comparison. By the same logic one would say gaming laptops are scam.

In terms of pricing every market mostly compete with itself, the high end headphones market for consumers is really new if you think about it, it's only 12-14 years since the release of the LCD-2, HD800, and the HE-6. So as we've seen more and more headphones provide better value overtime and I think the trend will catch the TOTL stuff soon enough I speculate, that may force TOTL headphone manufacturers to compete with the use of even more luxury materials or ridiculous technologies to justify their prices for the more mature headphones market in the next decade.

That's not to say no one has the right to be pissed off about the pricing, I myself disgusted by IEMs pricing but their market is even younger than headphones and speakers markets. But understanding the reasons can help alleviate the bitterness of the situation.

 

Re-read the thread and I haven’t really seen anyone mention market psychology. Focal might not actually care how many Utopias they sell. Same goes for the LCD-5

There was something I remember reading awhile back when it came to fast-food. When Wendy’s came out with the triple cheeseburger, sales of the double cheeseburger went up. Because of psychological biases, the existence of the triple made the double no longer seem excessive.

The Focal Utopia is meant to make the $1500 Clear look reasonable. Glowing reviews of the Utopia with follow up reviews of a cheaper headphone with 90% of the sound at less than half the price only increase the appeal.

 

This is done all the time with infoproducts/SaaS products that use a 3-tier pricing structure. It works as intended most of the time. Most people choose the risk-averse middle-priced option. I haven't seen numbers for smartphone sales by storage capacity, but I wouldn't be surprised if the middle of the road options sold the most.

 

Off-topic but one of my favorite stories was when The Economist offered 3 price tiers

Web only - $60
Print only - $120
Web + print - $120

Reportedly this was a mistake and they changed the options to only web and web+print. A researcher was curious and surveyed 100 people to see what they would actually choose when presented the two options. With three options more people tended to pick web+print with zero people picking print only. With only two options there was more people that choose web only than when 3 options were available.

 

3AM hot take - if there was as much R&D invested in earpads as drivers by many of the largest headphone manufacturers, the baseline performance of headphones at every price point would be higher than it is today... Especially with closed backs. Some of the most genius and well received Massdrop products were simply re-skinned headphone models with swapped pads - and that made a world of a difference in terms of sound quality. I love companies like ZMF for recognizing the importance of pads from the very beginning.

Evidently a certain influential person over at ASR says pads don't matter. I say that's the dumbest thing I've ever read on an audio forum.

 

Pads don't matter and there's no significant difference between the HD650 and HD600 so get whichever you like the look of more or is cheaper ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...cience-review-review.9827/page-49#post-347630

excerpt out of context:

Also you only need one speaker to evaluate headstage/imaging performance so why waste money on two?
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...cience-review-review.9827/page-14#post-318665

excerpt out of context:

@BenjaminBore added excerpts even though it pains me to have to read that stuff again. Links to ASR where he says those presently available through the included links.

 

@E_Schaaf Couldn't agree more. They make a huge difference. Second only to the driver itself.

Listening to any headphone sort of free-field with the pads off immediately reveals what performance is left on the table, at the expense of bass, slam, and tactility.

Saying that. I suppose the HD800, with the driver being pulled back and the pads super thin, tries to eliminate the effect of pads. But results in downsides like the above.

I guess it could be more appropriate to say that it's whatever sits between ear and driver. Whatever constitutes "the room" sonically. Which in almost all case are of course the earpads.

@Lyander Please use some kind of quotation when repeating ludicrous blasphemy! XD

 

Not just from a good sound perspective, either. The strongest opinion the headphone hobby has given me so far is hatred of protein leather pads. Doesn't stay in good condition long enough, screws with the sound when it starts breaking down, and a lot of them even leave weird residue on any nearby paper and such. Yuck.

 

As I am told, the Audeze upper mid dip is almost entirely an artifact of the pads, and the concave design on the LCD-5 remediates it. Clearly, pads are a big deal.

 

Well to be fair, pads don’t matter if you don’t listen to the headphone. Which isn’t surprising given that many “reviews” at take ASR happen without even listening to the gear. And no this isn’t hearsay, they have posts actually explaining why this is done…

Pad agnostics be damned. Pad swaps have been a godsend. Code X, Elex, ZMF…and just about every T50rp mod under the sun have for the most part, been mostly pad based upgrades (ZMF excused). It’s the equivalent (maybe even moreso), than room treatment in a 2 channel system.