Did anyone else see that video where a youtuber pwned Noble Audio's savant? Link?

I guess the lesson here is: when you make a good product with fewer components and you're charging what you consider a fair price for it, just say so. Some people will complain about the price, but that's preferable to accidentally raising any doubt about your honesty.

 

"honesty"
I've had to look for that one in a dictionary of Old English

I'm not familiar with Noble IEMs, but I've read someone on HF who publicly asked John Moulton if Savants were similar to PR in terms of frequency response.

The answer was: " Sorry, I don't like to talk about graphs, it just opens a huge can of worms, and derails threads. "

 

I find it just a mode of business. I saw FitEar also did not disclose driver information of its Aya CIEM (or Monet, can't remember which or both). If somehow a company could squeeze out an IEM as good as UERM with a cost of 0.01 cents using slave labor and price it 1000, my only objection is slave labor.

 

FitEar is a different story altogether. They didn't even to mass produce their stuffs, and then kept limiting the market availability of their products. It's like the economic rule, lower the supply, increase the price. It worked for them so far, while they are in no hurry to sell more.

 

I don't see how if the products concerned are mass produced or not would make the point essentially different. It's the same practice: a manufacture tries to raise the customers' curiosity and interest of one of your product by not revealing the internals of this product.

 

I didn't mean that. What i meant was, Fitear went to the extreme in terms of "piquing interest" and they are more "boutique" than Noble, in the sense that they didn't care to increase their production or produce a cash cow (which a product earns good and has great sales volume). That's how I see Fitear.

 

Despite my very unpleasant experience with Noble. The K10 is good in my opinion and definitely a TOTL. Their custom version, definitely deserve their current pricing 1.7k USD.

The universals however, are complete rip offs.

Them pricing a savant at 600 dollars is like if EC priced the Copperhead at 2.5k, because some people might have even preferred it against the ZDS.

You can do so, but dont go crying when someone does a complete teardown of your stuff and show the BOM cost.

I don't rag on EC or Schiit, because i know Craig's and Jason's margins are reasonable. Noble are asking for roughly 80% profit margin (excluding labor cost, which is really little for something as simple as those.) on the savant. And the shell is cheap ABS plastic.

The K10's margin is roughly 60% as well (excluding labor) , this one however, i think is acceptable, as John has completely changed the way we look at acrylic shells, the R&D into making those 10 drivers work so cohesively must have been significant.

The workmanship that goes into the shells is pretty significant as well, its not uncommon for a custom shell to be at least 50% of the BOM, even if its made in china like Noble's.

No, just stop treating them like they are your friend who are here to advance the hobby.

John is here for the money first, and the hobby second. Treat him like how you'd treat bill gates in the 1980's. Grateful, that he changed the world of computing, but wary, as you know he's going all out for your wallet and to dominate the market at pretty much any expense

Just because other brands rip off harder than Noble, does not mean what Noble does is acceptable. The cash cow is the K10U btw.

I can actually. That video is huge in Japan, like really huge. There was a huge furor in the Japanese forums over those videos.

If you were to go to the second hand shops in japan, you will literally find boxes of second hand savants looking for owners. A friend of mine found this out when he went to the Fujiya Avic show.

For some reason, people love to use fitear as an example when comparing to overpiced iems. And usually, this is because they have no idea how fitear iems is made and how they do business.

How its made
For most manufacturers, they the drivers in by basically sticking them on the tubes that directly connected to the nozzle. You can find out if this is the case by shaking your CIEM vigorously. As these as not glued down onto the shell, you will notice movement in the drivers.

Some go the extra mile of using either glue of acrylic as an adhesive, and stick them on the shell.

Fitear, does it very differently, the drivers are not sticked onto the shell, they are painted onto the shell. First they paint a layer of wet acrylic on the insides, and then, holding the driver onto the shell, they paint a layer of acrylic over the shell and driver, dry it, and do it again and again still its firm. And they do it for all the drivers.

They also use custom drivers (some like FAD do this now as well) etc etc.

How they do business
When the driver war started with JH, every manufacturer jumped on, except Fitear, whose Flagship had 5 drivers.

When every manufacturer, started trying to create new flagships for the sake of charging higher prices, fitear introduced lower end models that were very reasonably priced, but each being a very different sound sig or to show off a new process (3d printing etc etc). Flagship prices have not moved since, and their flagship was released in 2012. Lets face it, there is not much advancement left to do in purely BA CIEMS.

When manufacturers are throwing away quality just for the sake of fulfilling orders, and misguiding people on lead times (im looking at you JH). Fitear refused to budge on that point, they were very upfront on the increasing lead times, when demand went up like mad. They took forever to increase capacity as training is something they took very seriously. You dont touch the TG334 until you are really good.

This is also the first company i've seen to throw sales away to focus on the people who will really enjoy their IEMs. In response to the amount of people buying their stuff for the purpose of selling stuff overseas (most of it china), They even created a policy, where you can only own one of each model in your lifetime.

And to actually not even bother with the US market, JH should thank their lucky stars. The would go bankrupt if Fitears competed in the States. The moment the demo's for the fitears finally arrived at South East Asia. JH sales at the official dealers plummeted, like more than 50% drop.

 

And don't you think that shows something really bad going on in communty? One day you are happy with your earphones, next day you are selling them because they have less drivers than you thought? What are you going to do? Use worse sounding IEMs instead, just because they have more drivers?

 

Think of it this way, you bought a car thinking it was a ferrari. Heck, it drives like one too.

Turns out, its a ferrari, with a tricked out toyota engine.

Nobody likes being mislead.

 

Man I promise, we so self-conscious
We have no idea what they doing at Noble
Them headphones that we bought don't have enough drivers
So we go and sell em used, because peers will look at em funny
Now, tell me that ain't insecure
The concept of drivers seems so secure

I think it's the funniest thing TBH. "I really love these headphones!!!!!"

Wait they only have 2 driver???

I can't like them anymore!

 

Yea, YOU were thinking it was ferrair, but nobody told you that!
Noble promised great sound and they delivered. All the drivers talk was just people on forums insecure in their opinions on sound and relying just on driver's count.

Anybody with half a brain could guess from beginning there would be something strange with Savant.

 

Its not just the drivers, nobody who owns fitears go returning them when they find out it has less than 5 drivers, or 3 drivers or 2. Even for the models with unannounced number of drivers.

Its the sheer cheapness of it.

When ferrari sells a car. One can reasonably expect a prancing horse. Not a toyota or nissan, even if the toyota performs as well as the ferrari.

You are right, thats why people opened them up.

 

That car analogy doesn't really work because deception isn't what happened here. Noble put out an iem and chose not to give any information about it, that's their prerogative. People bought it without knowing and loved it, cool right?

What's happening here is people getting caught up in driver numbers and price instead of the sound. I think it's quite hilarious that people are selling these, despite raving about them, because they only had 2 drivers per ear. Absolutely hilarious.

Those are the people who's opinions I would never trust on anything. Those are the people who equate higher numbers with quality. If anything I'd be more impressed that Noble put out a high end dual driver iem that held up to its price.

 

Hmm, i cant think of anyone who raved about them before the video and sold them after the video. The ones that bought, usually keep it.... and defend it

Its usually the people who have not bought who are criticizing it (like me), or you bought it just for fun (and thought it sounded ok for the price).

 

I don't have them, nor have I ever used a Noble product. I have no horse in this race. I just think the whole scenario of someone selling them when finding out they have 2 drivers is silly, especially when they liked them perfectly fine before.

 

Whats true: Noble knew they could not make the same profit if they disclosed the number of drivers upfront. Thus the secrecy.

What's also true: Noble knew it would not always be a secret.

Seems Nobles risk of annoying a few people paid off. Personally, I'd appreciated disclosure... But only because they'd be selling for $300!

 

It would have been awesome if they had enough confidence to say, "This dual BA is so good we're going to charge for $600 for it." That's basically where they are now, except that they used buyers who didn't know what they were buying to push the hype machine. The pricing was so out of line with their offerings people were certain they were getting 4-5 BAs.

Now...obviously, we all know the hype machine is insane. But they played that thing!