Consumer IEM Brands vs Audiophile

The lines are pretty blurred, especially with brands like Shure and Sennheiser that have very reasonably-priced models that sell in retail stores now. There's also quite a few smaller brands that don't necessarily venture into high-end gear and yet could still fall in the 'audiophile' category just because they are nearly unknown outside of the forum.

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Originally Posted by avocado 

I've been in and out of the mid-fi world for the last year and a half or so and keep getting sucked back in! The wallet's mostly intact but its been hurting a little bit

 

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about the exclusivity (snobbishness?) of the audiophile world and have realized that we put some much emphasis on brand and finding the latest flavor of the month, etc. Decided to do some 'market research' on the matter, like, what headphone companies are considered to be catering to the ignorant masses versus those that are mostly known by people who've done there research.

 

Sennheiser, Shure, Etymotic, etc, seem to be fairly popular among those who are upgrading, but Westone, Head-Direct, etc, are less famous, maybe? I don't know. I think it would be interesting to compile a list of companies that fall in to each category, but don't know enough about the business. Anyone willing to help out?

??

I think we put less emphasis on brand and more on sound quality.  I've read it more than once where someone raves about the sound quality from an unknown company, and it spreads and spreads as more people try it. 

Conversely, there's been numerous "famous" brands which don't interest everyone.  I know what sound signature I like, regardless if it's a well known company I'm not going to spend if it doesn't fit what I like.  

Maybe we just spend more time reading reviews than the average headphone/iem shopper?   

Well, the only earphones are available here where I live are mostly big popular companies like Sennheiser, Shure, AKG, etc.

It would be very difficult to categorize them into audiophile/consumer,non-audiophile by using

brand names. Just look at Sennheiser, they have dirt cheap (almost disposable) headphones

and high end (cost more than a car) heaphones. While there are other companies like Philips

or TDK which produce huge amount of earphones and headphones and yet, few of them can be

considered as audiophile quality.

In holland i don't know allot of people with high-end headphones/iem's . Must retailers only sell sennheiser and maybe UE and monster but there always the cheaper ones. Before i came to this forum i didn't know anything about westone, radius, head-direct and such.

It's hard to distinguish one from the other for the most part. There are brands such as Hifiman which is clearly targeting the people who visit this forum and others like it. Then there are brands such as Sennheiser and Shure which market towards both. They have cheaper products which many in this forum don't like and isn't worth a second glance at while they have products which many in here love such as the HD600, HD800, IE8, SE530,SE535, etc.

There really isn't a clear way to distinguish one from the other really. Some is very obvious but most are not very clear and possibly cater to both.