maybe a couple of them look thin, but most of them look pretty good. and i dont think they got them off ali express lol. i honestly dont know what you guys are talking about. from the pictures these pads look ok. i dont understand the skepticism of this headphone. maybe they dont like the hype on them. especially z comparing them to the sundaraās. but linsoul and theiaudio are good companies and iām really looking forward to this headphone. i think its gonna be great! but i feel like a voice in a sea of skepticism lol
I think it just comes off that they donāt know wtf they are doing. Offering 25 pads tells me they couldnāt get the tuning right, so itās up to the buyer to try to fix it themself. To be fair, they are not alone in this. Audeze pretty much instructs you to fix their tuning with their dsp app, so itās not exclusive to a new/lower priced company. At the price, I think people would be more accepting if itās a hit or miss. Trying to sweeten the deal with an abundance of low quality (in appearance) pads comes off kind of as a bad look imo. Hopefully they work out though. The grilles look cool if nothing else
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they offered 10 pads not 25. ok i understand that but how many pads does ZMF have? Maybe these headphones like ZMFās change drastically with the pads? maybe its Zeos reviews and others that are constantly mentioning pads? Maybe the headphone is unique and other pads out there wont fit them and they dont want people using glue? to me ive seen so many reviews where people will like the sound of the headphones but nix it cause they were uncomfortable or they didnt like the sound signature. i see it as a good sign.
But ZMF ships with the pads they feel work best to their tuning standards. You can elect to change them based on your preference not matching their ideal. I donāt like to pay for a headphone that I know I have to mod to sound right. I know people are big fans of thieaudio phantoms, and even m1060s, but if I have to add/remove stuff before listening, Iām out. Iād feel a lot better about these if they sold a stock version for 6 months, then dropped a lot of pad options, vs pushing them before anyone has really heard it
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I donāt get what people are expecting here. Theyāre freaking $5 sets of pads for Peteās sake. Do you realistically expect ZMF pads for that price? Get realā¦
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When people refer to Ali Express we are generally talking about cheap Chinese pad factories that make oem pads for smaller audio companies. The concern here is how quick they were to just push it out and like for free . Li would is a big audio company that has factories and subbrands like harmonicdyne or tib hifi. they most likely just pulled these pads from factories which is really easy to get cheap especially if you buy bulk from sellers in shenzen. Material quality just very much comes Into question with so many pads with varying materials for not a lot of money for a I reapeat sub $200 headphone . Chifi has proven themselves to not know what they are doing most of the time if you look at how many iems get praised and the sea of not so great iems and their need to sweeten the pot for a highly praised headphone just comes into question especially after z praised their ability to take well to pad changes. Itās a mixture of odd marketing and too good to be true that really hurts and adds to skepticism. Many of us in this forum have ridden hype trains that led to some crashes in the past and itās better to be a skeptic and be surprised by a good product than to be hyped and be disappointed and waste money on a bad one.
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They donāt buy from ali express, they buy from alibaba lol
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Lol even worse I was thinking banggood
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I mean plus people look to Zmf pads as basically one of the standards in pads. Those are bought not only for their own headphones but a lot of other. The most frequent recommendations for pads I see are zmf dekoni and branwavs
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Thatās exactly what were expecting shitty to mediocre pads.
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There are definitely some quality Chinese products. Matrix Audio make some top tier products that are highly regarded, but theyāve proven themselves.
This headphone doesnāt seem to be off to a good start.
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Itās also being distributed by linsoul which has some shade around them. They are a company who knows who to give review units to. Also the increased amount of Kickstarter like sites around audio doesnāt really sit well with me when itās done by a company like linsoul
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No one is saying they are expecting quality. Thatās not the argument anyone is making. Weāre saying the the selling of huge sets of 5 dollar pads speaks to the quality of the headphones themselves. 5 dollar pads will result in 5 dollar pads. Which also means that the $130 headphones theyāre selling will be nothing more than $130 headphones and not some miracle cans that some (actually only one person that I can find who will not be named) were hyping them to be.
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Itās not fair to compare legitimate established companies to stuff like this (I actually mentioned this in some posts above in this thread)
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Let me be honest though, if these drop to well below 100 bucks in the future (likely), then I may pick some up for the looks alone. Or maybe to even take them apart and mod them myself 
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Lin soul has been around for some time, but I get what youāre saying.
My comments were more about quality perception of Chinese designed/manufactured products.
Yo same I would keep them around and swap them with a better driver just for fun and try to tune them myself cause the matching on them is admittedly gorgeous
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Yeah that sounds fun. Maybe we can email them and ask for just the chassis for like 50 bucks lol. Theyād likely still double their profit.
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Apparently they sound great too 
Without drivers? Yeah I suppose thatās possible ha