You guys remember that cheap cardboard alloy they were making cars out of in Africa somewhere? They got cardboard, and sawdust and some kind of glue. and they would mix it and pour it into a form mold and make cars out of it dirt cheap?
And that material where they got used plastic bottles and learned how to turn in into pillows and cloth?
And you know about the cheapest most common standard electronic parts off the shelf?
And those unknown genius’s living in some poor neighborhood in china or india?
And some lame ass company formed in someones garage over night?
And that cheap-ass packaging the Fostex TR20P came out of?
Well i want to see that lame ass company find that poor genius and get those cheap materials, slap a coat of paint on it and make headphones that sound like ZMF headphones. Then they sell it for 180$ it cost 160$ to make. And its so awesome its like endgame and we all buy it and live happily ever after.
Make room for sales, lost product like QC fails, money to supplement the Rand D it took to develop it, you gotta pay janitors, accountants,secretaries, tech support and your higher ups, shipping. And that’s just what I can think of at the top of my head
And to the company bank account and stock holders. So yeah pretty much a $160 headphone to produce per unit I would be amazed if it was less than a grand.
Also packaging less so for audio gear but God damn did the last product I do cost a tin to package like $40-$100 per unit just on packaging cause people would fuck up applying it so often cause the contract was ass.
Initial post reminds me of Grado and the Verum One. Just need to locate that peasant genius then connect him/her with either company.
Production cost versus sales price discussion remined me of this (roughly first 5 minutes):
(Interested in RiceGuru’s take on how accurate this guy’s account is, since it would be self-serving for him to slant it.)
Let’s try a different tack. Take a company like Sennheiser. Hire a sniper to take out anyone responsible for sound quality decisions for their budget over-ear passive product line and put in place someone with good ears that you’ve bribed to target the ZMF house sound. This way you’ll get massive economies of scale plus production expertise to hit your target price point.
Or yet a different tack, if less enjoyable to contemplate. Start an on-line petition to show there is a massive potential market frothing at the mouth for an affordable ZMF (which model?). When you have 50,000 signatures forward to Massdrop. They’ll see the potential profit opportunity and job this out to some big company to get the job done.
Sennheiser really needs better ears though for a lot of their budget or generally closed back offerings cause geez with a company as much clout as them you would think they have better gear in those fronts
Take what I say with a massive grain of salt. I worked in the hydro electric industry for a while and now work at a production side of a geochem lab. Never really worked in audio. But I have seen how cheap certain audio components are made and depending on where they are made how cheap a product can be made for especially with robots. I extrapolated that knowledge on a estimate on the production vs sales it could be lower than my estimates or higher.
Also just for the robot thing most components will be machine made also designed with very minimal losses so components are basically almost mostly just material very little labour costs per unit. But where a lot of costs come from is assembly depending on how your shit is assembled that’s a huge factor on price look at a Chifi iem or headphone made in china most likely a robot thus can be cheap vs HD 800s hand assembled pre burned in made by gentle detail oriented German ladies
Yeah robots would make it cheaper but then you have to pay for the operators, and repair costs, and the oil, electricity to run them, and the litigation from the Union’s of angry workers who were replaced by them and then you have $1,000 headphone when the materials cost a hundred bucks
Exactly and we keep coming up with more reasons why headphones have such a high price point when most of the time material costs are in the 10s or even ones
knowing an audiophile and his money are easily parted lol.
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