Sennheiser HD800: Spray Painted Plastic and the New Acid-Washed Jeans. - Page 6

In styling, yes.

In sound quality, not so much.

The Qualia's were form over function, and an utter marketing disaster.

-Ed

The headbands are nothing like the HD650's headband in form or function. The headband extends and retrcts with a very smooth ratcheting action much like the SA5000, but better integrated into headband without having parts stick out when fully retracted.

- Ed

and wood as well...anyone who plays a string instrument knows that carbon fiber bows have been gaining some kind of presence

in any case, maybe the HD800 is just the standard/base model and they have some grand scheme to milk more money out of everyone a la "jubilee" via a special release a few years down the line that will possibly feature a different color scheme (like the K702), or material (less likely)

If all the silver parts on the HD800 were gunmetal gray, I would be drooling even more

In engineering, trade offs have to be made. In the case of a car, the use of plastic on the interior is probably not as a result of weight but a result of costs. As the interior of a car is a fairly large space, using trim to cover large areas adds significantly to the cost. This is especially the case in low to mid priced cars where the profit margin per car is a lot lower than you might normally expect. The ability to sell in super large volumes is what makes most car companies (BMW and Merc range included not just Toyota range) profitable. Its not the fact that cars are cheap to manufacture and sell for a lot. The car industry is also highly competitive meaning adding to the cost of the car by adding expensive trim that most people don't care for either significantly reduces the company's profit margin (if they absorb the cost) or significantly decreases the cars price competitiveness (if the cost is reflected in the car's pricing).

The case of the HD 800 is very different though as the super high end headphone market is neither competitive nor do such products have low profit margins. By this I mean that if Sennheiser wanted to use aluminum they simply would have and priced the unit higher because people who would pay for a plastic HD 800 would still pay the extra for a metal HD 800 (since such customers obviously have the money and obviously want the product regardless). The choice to use plastic on the HD 800 is more likely then, due to some favorable properties of plastic over metal. It may have been resonating qualities, weight, comfort, elasticity, etc. Basically, on a high end product such as this, Sennheiser would not have tried to save costs by using cheaper materials. The same goes for super high end cars. They don't save on the interiors of Ferraris because there is no need to. They manufacture it more expensive, price it more expensive, and people buy it regardless.

Plastic weighs less than metal and after wearing any headphone for a few hours, that becomes inportant. as far as the looks whatever holds the drivers at the porper distance and angle form my ears and points the music in the right direction

Then you're not thinking it through.

This is a niche product; it's not mass-market. Sennheiser isn't going to use plastic parts just to shave a few dollars off the production cost per unit; they're going to do it for a more sensible reason.

I don't buy vibrational properties as much as I buy weight and comfort. Have you ever worn an all-steel headphone, like some of the tanks made in the 70s and also the beyerdynamic DT48? They're incredibly heavy and uncomfortable to wear. It starts to get hard to hold your head up after a short time. This isn't a good quality in a headphone that you may want to wear for hours on end.

The material used for construction should make sense above all else. I prefer metal-bodied DAPs because it makes them both more durable, more attractive and gives a nicer "weight in the hand." I do not want to have much metal on my headphones at all, because I want to be able to wear my headphones without extreme discomfort.

eh.. heh.. its not my theory... Its an economic theory called price elasticity. I didn't make this up you know.. lol.

Apparently, I have too much time on my hands:

i dont think anyone said it should be an all steel, or lead for that matter , construction. With how little there is to it, changing from plastic to aluminum or titanium wouldnt add much if anything noticable. And i do think you're overlooking how much of a cost savings plastic is over metal, especially on a low production item. Hiring out a company in order to stamp out a very limited quantity of small parts to a precise form is far more costly than simple using molds and dumping a polymer into it.

I dont doubt that what they used also helps it sound the way it does, but i would question if they would indeed even bother looking into considerably more expensive materials if they simply found a cheap answer in plastics.

Hold on guys.....

Are we really sure that those silver parts indeed plastic? I just cannot find any mentions that those parts are plastic.