Why do TOTL headphones cost the same as TOTL speakers?

This is really no different than what happened to speaker rigs over the last 30 years. Wilson came along and said, f**k your money and decided rich old farts were where the market was/is, not "audiophiles". Then you've got a couple brands (i.e. Magico) that convinced some dealers that 100% markup on a $10k cost bookshelf speaker with a $160 titanium woofer was sellable, given enough positive press response. And it all cascaded from there.

most headphone manufacturers haven't picked up on the fact that there's a minimum viable product in terms of sound to learn that they can't just pull Hifiman junk in the guise of "technical prowess" and convince folks like us that their headphones actually provide a good value proposition.

seriously, folks, just grab HD650 and call it good enough. Most manufacturers aren't on your side after that.

 

@zach915m This thread wasn't aimed at you at all, I'm sorry if you took it that way. I wasn't thinking of any company in particular actually, but I definitely wasn't thinking about ZMF, I just think its a good discussion to have and deserved a thread instead of a profile post.

I absolutely understand what you're talking about. Running a business is not a simple matter of the cost of materials plus some profit. you have to make a living, you have to pay people, you have expenses, there is time spent in R&D that can be a lot, etc. I worked as a wedding photographer for quite some time. And what you're saying applies to how you decide what your rates are. Everyone always thinks wedding photographers charge way too much because they just think about the time spent at the wedding and then divide the total by that many hours and wind up with a ridiculously high hourly rate. But to come up with your rates as a wedding photographer you have to decide how much you want/need to make per year, figure out how many weddings you will shoot per year, add expenses, which are astronomical for photography, and then divide that total by the number of weddings. It's actually more complicated than that but you get the idea and it's the same for running a headphone company.

There is also simply the question as a business owner of "what is it worth for me to make this?". What is it worth for me to make this product and what is involved in making it?

But I also think it's worth questioning the high prices ike 4,000, 6,000. Have Hifiman's business costs grown since they made the Susvara? Was there a lot of R&D involved? Why did they price it at $6,000? It is complex as you say and we can't simply point fingers, but it's worth questioning as consumers at the same time.

 

Until I see their financials, I think it's 100% "what the market will bear" with hifiman crap.

 

Personally I find subscription software to play my own files more offensive than 4k headphones, but less offensive than 2k iems.

 

1) 5k speaker cables
2) 2k IEMs
3) 4k Headphones

and in about that order.

 

Because if you care about high-end audio online you're probably a young urban professional, and the main cost of a listening room for a young urban professional is the thousands of dollars in rent per year at NY, SF, Toronto, London, Berlin, HK, Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai rents.. not the cost of the gear inside. Same reason we have gaming laptops instead of desktops, ereaders instead of bookshelves, instant pots instead of bbq pits etc

 

I think you mean thousands more per month to have sufficient space for a dedicated listening room. I agree with your point, my reason used to be roommates and in-office use, now it's thin apartment walls. I don't want the $1,000+ monthly extra cost for thicker walls.

 

Because even if you have the space and money. There are still certain types of entertainment that you want sounding really good but don't want anyone else to hear. This won't ever change.

 

I was going to type stuff from a "project breakdown" and "napkin math numbers" perspective but have decided to say this instead:

Need money to generate interest and R&D and attractive business propositions (i.e. - they product gets launched) but I too at a personal level absolutely don't like that headphones cost over $2k.

For some other equipment, especially amps or DACs with expensive hard to manufacture nearly one off components (can't benefit from economy of scale), I wish it weren't so, but I get it a lot more here. i.e. I would buy my Stellaris all over again, but I certainly don't want to pay even half of that for any headphone I've ever heard.

 

I'd go even further. Headphone listening is inherently anti-social. Sometimes, this is an unfortunate side effect. Sometimes, it's the whole point.

Basically, f**k off world, I'm listening to music on my own right now.

 

Loud music pisses off my neighbors. With home ownership becoming more prohibitive, that will probably be an even more common excuse as we shove more people into yet smaller spaces.

 

My three audio friends in NZ are into speakers and they are in deep in the $100k of their setup. Someone even bought their house solely because a percieved acoustic property of a room. I guess there are additional costs to speaker ownership and nervosa, if you want to go deep.

 

Living conditions and other circumstances make 2 channel prohibitive for a lot of people. I only got into headphones because my situation changed dramatically and the only opportunity to listen to music was while lying in bed.

 

1. $8k DAC
2. $50k Tesla
3. $4k headphones
   thats what I rate as most offensive.

 

I reckon a 5k speaker cable has a chance of having less markup than the rest of the list. 3m per side in a quad geometry = 50m cable, or 100m if doubled up, in something exotic like silver/gold litz... plus fancy connectors (admittedly a rort, but someone else's rort). It's going to add up. Should you buy it? Probably not, but you aren't necessarily getting rogered senseless from a BOM perspective.

 

As someone who has owned Utopia and now owns Mini, I can hand-on-heart say that for pure enjoyment I prefer listening to the little guy. Utopia is technically impressive but it is both a blessing and a curse. It is patently obvious that Mini is a headphone designed from the ground up by a music enthusiast.


The band is definitely not worth $2K though .

 

Thoughts:

1. Demand:
- Is it really bad value? From a cost per minute utility, headphones (along with smartphones) are probably one of the better things to consume. A lot of people (including myself) have at some point realized that they can listen to music when working, working out, commuting, etc. My cost per utility minute for my speakers is worse by orders of magnitude.
- Total cost is less. There's a saying with grand pianos: the problem is not being able to afford a grand piano but the living room to place it in. Same for speakers. In that
- Some consumers will always pay a premium for the bleeding edge to subsidize technology that trickles down. Recently had the chance to hear a R10 again: a lot less impressive compared to what else is on the market today vs. 20 years ago.

2. Supply:
- In theory, miniaturisation should demand a premium rather than discount. So many speakers are just empty boxes and I can't believe that just the box should demand megabucks... But not the expert here.
- Niche is always more expensive. We'll probably need to see even more mainstream adoption before prices can start to come down through automation.
- Not a speakers guy but it feels like sound quality in speakers has reached more the end of S curve than headphones have in term of quality. So we're still paying for innovation.

And people can always just get the HD650...

 

Furthering the observation that we have a physical and personal attachments to headphones, with the intimacy and privacy of using them.

For those that have both do you feel that you associate music and listening to music, or the way music makes you feel, more with a pair of headphones or a pair of speakers?

When you literally look at either one what difference is there in your immediate emotional response?