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No argument. And thanks for taking my snarky post in good humor.

The problem is businesses aren't transparent, so really everything's generalizations. However, business in general is well known, and all there is in business is money, nothing else.

One can not say that they aren't being over priced on their hardware. In almost all cases you are paying more then is needed for the business to continue functioning. How much and why? that is debatable, but there will only be assumptions since we can't see all the working of every company out there. We can only guess towards their business practices, good, bad, and however greedy or caring they are. Heck, sometimes you're just paying for crappy business practices rather then quality. Knowing the difference is questionable.

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In a free, competitive market, there is no such as an overpriced product. The price charged is what the market will bear. If it's too high, people won't pay it, and other companies will make the same or a better product for a cheaper price.

In addition, the best motivation for a company to make better phones is the desire to make more money. That's what drives innovation, better products, and consumer satisfaction, i.e., the desire to make a profit.

And, in the absence of some very specific information regarding the relevant market -- in this case the market for headphones -- you have no basis whatsoever to say that certain companies in the headphone business are charging too much or make too much profit.

Its standard practice that the cost of an item is usually 25% of the retail price.
In headphones and many other markets, the 'switch sell' is where they make the money .. i.e. a range of similar items with 'tweaks' that bump the price from 'reasonable' to 'lots of profit'. Many cans in the same range have basically the same drivers.. so the trick is to find which in the set give you the best value, or bang for buck.
Typically 90% of the improvements will be found in going from free ibuds to $350 cans, thereafter your working on the final 10%.

The one thing that's always struck me as curious when people talk expressly or by implication regarding the notion of diminishing returns is: how does one measures what a 10% improvement is? What's the standard or unit of measurement?

For example, if a $350 phone sounds really good to me, but is slightly sibilant, and I really don't like sibilance, and the $700 phone sounds like the $350 phone but with no sibilance, is that a 10% improvement, a 100% improvement, or what?

In other words, while people say there is no linear relationship between price and quality, I would also say there may be no linear relationship that defines diminishing returns either. And it may vary from user to user. Someone may find the improvement from a $150 phone to a $350 phone to be slight, while the jump to a $700 phone yields a significant increase in quality based on their particular preferences.

I don't think that it is much of price (don't get me wrong, price does matter), but more of the SQ you will get/want from your headphones.

If you pay uh....200 for some ER-4Ps, then you might like them more than 500$ Triple Fis. It's all about what kind of music you listen to and what you want to hear.

If you don't want bass, then you might hate some of the higher end IEMs.

But yea, about your topic, I think that.... haha it all depends on what you are looking for man.

I can't say with a straight face that you will like a pair of 100 dollar iems over some 30 dollar ones because they might sound different to you (sound signature) or other reasons.

Generally, higher priced is better, but you COULD roughly go by the 100 dollar buffer, meaning : 100-200 is roughly the same. 200-300 etc. Although this is in NO way of debating whether something is better than something else.

That is like asking a person if a car is better because it costs more. There are so many makes and models because they are made for different things.

I agree with most of what is in this thread, and yes, there are differences between IEMs in different price ranges, and usually the higher priced IEM sounds better. How much better is subjective.

It is personal preference/perception if the extra money is worth it to you. If you can audition them with your source/music, that would be the best. What I tried to do was find out who on here hears things in a similar way to me via a review of a product I own. Then I see what they think of other products.

Would you be willing to buy an IEM with a lower sound quality that is more comfortable? How about better isolation for less SQ? And the SQ is perceived.

I first bought some cheap IEMs that I initially thought sounded OK (but not great), and stumbled onto this site. I was looking for $200 IEMs, but read that $50 IEMs that were very close in sound quality to one reviewer (the well respected HeadphoneAddict), so I got those (NE-7). They sound really good. But more reading (when I should have just walked away) made me wonder if these sound this good, how much better would more expensive IEMs sound. So I ordered the IE8s. While waiting for those, the Phonak Audeos intrigues me, so I now have those also.

I can tell you which is more analytical, more detailed, has a wider soundstage, but which sounds better is subjective. Is it worth the extra money again is subjective. I chose 2 different IEMs with different sound signatures because I wanted to hear both, and enjoy things about both. And I want to burn in my IE8 somewhere between 100 and 200 hours before I make any final decisions about which I like best.

Back to the NE-7s. If I listen to the IE8 or the Phonak before the NE-7, the NE-7 doesn't sound very good. But if I just listen to the NE-7, they sound very good. Is the price difference between the NE-7 and other worth it? To me, yes. Are they that much better, to me yes and no.

At least one person on here wrote that once you hear better, it is hard to go back as your mind has expanded.

For me, the process in choosing a headphone (in hindsight) is:
1) What sound signature do you want and what genre do you primarily listen to.
2) What is your source.
3) How important is isolation/fit/comfort
4) What fits the above criteria
5) How much perceived difference is there, and decide on paper, or preferably with your ears which one is best for you.

And also, is it better to expand your budget and wait a little while for something you will like better, and over the long run be cheaper (because you don't buy many new IEMs)?

I think that is more like a quarter than my .02 cents.

young spade, average joe thanks for your replies.

So the overall message from everyone seems to be 'what sounds good to one person's ears is not good for another person'

This makes sense.

thanks for the replys everyone. I just wondered what people thought.

The only conclusion that I can make from this thread is that my Sennheiser CX300 are not anywhere near as good as other people have but to me they are a massive improvement compared to my previous IEM's.

This makes me wonder how good some of the IEM;s really are.
hmm I feel another gap in my wallet comming .....

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Quick, run from this place and never look back

Or, if that isn't gonna happen, sorry for your wallet

The sennheiser line of earphones are not worth buying unless you are buying the IE series, but that's the top of the line for sennheiser. The CX series is just rebranded Fosters, meaning that you can have the same as the Sennheiser's if you buy the Creative Ep-630, as those are the same things just under a different brand. To me, i would say, the jump from $10 earphones to $100 eaprhones would be massive, but as you get higher, you would need audiophile ears to tell the difference. To my friends, my westone 3's and shure se530 sound only slightly better than their westone um1 and Shure Se210. But another friend of mine who's been a musician for 15 years can straight away tell me every single thing that my earphones are better at. So that could also change the fact that if you think if your money was well spent. Another thing, sound signature, for example if you're a person who likes really powerful lows and don't care about anything else, than you would think even the Top of the line, ultimate ears triple fi 10 pro and the Etymotic Er4p to be absolutely horrible earphones because though they are high-performance earphones and are very very high quality, it's just not the kind of earphone you like.

My first set of IEM's were the CX300's I too was very impressed with the SQ and I allways looked to Sennheiser for good cost to quality ratio so much so that I have the CX500's and someday I'll have the IE8's.

Your question answers it'self.

The ultimate choice to be made is if YOU!!!! Can tell the difference.

If we could answer that question, then we'd be "Audio Gods" and not just ####+ Head.Fiers.
Generaly the higher the price the better the sound because with places like Head.Fi they wouldn't sell at all if they sucked.