Sony to buy Audeze

https://audioxpress.com/news/sony-interactive-entertainment-to-acquire-audeze

 

Absolutely huge! The MRI gear alone is priceless until someone else swoops in and one-ups the technology.

 

They’ll keep that as overpriced medical tech and ditch the rest in a few years. That’s what Sony does.

 

I think it would be all of Audeze's patents that they are after.

 

Whatever it was, I doubt the audiophile business was what they cared about.

 

You mean all 6 patents over the past 9 years?

 

Maxwell has been doing exceedingly well for Audeze since its launch and Audeze had made inroads with both Sony and Microsoft with it. Probably not a coincidence that Sony announced the day prior that the new Playstation Pulse headset and IEMs are planar: https://blog.playstation.com/2023/0...e-player-to-launch-later-this-year-at-199-99/

My hope and guess, Sony leaves Audeze to be autonomous and have tech trickle down to the Sony Interactive Entertainment (gaming) side of the business while being hands off with rest of the company. Stax and Edifier comes to mind as the audiophile brand acquired by a bigger brand that has mostly been hands off the core business. Minus that Edifier STAX Spirit S3 which is still ironically an Audeze made headphone.

 

ya I dont think they after this either, and it musta been a nice lil payday for the c-suite audeze folks...

 

I've peeked at the FAZOR patent, and (tho i'm not a patent law attorney) it's suitably generic to fall into number #2.

 

Generic claims with broad claim scopes are ripe for prior art attacks under 35 USC 102 and 103 under post-issuance inter partes review. Generally, claims with broad claim scopes are susceptible to invalidation via prior art or (more recently) enablement attacks. Narrow claims are more difficult to invalidate, but are tough to enforce and are susceptible to design arounds. Additionally, from the few I glanced, it seems that their US patents are largely one-and-done deals, which suggests a strategy apart from #2. I suspect these patents are for defensive purposes.

Anyways, for Sony's sake, I hope their M&A team had some IP professionals that thoroughly vetted Audeze's IP holdings during the due diligence phase of the deal.

 

So does this mean Mega Bass will be a legit marketing term now from Sony?

 

The patent for ANC planar and electrostatic headphones seems pretty important.

Ninja edit:

Since both of Sony's new headphones are Planar

 

One thing that I think could be a great thing coming off this: Audeze has developed a fairly questionable reputation with regard to manufacturing consistency over the years ("unicorn samples" etc etc: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...-pre-fazor-unicorn-edition-measurements.1834/, and this persisting to relatively newer stuff like the LCD-2 Classic: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...ents-and-impressions.5556/page-14#post-198073), and while I'm not much a fan of how Sony consumer gear's sounded in the enthusiast space (MDR-Z1R has that treble spike and really fuzzy bass, IER-Z1R is just glarey and harsh which is unfortunate because it DOES resolve a lot of information), I think it's safe to say that they've got really tight manufacturing tolerances.

Being able to consistently churn out unicorn sample-tier Audeze headphones may be interesting.

 

If Sony leant their manufacturing prowess, perhaps an effect here is planar going mainstream.

 

This is exactly my thought.

Audeze obviously does some *really* amazing stuff, but they just don't seem to have the manufacturing consistency nailed down. Throw some new process engineers to look at the problem from a new angle, and things could get really interesting.

 

I’m very excited about this. Great products with super scaled out manufacturing and sales can only mean a lot more people can afford awesome stuff, which is great for the hobby.

Imagine a world with $199 planar IEMs.

Kudos to Audeze and best wishes!!