Why do TOTL headphones cost the same as TOTL speakers?

@zach915m The thread started off based on the reasonable assumption that there's inherently less value in headphones versus speakers. But it's still assumption for the most part, and it's important to come at things from different angles.

In your experience does manufacturing headphones have any inherent challenges that may not be an issue for manufacturing speakers?

 

I've said this to people when they assume I know how to make furniture because of the wood aspect of ZMFs, but I know the wood process for headphones extremely well, but I don't know a ton else in wood working and have learned just about everything on the basis of making headphones (out of wood). So believe it or not I've never set out to make a speaker, as I've just always been so fascinated with headphones.

Somethings that may be more unique to certain headphone designs (and really I'm not sure here)

1. 3 dimensional machining and design for cups.
2. The chassis is a tough thing to make well, lots of bizarre non flat/3d parts, specialty bolts etc etc.
3. Leather work, very hard to find and have done well, and has to be custom to work well.
4. Labor to make a headphone is tough, and may relate less to things like furniture making than speakers (again I have no idea).
5. Channel matching and acoustics are extremely fragile in a headphone because the environment is so small, so testing equipment and tolerances likely have to be different for speaker matching and testing etc etc. (could be totally off base here, haven't done it.)

This is just a few things I can quickly think of, but I am sure I am either wrong, or maybe just also wrong.

 

I think there's similarities to art or luxury. The price is whatever the market can bear.

A Utopia can be priced at $4k because nobody but Focal can make a Utopia. There's things 95% as good, but it isn't a Utopia. Focal controls all the supply, so the price is whatever people will pay, and people will pay $4k.

 

This is pretty important. If speakers were required to sound good in a closet, the number of "affordable" good ones would decrease dramatically.

 

I like to think the spirit of sbaf is it all goes, sometimes we can lose meaning trying to jerk each other. But man to me, so much of audio sucks. I'll be honest, alot of it just sucks, but it some in different ways each year. As a hobbyist my purchasing decisions are very different than the Consumer. Heck, Ill even be nurotic enough to message close friends who will judge me openly because well its real talk. (I still want a ls3/5a with a octoset of type 46 tubes generating half a watt giving me a limp but slight firm sensation because well it looks cool and sound comes 2nd)

Makes you wonder really, is the product for headphones/speakers for the hobbyist or consumer?
Sometimes it can be cool having a 3k+ headphone and talking about it online. But as a hobbyist I don't really care for it. It's been said many times but who you trust depends on so many aspects of audio.

Personally sign me up for the PR, and spechul talk. I love it, tell me how something is finely tuned by precise engineering and how the final result is only derived solely by the engineering and no strokes of luck. Maybe a cool cut scene or big advert and maybe get someone with a macro lens to show me all the cool shadows it can do under the studio lights.

 

That's okay, I made no assumptions. It's educational just to hear where the challenges are making headphones without any wider context.

Just reading this gives some insight into the manufacturing process.

It is my understanding that many or most speaker manufacturers buy the constituent parts in. The cabinet made to spec by a partner, the drivers from an OEM, and the crossover is all off the shelf parts. Economies of scale, not just for an individual manufacturer, but also the industry as a whole, must dwarf (high end) headphones. So that's got to have an impact that helps to drive down costs.

Though I can think of two examples that run counter to that, in opposite ways. Harbeth and ATC. Which may, as you pointed out, highlight just how differently every company is run.

 

Between the Auteur and the Vérité, I have spent what most (non-enthusiast) people would consider highly unreasonable for "just headphones".

It's perhaps unfortunate they cost that much, but they're luxury items that I ultimately derive enough joy listening to music that the value factor makes sense to me, in the form factor that works best for me.

For me, speakers are only used for home theatre purposes and I can get away with nowhere close to TOTL pricing to enjoy movies/shows.

That probably doesn't answer the thread topic, the "why", but in some cases like ZMF it may be due to scale of operation and uniqueness of the small batches of their products, but for the larger companies it may be the "halo effect" and purely marketing psychology; probably all down to consumers' perception of desirable products that need to cost more in order to satisfy (as has already been alluded to).

Maybe it's because there's been such a slant towards the personal, isolated enjoyment of music a la Apple device/ecosystem marketing and "affordable" audiophile earbuds/headphones, that's an easy huuuuge market to tap for those yearning for something more to wrap around their ears.

 

I do appreciate this type of plain and honest insight. Not everyone is looking for the same thing - that much is clear.

Personally IDGAF about much of anything aside from sound quality when it comes to a headphone or speakers. My current speakers were full of literal rat shit and living spiders when I got them, and the wood exterior of the cabinets is splintering in multiple places. I love them more than anything else I have yet heard.

With a headphone, if the sound isn't right, I won't enjoy an aura of novelty or maintain interest about the other aspects of the build (even if it's a masterpiece of modern engineering and looks amazing), I'll lose interest immediately. It becomes a paperweight. I can't see the headphones when they're on my head, and that's when I should enjoy them most. Maybe I'm the outlier and I'm missing out on huge profits by trying to raise the bar from the bottom and not push it up at the top. Thankfully I have teammates who are more passionate about the alternative approach so we can do both. Maybe someday I'll sell a $5000 headphone and a $200 one at the same time and maybe the $200 one will sound better - if that happens (and I hope it won't), I'll be honest to the consumer about that. If someone wants the more expensive one for its looks and craft, that's on them.

I just want to make headphones that my IRL friends - many of whom are less fortunate than me - could afford, enjoy, or even produce music with. There are plenty of options to serve those who have money to throw at novelty items. I am not one of those people myself. But the most common setup I see in my friend groups offline (many working musicians, and I don't mean highly successful ones, but educators and freelance session workers, editors, etc) is a HD600 or M50X driven by a laptop jack or basic cheap AF audio interface. Those people deserve amazing sound quality at an accessible price too, and that market is being underserved.

edit - also, if there's one thing that I've learned from cycling tons of gear and headphones before making my own, it's that it's more frustrating than it is rewarding. I want more than anything for a pathway out of nervosa to exist that anyone could afford and simply exit the hobby thereafter to do more rewarding things in life. To that extent, maybe I'm anti-audiophile in terms of the lifestyle component. It shouldn't have to cost several thousand dollars to engage with your music without reservation or enormous compromises.

I think @ColtMrFire hit the nail on the head with this explanation. I love how right he is and hate how true it is:

 

This has turned into a very interesting thread and I had a few thoughts. Whether true or not,

I dont think that their is a real mystery as to why headphones, or anything "luxury" or "elite" or "flagship" is more expensive.

As headphone makers develop their products and price them at reasonable (ie; profitable) prices and begin to make sales and a grow a business, more capital is required to continue said business and to develop more "better" headphones.

With higher sales volume, you are faced with lower per unit cost and having to find ways to offset those savings. This higher profit margin can be used to make the product better to justify its cost, or drive the production of a new unit that is more costly because more time goes into the production and because it is more interesting. As profit margins get larger, the maker can spend more time refining, and beautifying a model to justify the high cost. It is not in the makers interest to lower prices....until the market forces them too.

Maybe this thought is overly simplistic, but it came to mind:
Why did Senn go with gorilla glass on the HD820...because cost to produce the unit was sufficiently low that they needed a way to differentiate it and justify the premium. They could have just used plastic and saved a ton of costs and offered it at a lower price. But that is not the point of a flagship headphone. The flagship headphone is there to sound good, but also to raise money to cover the cost of the lower end models and further developments.

As Marv points out, car companies have been doing this forever and the business model works pretty well! Musk outlined it word for word, step by step for Tesla.

Low end model headphones benefit from the time required to produce a flagship....the flagship exists to make you want it, and it drives sales. In my mind, that is why 4k headphones exist.

 

I love this analysis and believe it wholeheartedly. It's a 'trickle down' mentality. I think the frustration is that despite these tactics, the baseline 'cheap' options don't seem to be getting much better. It's not trickling down, it's trickling up.

edit - I'm going to take a break for 24h from this thread. Really got my gears turning - which is good!

 

FWIIW there are speaker systems costing close to a million dollars...silly post

 

Just a thought: the chi-fi plethora of IEMs could have implications in the over ear open back/closed back space now that Sennheiser has essentially given up on the audiophool/studio segment.

Just think if we start to see Sendy-garbage actually hire folks with decent ears, and start popping out $300 headphones that compete with ZMF/Audeze TOTL.

Edit: also just to provide my personal context, it's my opinion that any headphone over $1k is a complete and utter extravagance. none of this shit should be more than $700 unless its got wood cups.

 

This thread has me thinking, does price really not mean performance? Is the money going to comfort? I can think of the Meze Empyrean, rated as one of the most comfortable headphones ever but many think it is simply subpar. All criticism is relative.

Maybe we need 20k headphone systems to be taken more seriously.

 

I always thought the HD800 was appropriately priced at $1500 retail as it brought some real innovations to the dynamic driver headphone market at a time where it was pretty stagnant. It made sense as a "must have" item, because it was (mostly) worth the money for people who valued what it did. And it still remains a standard in certain areas.

Now it just seems like variations on the same thing, with higher and higher prices, presenting the illusion of "more expensive = better" when it mostly comes down to shiny new toy syndrome being the driving force/philosophy.

 

Wife acceptance factor. And 24/7 enjoyment even when kids are sleeping.

 

Maybe not a direct answer - but I've always loved owning items that I have a tactile or physical attachment to. I don't know exactly why, but with speakers you don't pick them up and carry them around with you places etc.

On the inverse, I should probably buy some nice speakers some day to experience that world better. Still too headphone obsessed though.