Well i have been researching as well as scoping prices on various IEMs.One in particular is the Sennheiser CX300 II.So i sent a few questions on authenticity to some sellers and got one interesting response. "The earphone is made by authorised sennheiser factory in China, but not allowed by sennheiser, so no warranty, also it is the reason why it is so cheap. It is definitely not the fake with bad quality, I also don't want to get any negative feedback".Sounds pretty hypocritical and contradictory doesn't it? I won't name the seller because they were honest and nice enough to give me this answer.For those who were wondering.Now you know.How good do they sound?Who knows.But this is probably common for a lot of headphones and hifi gear.Oh and i got the same answer on another site about the ESW9s.

There's a small percentage of possibility that he's telling the truth and the item is authentic. I wouldn't count on it.

Quote:



These, by definition, are mutually exclusive.

I smell a rat...

i would ask why aren't they authorized by sennheiser since it seems to be the only unclear part of his explanation. and i live in china and a lot of sennheiser earphones can be found for cheap prices too (IE8~130$ =P), a friend of mine bout a pair and they turned out not to be fake, so it should be okay, just try to get more info from the seller.

LOL
I was planning to post "the catch is its a CX300". Turns out it was.

This is either a scam or a dodgy insider job at the production factory. Either way I'd probably steer clear...

They are fake. This has been discussed before. Factories that Sennheiser does not allow to produce the IE 8 are actually the ones making the fakes.

The explanation was a bit confusing to me when I had read it earlier, so I won't try to explain. That's just how it is. Incidentally, the seller wasn't totally lying.

sounds like the factory is authorized to make sennheiser stuff, just not the CX300 II

without Sennheiser quality control behind it, i wouldnt trust it...

Quote:



That or the factory's run a ghost shift, in which case there are likely a whole bunch of shoddy CX300s floating around in legit packaging.

This is going on everywhere it seems. I have a friend who imports from China under a close trademark name to a product with adds on TV made by the same factory after they make the advertised one. The strange part is sometimes they get both products mixed up in the same container and he gets a load of name brand products that he has to sell undercover. This proves that they are made by the same factory on the side. The quality is the same as it would be harder to make the product any different. They just switch names and the original investor and inventor get the shaft. This is said to be true with the web site Best Nike 23 also. These get brought into the USA as one of one samples to your door to bypass any import/export heat. The next real issue we have here is the reheating of all of Americas used plastic. What is going on now in China is really scary. They take undercooked recyclables from the medical field under cook them and re fabricate them into plastic things like headphones for Americans to place into their ears. How many plastic food containers come from China? So getting a knock-off is not our biggest concern. Go buy a china made cell phone cover and smell it, wait two weeks and smell it again. You may get the drift of what I'm saying here.The plastic they buy from our recyclers by the boat load is sold back to us in another form, but it is not the original form. How many microbiological tests are done at the docks on cell phone cases or headphones? You be the judge!

Basically they are saying that they are replicas or "knock offs".Either way they are not original.The whole reply was contradicting!I just used CX300s as an example because there are so many on eBay.I have Atrios.But I really want the ESW9s.The earphonesupplier.com is another site which sells replicas.They gave me a reply about the $20 ESW9 "As for Audio-technic ATH-ESW9, it is our high-copy products which quality achieves 98% of original.
Although it is not original products, many people can not tell them from. As its sound quality reaches to 100% of the original ones, With the package, accessories and the headphone itself are exactly the same to the originals".
HMMMMM!I'm not even going to dignify that one.So where can i buy them at a discount and not get knock offs?

Quote:



That's very interesting and scary.

Quote:



i would be worried if i bought 2 of the same cell phones or other plastic item, and they smell different...
if they all have the same smell, its probably caused by a factory procedure... the smell that leeches out of the plastic is most likely some sort of plasticizer, makes it easier to mould and stops it from being brittle... thats why some of your old plastic stuff breaks apart so easily... but that only happens long after the smell is gone

Quote:



actually, wouldnt the opposite be true? if it was harder to make the product 'any different' , they'd all end up exactly the same and there wouldnt be any need for quality control... basically without the official Sennheiser guy getting paid to stand at the end of the line, it falls down to the consumers paying to do the quality control themselves, i.e. buy and hope that it isnt a reject-case...

in fact, i would go as far as saying that the 'unauthorized' stuff is made of nothing but the stuff they would have normally thrown away, why spend money on disposal when you already have a bunch of practically indistinguishable goods just sitting there?

Quote:



I have read that in more detail. As the story goes, the 1st OEM company Senn. approached doesn't have good enough quality samples to warrant a contract for IE8, so Senn. went to another company for IE8 OEM job. The 1st company then used the mold they got for prototyping to clone the casing and stuff in a 2nd class transducer. Since the mold comes from Senn., the knockoff looks very real from the outside - that's what I heard, just rumor of course.

On another note, many Senn. models comes from Foster Japan's China factory. If one thing is known about Foster, it will be their very strict QC process on their China factory. OEM leakage on Foser is almost unheard of - in fact, I have heard that many small companies actually trying to pass their knockoff as Foster's leakage to the market.