$55 drivers in a $1400 IEM... Is this okay??
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ย. 2024
- Here's the original reddit thread: / 64_audio_solo_1400_use...
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Yeah anyone who thinks this is controversial should think about how much each circus logic dac costs in the dac amps out there, or how much a Knowles balanced armature driver costs per unit…
I've been saying this for ages. Desktop dacs and amps are just glorified metal boxes with off the shelf chips. They don't develop their own, they get them from chip manufacturers like infineon
@@ahsookee True, but that's a testament to how good the chips are these days really. And a circuit board still has to be designed for them.
$1400 iem probably doesn't sound as good as a $19 Koss ksc75，koss might be a lot better
@ comparing apples to oranges
My IEM use in house BA driver
I think the "driver story" means a lot to people's purchases. It's much like what an engine is for a car. People buy the v8 model despite never utilising its performance. I think it's an innate way humans see objects anthropologically. The driver is the heart, so it feels more important.
Ultimately, companies like audeze design and make their drivers themselves. For the flagships, even the magnates are made by them. Does that matter performance wise? No, but it does matter in terms of the story it's telling, which is important for a investment based on emotional fulfilment.
that's very true, people want to feel like their purchase is special and unique.
Even worse are audiophile cables, where the BOM cost can be a few Dollars with the cable selling for 1000s of Dollars.
now THAT is a really unjustifiable cost
Wait till you hear about sixth elements sticker or rosenkranz sticker 💀
@@Izou96 ☝🤣I've seen people in the Head-Fi facebook group with these all over their gear. It's the audio equivalent of Goop's healing stickers.
@@Izou96 Been a minute since I've seen the name rosenkranz 😆 real audiophiles know that Hi-res Audio stickers improve sound much more than rosenkranz stickers.
@@SpirallingOutoh I thought that was a meme 😂
People often overlook the costs of R&D, support, and manufacturing; generally, you’re not just paying for the sum of the parts.
In some cases, especially with entry-level manufacturers-often from China-the prices are much closer to the actual cost of the parts. Brands like Aiyima, Fosi Audio, and others offer significantly lower prices. However, even these brands still have R&D expenses, provide customer support, and have other operational costs to cover.
Caleb Loo from reviewed the Solo and at the end he wrote:
Should You Buy It?
No, not at this price. Like most of the popular planars, the Solo is a pretty good IEM. And 64 Audio has genuinely made key improvements in the treble with the dual Helmholtz resonators. However, $1,400 is a LOT of money to spend for what is, in my opinion, a fairly standard 14.2/14.8 mm planar in a 64 Audio shell. Not only that, they’re about 2 years late to the planar train. It’s why I didn’t include a comparisons section - if you want a planar, there are countless for less than $200. While the Solo might perform a bit better than a lot of them, there isn’t a clear-cut distinction unless you somehow love love love the planar IEM sound profile but are simultaneously very treble sensitive.
The $100 Letshouer S12 Pro sounds like a bargain right now, those basically has the same $55 drivers of the Solo.
you can get the artti t10 for half that and it uses basically the same driver as s12 pro in terms of performance
sgor luna and kz PRX are good considerations too for only 35 or less
Yeah especially because it has a fantastic cable and amazing (metal) build quality that's not even matched by IEMs multiple times its pricepoint.
@@luvingyouuso you are saying that T10 that cost around 60 USD use the same drivers as S12 pro which use the same driver as Solo's which cost 55 usd? Please make it make sense
@@Quantowski artti t10 driver from the same factory as the s12 driver and about 0.6mm shorter. If we are to believe the specs. The driver itself tunes quite similarly to the s12 driver and they are almost identical in technical performance . I have tried t10 and s12 modded to sound almost identical and only major differences were s12 sounds more holographic on some tracks and t10 sounds more open, this could purely be down to driver position / implementation. I can't say either sounds more resolving than the other, though that might just be my ears and planar timbre
In terms of objective sound quality and tuning, It is a $1400 iem that competes with other planar's 1/7th the cost. That is the biggest issue with the Solo and the CA moon rover.
CA is being kept alive by headfi addicts.
Yeah the whole driver discussion aside the price is high.
Its just how everything works, some people just seek for validation by purchasing the more expensive product even if its not "better" or are stans who pay for the name and thats all they care about. All marketing aside, at the end of the day all that matter is how it sounds to the ear. If it sounds 95-99.9% like 4-8-16 times cheaper product sorry but you're a fool who's getting ripped off. The more IEM's i try, the more i get convinced how this hobby is about consumerism, validation seeking and not audio itself or music enjoyment. I've seen people happier with EW300 + Tidal and some cheap dac than the miserable ones who have 10k$ collection and keep buying into every new hype train even if it sounds like 10 pair they already own, never satisfied and all they do is post pictures on forums to "flex". Peak consumerism brainrot.
@@3ildcard 100% this "hobby" is consumerism. People defend their purchasing decisions as a coping mechanism, they can't fathom that they might have overpaid for something.
I think the tuning bring so simular to a much cheaper planar iem was the bigger issue people had with it. At the very least we expect a different tuning if you are going to charge so much.
Yeah I think that's reasonable.
Thing is you can make your own tuning with EQ very easily nowadays so is there much point to very expensive drivers like this?
@Kalane It's "similar". There is no such word as "simular". Sorry to be an ass, but you REALLY need to know this.
@@mccririck01 from a oem? Probably not. But manufacturing your own can beneficial for QC and they will always cost more.
@@mccririck01 not really much point imo
While I totally understand tuning takes a lot of labour, they had a blueprint with a dozen identical drivers with previous iems. All they really had to do was copy the S12 tuning and remove the resonance
Yet I can buy a heddphone one with amt drivers developed from scratch, tuned, and hand made for $1000-1899
And thats not all, 64audio has been dragging their feet for years. Still the same garbage cable on the U12T, still no interchange sockets, still no nubs on the nozzles. This is glacial improvement
Yeah I'm more of a headphone guy, and I still think most IEMs cost too much, but my thoughts here are mostly just about driver cost.
@@DMS3TV Understandable! I think people would have a fit if they knew what most things really cost to make, and I super appreciate you listing your headphone costs, even if people were very unreasonable about it.
This is why I trust your reviews
There’s a whole DIY community out there, so if people think it’s that cheap and easy they should do that instead 😂
Even if you compare with similar sounding planar iem, that "64" always going to get more attention. It's beginning to look like fashion designer, if your T-shirt have that particular brand it will hold more value, same goes with boutique iem right now.
Wait till you see they charge 500$ for a mini air vacuum cleaner.
And spoiler they also use off the selves cheap Chinese motors.
The problem with this case is that first of all the faceplate fell off, which shouldn't have happened when you pay 1.5k for an iem. Second, when you look into the frequency responses of 64audio solo and Nicehck F1pro which uses same planar drivers, they are almost identical and I highly doubt that 64Audio even bothered to put time and resources to tune the iem for their intentions. It is basically put drivers into other shells and sell it for more than 1000$. It is absurd to see flagship iems going up in their price every year. Flagships were 1k range 6-7 years ago and now you have to pay more than 5k for flagships for marginal improvements on technicalities and aesthetics.
The faceplate falling off is def not something that should happen at that price I agree. Also not saying its worth the price, just commenting on the driver cost.
the faceplate fell off still exist till this day is just unacceptable. the faceplace of my u12t felt off once, got it fixed by 64audio in warranty , 6 months later it felt off again. so i got it fixed again and sold it. never play with 64 again :(
You dont HAVE to, some people just choose to, for reasons unknown to me
Right yesterday someone on headfi wrote "one side of my Tia Fourte has fallen off" .
So much for "muh manufacturing and R&D"...
And from all of the real tangible achievements pertaining to actual sound performance - they seemingly managed to suppress the second (6-10 kHz) resonance. Which is great, but that's also something that was achieved before in products 1/5 the price of Solo.
Bro I'm never buying expensive iems ever .... Knowing this just significantly shrunk what i consider reasonable for iem cost.
Just saying, even _your_ own newly released headphones have sub $20 drivers for a $1k headphone. %3.92 of 64 Audio IEM for the drivers, DMS Omega @ %2.1 for drivers. Not a HUGE difference.
The price should also be determined by quality. The Arya Stealth launched at $1600, and now they are being sold at $700 and Hifiman is still probably making a profit. They sold them at $1600 because they sounded like $1600 headphones, and a lot of people would agree because a lot of people bought them at $1600. Hifiman could have launched them at $700, but they are able to charge a lot more and people still bought it. Companies can charge whatever they want, I've heard bottled water is being sold at a 2000% upcharge and people still buy them.
Are they overpriced at $1400, I would say yes because good IEMs exist at $40. It's overpriced, but if the quality matches, then it's worth that much to enthusiasts. It's overpriced, but it's not a necessity and in a marketplace with competition, so the price is fair and they can charge what they want.
Hifiman launching their Arya at a higher price and slowly decreasing the price over time isn't unique to Hifiman, nor is it a deceptive/scammy practice.
R&D is one of those abstract costs that people have trouble understanding when trying to analyze the price.
Let's say you have a product that took $2 million of research money, but the BoM comes down to 15 cents and machine time to manufacture it costs $2.
The very first item you ever produce didn't cost you $2.15, it costed you $2,000,002.15. But you can't sell that product at a ridiculous price tag of $2,000,002.15. Instead you need to make some predictions about how much you can sell within a set time frame and spread the cost of r&d over those. Then as you eventually break even on R&D, you can cut the price and further increase the demand of your product which, by this point, is already very late into its product cycle.
Headphones and IEMs are one of those things where R&D is the most important factor. It takes a lot of specialists and specialty machines to design a something that actually sounds good.
The hifi world is an area of business where releasing your product for a lower price might actually hurt sales. If Hifiman releases a new headphone at $700, people think of it as a "$700 headphone". The snobs won't touch it, but it's also too expensive for someone looking for a cheaper entry-level headphone. So it won't sell.
If they release it at $1.600, now it's a "$1.600 heaphone". Everybody wants it, they say it's great. Now Hifiman lower the price to $700 and it becomes a "$1.600 headphone with a great discount" and even more people buy it.
Related story, I know a musician who did his first vinyl release a couple years ago. He was talking with the company about pricing, and they told him: you could sell it for 15€ a piece no problem, but we'd recommend you charge at least 25€ per piece because you will sell more! The vinyl enthusiasts won't buy it if it's too cheap!
This is something that I have known about for over 50 years since I used to build my own speakers.
You didn’t even mention the cost of packaging, utilities, distribution, warehousing and the physical business.
it is ok for 64audio, as always
if you need a reason to justify spending 1400, you probably shouldn't be spending that much.
You are paying the sucker tax.
It kind of bothers me that so many reviewers allude to companies doing this but won't call them out because they want to keep getting review sets but act like it's about "letting people enjoy the hobby, the way they want."
64 doesn't send me review units. I don't think they're out to scam anyone either. I think people severely underestimate what it costs to run a company in the US. Does that justify the price? No but it does fairly explain it.
@@DMS3TV To be clear, it was HBB I was talking about specifically not you.
I thought you gave a well reasoned breakdown of how it's more complicated. I still disagree that the costs are worth that level of inflation but thats why I don't spend into the higher price brackets.
I just think reviewers should always be sharing information like this because that is literally the point of what they do, to inform consumers.
Idk about the sound or tuning, but fwiw, 64 audio is just too expensive. Sure they have a few bangers, but $500 for the A2e and $700 for the A3e is ridiculous.
They are selling much overpriced products. Don't worth it.
In my opinion if that 55$ wasn't a reproduction then of course I would choose to buy the solo, simply because you can't make IEMs that your ears will enjoy for a small amount of money unless you go and reproduce one. I have purchased all the high end IEM's from 64 audio and they have all amazed me so much that I have a custom cable made specifically for each pair of IEM's so that they can delight my ears.
Funny as this is what I asked on the forum today. What kind of drivers are in our IEMs? Would like to see some info on what Moondrop uses, Dunu , 64 Audio , etc….
Great video !
More on this please.
Dinner at Noma, what maybe a few $thousand and dinner down the street at the burger joint is $25. Labor, R&D, distributors, name recognition, customer service, return replacements, all that. I will never buy a 64 Audio product but I do fully understand the pricing. Crin did a video on a single B.A. driver IEM that was selling for $1200 or so, seems very sketchy.
They are a greedy company... and this product is a scam!
I think 64audio is still too expensive when I can get Chifi. If 64a had larger scale of production and paid their employees less like in China, they would probably be actually competitive but instead they insist on unrealistic American standards of labor and quality when most Chifi iems are fine in most cases, and if not you can return them for another unit
Yeah cost doesn't matter for sale price. They are $1400 because they think you'll pay it. If they don't move units they will drop the price.
You'll be surprised by how unwilling western companies are to drop prices on an non viable product. It can hurt band identity to show that the product is worth less than what is established by the brands market sector. It many cases, it is actually better business sense to let the available stock rot and keep their brand image.
how come $20 to $50 or even $150 to $250 iems can do almost the same research, development and quality control and not have to charge more than $1000 for this process?
"How come if I fabricate evidence I always come to the conclusion that best fits my narrative?"
@@En_Joshi-Godrez well tuned and designed iems of this price range are widely available. what part did I fabricate?
@@Randy-nb6fw but they don't have the same research, development, and QC. Cheap chifi products have a notoriously bad unit variance you don't see from a company like 64audio. I don't like the company. They haven't made a new and interesting product in 7 years. But the idea that they're the same process is wrong. You know it's wrong. "But but, I think they're the same to justify the tax bracket I'm in." Don't we all.
@@En_Joshi-Godrez this can be true for like sub $50 IEMs but anything above that is pretty consistent unless its KZ. KZ is a scam.
you dont need to pay $1000 on top of material & manufacturing cost to get a consistent product. and making some passive filtering is not rocket science.
It would be ignorant to think that some companies cut corners in QC to make money but others don't over charge just because it is a "premium product"
you seem like the kind of person to buy apple products lol
@@En_Joshi-Godrez didn't this started because the faceplate of the 64audio iem fell off?
Looks like we got board pics.
This can be reverse engineered.
Boards can be printed from $8-25
Shells can be 3d printed and sanded/smoothed
Drivers $55
I'm pretty sure I could make these for around $180-220 with time included.
But no glamorous shell.
Just nice sound.
Money is important, but the enjoyment of the audio is more important. I'm writing this with Glacier in my ears and I can't stop admiring this "expensive" IEM.
Great video Doug! 100% on point. My match rate for the peerless driver is around 50%, I'm sure your experience is similar so multiply the driver cost by 2x right off the bat, maybe more. Then there's the defective rate, which I found to be around 2%. And assembly survivability which is about another 1-2% loss. Driver pricing is almost meaningless when it comes to defining overall value of the product. Might be a little different for planar drivers, but I'm sure the same issues plague them as well. Glad you made this video!
Reminds me of Henry Ford's problem that he hired Charles Steinmetz to solve. The full story is really cool but essentially, Steinmetz fixes Ford's problematic generator and sends him an invoice with the following:
Chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $9,999
I don't understand how anyone can actually think that a piece of plastic and some magnet is the main cost of an expensive IEM or headphone. Material cost is very very tiny part of any decent audio product in the market. HD800 for example, it's mainly constructed from plastic, I'd be surprised if the material is more than $20 to make a single unit, but the countless working hours from world class audio engineers is what determines the price, not to mention the expensive equipment it takes to make them and the extremely thorough quality control.
20 bucks for a taxi? But you spent only 50 cents in gas!!!
Only 20 bucks? Go ahead and charge me 50.
@@jjose7410, don't assume too early! He didn't mention which country or anything.
Thanks for your insights. As someone from aerospace I know how much QC can inflate prices. Makes it more amazing to my that the Sennheiser ie600 cables are so often defective.
I agree with you. Only evaluating the individual driver is not correct. It takes a lot of work to develop a high-end system. On top of that, how much expertise is built into it (resistors etc.) This can take several months or even years. That also incurs costs. I think 64Audio does a great job.
The ingredients to make whiskey and wine are pretty cheap, but bottles can costs a lot for varying reasons. The components used to run utilities in a jars are relatively cheap, but professional installation is quite expensive. No matter the product or service you should view yourself paying for quality of the products as opposed to the some of its parts.
I mean the vines and vineyard cost a fortune so it would be equivalent to 64audio having there own driver factory. This is equivalent to a wine company taking someone else's grapes (which is also a thing).
@ plenty of wineries source grapes and small wineries even source mash/must. Same idea with whiskey. Plenty of manufacturers source distilled spirits and prefilled barrels. At the ultra high end a barrel of weller millennium could have a srp of almost a million dollars despite time and material being only a fraction. Wild turkey bought barrels of buffalo trace spirits and those bottles sell for bonkers money despite the cost of the barrels.
@bigchimpin4215 I'm not entirely sure what you are saying. Whisky companies buy someone else's whisky in the barrel and then pass it off as their own?
@@danaillaysen7632 effectively yes. Some whisky companies source all of their distilled spirits and age the barrels in their own rick houses and some buy pre aged barrels to resell as their own brand.
@@bigchimpin4215 wow, interesting. Thanks.
Great video thanks and I appreciate the honest insight! Since you mentioned the Mega5 EST, how do you think it compares to the XENNS Mangird Tea PRO? Any thoughts on which is better or best allrounder?
I suspect that some folks may also refer to a product's physical dimensions when determining what something "has to cost" to be justifiable. Admittedly, yes, when a shell is made from resin, even if it's a custom mold, or perhaps a poly-blend -- I'm staring at this product in my hands that is the size of a quarter wondering why it's "worth" $1,400. I'm not in a tax bracket to think otherwise, therefore the thought crosses my mind. However, I also have a clear understanding of the costs associated with the entire manufacturing process. And still, despite that knowledge, it's a tough pill to swallow. "Enthusiast" or niche subsections of a hobby are usually NOT for the faint of heart.
This is an interesting case indeed. I agree though that people often don't look at everything involved in making a product as well as what that product as seen to represent in the market, and this is common across industries. As you go higher you hit diminishing returns, where you no longer really getting more for your money, but rather maybe getting customer support and belonging to a certain group of people that some of us don't care or even want to be part of, but to some it's very important to be.
The luxury watch world is much the same. There are many luxury watch brands that are paying double digit prices for ETA movements and then put them into watches costing deep into four and sometimes five digit timepieces. Case materials, finishing, and other things drive up costs.
ROI and ROE calcs are not solely based on component costs. Even direct cost falls into 4 categories (Labor, Equipment, Materials, Subcontracts). Then you factor in indirect costs, overhead and G&A. Followed by interests, other financing costs, taxes and dividends etc.
you said everything I would have said. Yes, I bet they are buying those drivers for much cheaper. Because I know that those same drivers are used in 50 dollars iems now. The only thing I would argue is, nowadays I see much lower build quality, qc problems like breaking iems or bad driver matching from high end brands. Even when the sale numbers considered, we don't come across these problems with chifi just as much. In the earlier days, they would get away with anything but now we see them all over the internet. Just checking a squig database shows how bad driver matching in the iems of these manufacturers. If I pay the premium, I want none of that.
Remember, expertise today becomes common knowledge tomorrow. The knowledge and skills to create a $1,400 IEM today may lead to $140 equivalente alternatives from Chi-Fi brands within about five years or so. R&D requires constant investment to drive innovation, but every product has limits on how much it can evolve and innovate. Unless there is disruptive innovation (which resets the cycle), the gap in sound quality between top brands and commodity products will narrow over time as the latter improve. Once quality reaches a commodity plateau, perceived value will shift to more subjective, fashion boutique-like appeal. Again, any disruptive innovation driven by R&D investment can reset this cycle, and that's why it is so important for top brands to continue investing in R&D and innovating their products to differentiate from commodity products. Any today's $100 Chi-Fi IEM can be as good or even better than a $1,000 IEM from 5 years ago. That's my point.
Of course when we buy a manufactured good we don't pay only the raw materials, the question is what is the margin in the iem business do they may 80% profit or 20% profit ?
What they don't say is how cheap actual Sennheiser 800/s drivers are
55$ is actually expensive for a driver
True it's not only about the BOM, am budget oriented. KZ in ears are good enough for me.
Personally Agree based on this video, its like art where someone can use everything that free like leaf , twig etc , but when they make it good, it value on that.
This is the reason why I stopped buying iems in general, discovered the DIY route and never went back to the rabbit hole.
Distribution has a big factor of the price of something.. it's pretty much doubles once all the parties of distribution adds their percentage.
Modern Day Production made studio monitors using the purifi woofers and belimisa tweeters and mid drivers and they are half of what they would cost because they sell them themselves... nut still, the drivers are still quarter of the over all cost because other things cost more than you think... the simple casing, even though there's barely any technology it costs a lot... you'll see on aliexpress amps going for $200 and the empty casing for the amp going for $100... it does cost more than people think for that even when simple in design... with these speakers there is then built in amps with DSP, there that and then the time of programming the DSP... there's then more than you think that goes into making something than just the driver... and in this case it's not the only driver... $55 for one component is a lot... if this is also being sold in normal retail websites then they are already marked up more anyway... the MUM speakers would be almost double the price if they decided to wanted make them a retail product.
So really you have to thing these are $650 headphone really... then $110 of that is this one driver either side... then the tec that goes into making those drivers sound good is worth far more than the driver... it's a fantasy to even think "I can build my own speakers for much less with the same result" now, it'll be less than a retail speaker for sure, but do you expect companies to make no money off the production of their product? even if they only sold from house, you should still be able to build it for cheaper if you could get you hands on all parts... but the truth is you can not get you hands on all parts... a lot of other parts often are only sold to companies creating products.
Now lets look at this like a chocolate bar... if a shop buys a box where the chocolate cost them per bar $1 and they sell the bar for $2... they will not be able to pay the rent of the shop let alone all other running costs and the staff... a shop needs to but that chocolate bar for $0.25 and sell it for $2 to survive.
\the companies that then sell that bar for $0.25 need to be able to sell a mass bulk of that item and so anyone buying needs to buy in bulk for that company to survive off of that price it's sold for.
Now, another thing here not discussed is the fact this driver might be on Alibaba because it is the last of a old stock before the production of a new driver... this price might be to get rid of old stock... this also might be a luring test price as no one buys this unless they are wanting to build their own headphone and if they do then what's next genius? all you have at the moment is a driver.
So maybe this is a under sale also to get companies trying out the driver in their own design... this price might be the same price for bulk and it's a under sale for a single unit just to be enticing for companies to try it.
I tested this and bought the drivers and just wired the, put in my ears and must say the full IEM is far better value when it comes to sound quality.
I really wanna see a breakdown of WHAT an IEM is. Like, ok, you bought the drivers, you have all the parts. What then? What exactly is tuning not in the frequency graph sense but mechanically. What do you actually do to the driver to tune it?
Idk if you mentioned tooling specifically but oh my god the tooling required. If you're making these out of any sort of injectable/pourable material you're gonna need molds and those are noooot cheap. If it has any custom CNC that's *not* cheap either.
People need to be real about this kind of stuff.
You can get a pile of lumber for a lot less than the cost of a house.
Wow, passive analog filter in iem! If 55$ for driver and its a lot, guess how much passive elements on iem cost.. 0.1-2$ I guess. For materials something like 85$ max.
If they really spend 55$, which I doubt, about 1,4k wouldn't be a crazy price.
Most people just have no Idea how much other things go into the price of a product, you can take about 10% from the retailprice and you have a decent estimate on how much it cost to produce. For most things even less.
Thank you for this interesting video. Which brand and model number of headphones are you using in the video?
Geoff. UK.
All I see is community overreaction .......... if it bothers you, then just don't buy it. I, for one, am already pretty satisfied with P20, MP145, & S12 2024 to satisfy my planar needs; kept the extra cash and I'll just get creative with EQ if I get the itch to do so for some reason.
ok, no more iem for me
i usually justify such things by the fact i would not be able to manufacture it, to the same quality level at home for significantly cheaper which even when not accounting for the hours spent on it - if i can then it is kinda over priced
I saw this too, it is a good response to this question.
55 bucks is actually quite a lot for such a small component. I wonder how much Sony's high end drivers cost, or Dan Clark's, or Focal's? They may have developed them in house, but I doubt the cost per unit is much more if at all.
Nice comment stealing
@@En_Joshi-Godrez How do you know that I am not that Reddit user? Because... I am.
@matthewweflen hmm, ok. You got me.
@@En_Joshi-Godrez Copying oneself would count as plagiarism in a college course. I didn't include the Sony parts link here, though :-)
They also price in advertising, shipping of components, labor to assymbol, QC testing, energy and additional cost to run the facility while constructing. The cost to store the product. The team that distributes said product. The cost to warranty any failed units. Fail components like PCB or drivers that are DOA. etc.
There is a whole lot the average Joe doesn't see when it comes to bringing a product to market and standing behind said product.
That said could it still likely be cheaper, probably but the company needs to be profitable to be worth the headache that comes with running a business. I'm sure the total parts labor etc is a 3rd to maybe half the sales price at most, but likely a 3rd of the price. This means if they need to replace the set once they still have a reasonable profit.
Not to mention the product will at some point go on sale to increase the sells while still maintaining a healthy profit.
It's laughable when JBL makes good speakers at 1/4 price with all same lame you have given above.
These Iem are scam.
@@fuzailkhan4598 JBL sells in a lot higher volume, at least if you mean their consumer line of products.
Audio 64 is a relatively small company and thats a normal price to pay for audiophile gear. Would I like stuff to be cheaper? Yes. But I can't assemble IEM's myself, so I gotta go with what is out there on the market.
If 1300 is too much (which it is for me currently for example, but I do think it is a fair price) then get something else.
That's the beauty of choice.
You wrote all of this to defend 64 audio and to not say that they are selling very overpriced products! Yeah this is a SCAM! 1400 dollars for that is a scam! 300/400 dollars was a much more honest price.
@@resottolamontagna904 I didn't say it's a scam because I don't believe it is one. They are selling what they say they are selling.
I don't own a pair of 64 Audio Earphones personally, but from what I have heard so far it's expensive, sure, but not overpriced. And obviously, per definition, not a scam.
Cope, do you buy one?
You're coping so hard
this is the kind a topic i'd liked, it's educating viewers. to say the value to one product is objective, one might said : look at how many hours / month or even year to made this masterpiece, and one might said : naaah is overpriced, i can get 4 "B" brand with this amount of money and it sound 90% the same to my ears. with the exotic cars a builder can charge up to $4 million for one limited edition of masterpiece, how they put the price tag is by the car performance, if it can score a new record and he can name the price he want, simple as that. but in listening domain there is no scale to beat, u just need to build the hype train & make it run, paid couple of reviewers and the train will run automatically, when 10 people said this product is amazing that word should effect the others.
This proves we still have a lot of idiots in the audiofile realm. Wait till they find out the cost of their beloved planar or dynamic 1000+ headphones.
Also just... conventional wisdom on iems has diminishing returns having fallen off a cliff hundreds of dollars ago, and at this price we've arguably entered the realm of total decorrelation between price and value for money. Why bother complaining about the bill of materials for a product in the "money has lost all meaning" bracket?
QC? Just yesterday on headfi a guy wrote "one side of my Tia Fourte has fallen off".
The way I see it is the components in this are the same spec and have had the same effort put into them as the approx $6k IEM's by other companies, yes they are expensive BUT they are a better deal then many more.
IEM's and headphones are stupid expensive at the higher end , can this be justified? hell no! Will people pay it ? yup and not blink twice at the price. Until people refuse to pay high prices this will continue
64 audio is one of the biggest ripoff companies, prices 1/10 or 1/20 of the retail would be ok.
I totally agree with you brother!!!
The resonator thing is just some gimmick bullshit they used to mask the fact that its some cheap generic China driver and a copy of the S08 tuning. Its not like its their own $1k+ self made driver, its some generic cheap driver anyone can buy online. This set shouldnt be more than $250, its just that simple.
Welcome to high end ear/headphones. I know it's a spicy take considering this audience, but spending more than a couple hundred bucks on wired headphones will not yield greater music enjoyment. You can get full enjoyment out of your music for not a lot of money. The big caveat is that you are focused on using gear to listen to music, not using music to listen to gear. There was a video on the headphone show channel where they showed what happens when you blind test headphones with normal people - price has very little correlation with perceived quality/enjoyment.
Couldn't you get an IEM with the same driver and tune it yourself with EQ to the target curve you like?
I would have thought the drivers would be way higher in price in these 1k plus IEMs. Hmmm....
Did you even like.....watch the video?
Not a fan of 64audio,and spending $55 for only one component is definitely not cheap in eletronic world.
Speaking of the Mega5EST....... We will need you to do a comparison of the original to with the Mega5EST Bass+
the bass+ is waaay too much bass to be enjoyable imo.
I just don't understand why 64 Audios IEMs are overpriced period. The choice and price of materials are a non-factor IMO . There are so many better value IEMs.
Mega5est still megabest
ALL the planar iems use the same drivers. I've known this forever and made videos about it.
Yeah...No. Typically manufactured items retail at 5X the cost of manufacture to cover things like R&D distribution packaging and advertising. Inversely market placement prices inform allowable manufacturing cost. In order to turn a profit you had better be able to manufacture a product for 1\5 the sale price to be able to turn a reasonable profit. These IEM's should probably hit market placement prices somewhere in the $700 range.
its especially an issue for low volume products, you need to make up for a lot of investment for a small number of sales - like how many people are buying such an iem
To me the correct reasonable price can be 400 dollars at most. At 700 is already dishonest.
I've said this before, I'm looking forward to the day the Chinese absolutely destroy the Western headphone market. Maybe sometimes there are question about build and durability, but I know most Chinese companies take a no bullshit approach to marketing and pricing (of course there will be outliers, but Chinese brands are more competitive with each other).
Where do you draw line on the price tag? It can be few hundred $ more and these points will still apply. If I find out that 'the driver' in my kilobuck single driver is 50$ aliexpress, I would be pissed than apologetic.
DMS. Please make a headphone under 300 price point. I am sure it will be a hit. Also pls make it available in Malaysia.
Wow the profit is unbelievable.
People who think it’s unreasonable doesn’t know how business works. 😂
Driver frequency range 20Hz~30KHz, but 64audio cut it to 20khz..
Hmmmm, It would make you think twice about buying the Solo though, you would feel like your being ripped off, but I guess SOUND is what matters!
It doesn't sound much better than other planars. So it is much overpriced.
This sounds like a customer complains to the chef about the cost of a full course meal just because the ingredients costs much less at a grocery. That said, $1400 is quite a lot for a non-custom IEM. At that price, I'd rather buy a really nice pair of headphones or a set of speakers. lol
a niche market and unique design is costly, but you need to think twice about paying $1400 for an iem, a type of audio device that is constrained by its engineering format that can’t even sound as good as a pair of $19 koss ksc75
This is something that pops up every now and then, people finding out that an expensive product uses parts that are noticeably cheaper in price for the core that makes the product.
I'm not gonna justify the price personally, as I don't have their accounting's at hand... It's not difficult to see why joe-smo like myself, would see this and initially think of it as a scam. But if you've worked a day before, you know that every single product on the shelves of your store, on the electronic shop, on the hardware store... Whatever it may be, there's a mark up. You can definitely ask "How much are they profiting off of the product?", I'm not immediately judging the price. Ever heard of printer ink? Yeah, I know, lame excuse, but that's the type of stuff we're working with here. Depending on the margins, every penny counts towards... Either to line the pocket of the executives, or manufacturing, QA testing, blueprinting, assigning, assembling... You get the point.
most people see more cost = more quality
audio companies wouldn't dare take advantage of this 🤪
How do you "tune" a driver? Is it really worth $1400?
Thank you very much!
That's why I put more stock on the values manufacturers Like sony does it, they develop their own BA and DD drivers, they also develop their own FPGA on their amps, also their own software for their DAPs.
Not to mention they make good looking iem designs, not like the acrylic slop many chifi default to.
There's a reason Chifi is thriving so much, the material and development cost is kinda cheap and they can range to many price range selling them from 100-2000 depending on how well you tune them 😂
I like your headphones, what are those?
Also, aren't all planars de facto linear impedance? Isn't this the same situation as the campfire planar? You're trying to justify the price of high end audio. Companies will sell it for whatever price they think the people it's for are willing to pay for it.
I heard a story once, a guy had a store in Beverly Hills that catered to rich people. He bought a letter opener at a dollar store and tried to sell it for $150. Weeks went by and he couldn't sell it so he raised the price to $1500 and sold it the next day. High end audio seems kind of the same to me.
I wouldn't say im trying to justify the price. At the end of the video I said my favorite iem is less than 1/2 the price. Also planars are generally linear impedance but when you use a passive analog electrical filter to tune them it'll make the impedance non-linear.
@@MaLaLiberty what does linear impedance have to do with anything? You still need to tune it.
@@En_Joshi-Godrez I mentionned this because DMS pointed that as a specialized expertise and trickery from their part to justify the amount. Tuning is $1400 per unit? Of course not. It is just the way business goes, buyers wants it at this price. So, they offer it at this price. Their customers wants expensive first. I dont see no problem with that from both side of the transaction.
@@MaLaLiberty in terms of sound quality, you are always paying for the tuning outside of artefacts like clipping and high ordered distortion profiles. But the product can also come with better warranty, customer service, and, in most cases, significantly better QC. That's usually the defining factor of high-end audio. Proper quality control is very expensive, so that cost is passed to the final product in most cases. At least, that's the strongest corelation. There are many exceptions in the luxury world also.
Your opinion. Your money. Your priorities. Personally, i dont believe that more expensive correlates with more better.
It just prove that people never understand what they were spending for
It's like complaining that a $400 print was printed on $20 paper. It's a pointless complaint
Accept the fact that this iem is a scam! Check the prices of other planar and rise the price for 100 dollars at most, because the Solo can sound a bit better at most. The actual price is a scam.
Love all your vidz....😊
While I understand the explanation of where the value is from, I'm still shocked about how cheap drivers actually are. Knowing that now, when my headphone or earphone breaks, I will probably try replacing the drive instead of going for other options then.
Fwiw rarely is it the driver that breaks
buying drivers individually and as a consumer is going to be drastically higher ie why sometimes that’s not worth.
Buying in massive bulk and as a company sometimes partner with those big brands or in house is completely different in terms of pricing. Bigger companies can buy knowles for literally pennies to tens of cents per driver depending on model while we spend tens of dollars per if we wanted to buy them for ourselves
Nice vibrating microphone bruv. You forgot duties/taxes, shipping/handling, Electronics Certifications, EU Laws and regulations, marketing, dealing with returns and running customer service. Sometimes people steal products by doing charge backs. Lots of stuff to handle outside of the parts or even the time it took to tune the product.
Its a luxury product and like most luxury product there is an IQ tax.
Hey I have seen Knowles and Sonion BAs selling on Ali for about 40$ a piece......so are those 2$ if sold bulk? :)
ali-pricing is usually marked up a TON.
@DMS3TV i found knowles 30017
..... which I believe is a very good BA... on an EU site sold at about 50E one piece and about 25E for 30pcs.....does it drop to 1-2E for 1000pcs ? :)
Same scam as Campfire Astrolith. Two planars priced to 2200 dollars