I just visited your website. Impressive. I mentioned before Markl Mods going main stream with his own line of headphones, but it seems your company might have the resources and the knowhow to do the same. It has been nice that you have been following this thread. May I be presumptuous in exhorting you to, please, if you do come out with headphones that can compete with the best of the best, do not you use plastic. That stuff is aweful. Yes, my dream headphone is the R-10, but I could live happily ever after if I had the Grado HP1000. In fact, I think the Grado's are the most perfectly designed headphones ever made. I started off as an industrial design major in school. I switched to fine art, but my eyes are unforgiving. Please do not cut corners if headphones are on the drawing board within your company.

Well, I am not certain whether or not headphones are on the drawing board here. I am an apprentice to the master full range driver builder: Mr. Teramoto. Whatever he says goes... so it is 5 and 9 inch mind bending full rangers for home use.

I have been an avid headphone nut all along in this pursuit though.

Perhaps when I have my own skills up in 10-15 years (no joking...) I will try my hands at making perhaps washi paper headphone drivers or something funny like that. Just thinking out loud.

Plastic? Not a concern. It sounds like crap, even if used for the arch over the head...

I personally like some of the ATH offerings. Good for the money. comparing the w5000 to the r10, less speed, and a slightly smaller sound, but they were missing that high frequency resonance... and they were not as "annoyingly beautiful sounding." A little more like a good pair of speakers on your head.

There is SO much further that headphones could go. Trust me: it bothers me so much that people are missing "the boat" right now.

It is about marketing. Release a truely killer headphone within an existing product line (and market the hell out of it), and the lower end products sell better because people assume (correctly) that trickle down technology happens within the rest of the line, and then back up to the top.

It is like the racing program of any car manufacturer. Racing gives the production vehicles a little more "street cred" (Look at Subaru. Prime example.) Even if a little money is lost on the racing program, so what. It only seems to loose money when looked at all by itself around a grungey board room table with the man at the head of it wielding a mallet (or is that a hatchet) pointed at the poor sumguns that run the high end division.

Corporations are not always evil. Look at the grateful dead. It is just that all too often, the smell of money to the principal investors sitting on the board is stronger than a sense of duty to use one's resources to provide culture for society (and thereby make even more money, if done correctly).

I dunno. I would suggest that instead of seeing yourself as separate from the manufacturers, try to learn to make a headphone driver on your own or work within a company that is very good at it. Or just DIY it. That is what most manufacturers did initially.

You don't need an engineering degree to put a chisel in wood and then bend some clothes hangar pieces into a frame and glue some paper and a Neodynium magnet to it. better yet, a mini field coil. I think Ill call THAT the R11.

Hell. If anyone wants one, itll be 18000 bucks, pleeeaze.

-Clark

So I think I found a kindred spirit. There have been many naysayers on this thread. Sony can't do it. Other companies can't do it. The economy is too bad. Can't. Can't. Can't. What happened to people living out their dreams? I think it would be really great if all of us on Hi-Fi came together as a community and acted as one voice. Exhorting the headphones manufactures to do better. Yes, what a great marketing tool a reference headphone would do for a company. It would help bring attention to their lower priced lines. Let me know when you and Mr. Teramoto start making headphones. The TC R-11's. : )

Bump

in terms of the R-10, i think affordability is the only issue. as long as i have been here on head-fi, i've seen at least 10 R-10 go for sale either here or audiogon or even ebay. if they were within my budget, i could easily snag a pair. granted, i would probably have overpaid for them, but to get the king of headphones, it's worth the price (~$5,000-6,000).

i think if the new king of headphone is to be made, it has to be a new small vendor ala RSA or Headamp. no big time corporation is going to waste their time on niche products when history has shown that they do not make money for them. hopefully someone with the technical expertise will see the money making opportunity and create the perfect headphone for us.

You guys are doing this the wrong way. I'll let you in on a solution that will work:

BUY Sony. Then, you can make them dig up these dusty spec sheets and restart R10 production.

Of course, the only kink in that strategy would be the ability to scrounge up enough money for step 1.

Perhaps license it? Or contact someone in Sony and make a special order for x thousand units at y dollars.

Quote:



I am sure there are many ways to go about this. But I like this idea too. If Sony will not listen than maybe a smaller company that specializes in headphone equipment would be interested. If any manufacturer is reading this thread, can I please, please, beg of you, do not use plastic except where absolutely necessary. It is so cheap looking and it just doesn't last.

^

Doesn't this describe Grado's process?

Yes, it does. But no plastic, please.

Give me a pair of R-10's and 6 grand.....I'm sorry, what did you say, "can't". How bad do you really want it. I wonder if someone just handed someone at Sony all the specs for the R-10 and said "if you build this, I think it will sound good." Honestly, I think the R-10 could be put to shame by a couple of guys in a garage, with maybe a computer and a friend who has access to a CNC machine.
Come to think of it, I don't remember the last time I heard someone say "can't".

i think the reason why they can't reproduce the R-10 is that they can't find the wood material for the earcup anymore.
or the designer or workers of R-10 have retired or died
that is my guess

What nobody can figure out what species of wood the bowls are made of ? Some magical extinct tree?

Sony tried to make the reference again with the Qualia 010, and IMO failed miserably, too much technical stuff behind, but less musical enjoyment behind them, and on top you need a watch-maker to adjust them properly....

Others had tried as well, L3K, Editions 9 and 7, GS-1000, PS-1000, JVC woodies, UE11, etc...all IMO are different taste of the same medicine, but not a cure for our main problem...We want R-10 so badly that any other attempt will not even be considered...

I guess you guys know way more than me about the whole subject, and I don't really have a leg to stand on when it comes to duplicating the driver itself, but I did look at the sony patent online, and I think the bowls are definitely duplicatable. What makes the Ed9 different from the 780? Is it really the driver, or just a little tweaking of the bowls and some damping? I am currently trying to put Pro 650 drivers into an HFI-450 shell, cuz the 450 resembles the 780/Ed9, only the 450 is rounded out and the ED9/780 is flat on the back, guess I should start a thread in the DIY section, sorry...
Later,
Scott

R10's are no longer made because the profit margin was not high enough. The abyssmal failure of the Qualia line pretty much sealed the fate of any high end audio from Sony. They have been bleeding money lately.

My feelings for Sony are pure nostalgia. I am not a fan of any of their recent products.

-Ed