Got my request in and thank you sir 
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I can speak a bit to this considering it’s off the shelf components used by probably a single hardware engineer in Shenzhen who has a salary somewhere between 50,000 to 150,000 cny so $7000 to $20,000 USD but if it’s on the higher end they’re definitely getting at least half reimbursed by grants by the government.
And that year’s worth of R&D is not just for a single IEM of course
So selling only 25 Studio 4 IEMs has already paid the entire R&D for the year! 
So it’s definitely not like the US where you need like $500k in funding JUST to pay for R&D for a couple years haha!
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Very interesting, are you working on earphones (or of something similar) development (offshored to China possibly)?
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Nooo no earphone experience. Would definitely defer to Riku about that! 
But yeah offshore software/hardware engineering experience.
There was a time when it seemed like every company wanted to offshore their engineer work to Asia since you can get 10 workers for the price of one US worker but the culture, time zone and even language barriers were actually a huge problem so most of the successful companies opened up offices in Asia to help with that
And it’s funny I’m actually Canadian so not from the US but I’m seeing since COVID and the resurgence of remote work that US companies are actually trying to hire us since our engineers salary is effectively half theirs when equated in USD haha!
Ok rant done haha 
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First impressions RikuBuds Alter Rider 3 by Baskingshark:
(official launch is very soon.)
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The upper mids are boosted and vocals are forwards without veering too much to shouty territory (at moderate volume levels). Vocal and midrange lovers will have a field day and there’s something really magical about this bud’s synergy with acoustic tunes.
Cunning 
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Dude, I am flabbergasted at the level of condescending asshatery going on at Head-Fi pointed at you.
What a miserable bunch of cunts. Just wanted to say that
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Yeah, and seems most of them dont know how to read either.
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Where is this asshatery happening at?
Somewhere around there. I ignored a mess of posts going on
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Wow yeah that’s so dumb
God was that frustrating to read. The original point may have been “correct” but you could just throw that as a question for discussion instead of instant accusation and then plugging your ears and scream malice.
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And they got the discovery thread locked too. It was a whole ass mess over there today
Lol Head-fi
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And now the dickhead’s just apologised 
… really what a complete and utter 
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Did he, though? He said sorry, then made a whole bunch of excuses to justify calling Riku a snake oil salesman, unprompted.
He can stay on ignore, as far as I’m concerned
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Wow that was a complete train wreck in the making yet, I couldn’t stop reading.
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Yeah, I just read the last 3 pages and the one thing I got from it is that dude is a very very opinionated person.
I honestly can’t stand people like that. Trying to push their opinion and stance on something as something that is written in some bible somewhere. I can respect the various scientific examples I guess? But Jesus Christ does he come off as combative as hell.
Riku is a good dude. And while I may have some bias because I’ve interacted with him on a daily basis for over a year now, I’m confident in saying he’s not trying to be a con man or some snake oils salesmen.
What a ridiculous turn of events today over on HeadFi. First Riku gets destroyed by some cowboy, then the discovery thread, the ONLY thread I enjoy reading daily, gets locked by some shit I completely missed.
What a meme is right.
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And neither of those were the kerfluffle I got into a couple of days ago in the Aur audio thread. Place is a mess
Damn the discovery thread got messed up too?
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