A friend recently was talking to me about headphones, asking what would be good and so forth for a budget and it got me thinking. I gave the popular solutions when I realized one of them, the Denon D1001, are out of stock and have been replaced by the D1100. I wanted to know what the hubbub was about so I gave them a test. They weren't bad, but they felt rather unbalanced with the boomy bass, and the build quality didn't seem any better than the D1001. Overall I felt the sound quality had possibly decreased because the bass was too much. I then looked at the prices, $200 new they're going for. The D1001 not only had the same build quality and a better sound, imo, but were half the price. What gives? Why is Denon pushing an entry level set of headphones, that replaced an already good set, as a mid-level set? This saddened me because I always felt the D1001 were great headphones for the price and when I heard about the D1100 I'd assumed that they would be the same price with slight refinements, sadly I was wrong.
 
The same could be said about Sennheiser with their HD558/HD598, thankfully they didn't discontinue the HD555/HD595 though. Both of these headphones, are vastly overpriced from what I have heard in my hours of listening to each. The HD558 I found to be hardly better than the HD555, in-fact I wouldn't pay more than $100 for them. I played all sorts of music through them and nothing clicked, not Miles Davis, not Led Zeppelin. The only improvement I really can say I noticed was soundstage, which even then wasn't very expansive or impressive, definitely not worth shelling out an extra $50-$70. The 598 are a slightly more refined 558, it removes some veil and I think they're decent overall, but seriously who is Sennheiser trying to fool with the $250 price tag? The build quality alone is enough to lower the price tag a little, the small wooden finishes aren't tricking anyone into thinking these are durable with the cheap plastic. Why they didn't switch to magnesium is beyond me. If they had used magnesium instead of cheap plastic, it may have justified a $250 price tag, but essentially you're getting a $150-$175 headphone for $250. It's astonishing to me.
 
Yes I know value and so forth is subjective, but I think it's hard to justify the price jump from the D1001 to the D1100, and the price differences between the HD555/HD558 and the HD595/HD598 are hardly justified.

Monster. (Beats)

How about Ultrasone edition 8 ? it's bit overpriced in my opinion.

ultrasone and shure

Monster for their Beats series and any headphone above $500.

Bose
 
Monster
 
Ultrasone
 
 
Let the fanboy attacks begin.

Ultrasone only overprices the Editions; the HFI series is actually very reasonably priced.  The Pro series could do with coming down the price ladder a notch or two, though - at $400, the Pro 900s are sharing territory with some very heavy hitters.
 
I honestly think any Grado above the SR80i is overpriced.
 
Quote:

gevorg said:

Bose
 
Monster
 
Ultrasone
 
 
Let the fanboy attacks begin.

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If you think any headphone over $500 is overpriced, what's your threshold for speakers?
 
Also, the ED 10 is over priced, the ED 8 however I think has a little wiggle room price wise. It's a little high, but it's stunning, and has great build quality. The reason they're so high though I think is because they're one of the only closed (and the ONLY portable) high quality headphones out there. Pay a premium when there's only one out there.
 
If they'd put a good cable on them, I'd say they're worth the MSRP.
 
Quote:

fearsc549 said:

Monster for their Beats series and any headphone above $500.

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Quote:

morbidtoaster said:

If you think any headphone over $500 is overpriced, what's your threshold for speakers?
 
Also, the ED 10 is over priced, the ED 8 however I think has a little wiggle room price wise. It's a little high, but it's stunning, and has great build quality. The reason they're so high though I think is because they're one of the only closed (and the ONLY portable) high quality headphones out there. Pay a premium when there's only one out there.
 
If they'd put a good cable on them, I'd say they're worth the MSRP.
 


 
 

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Starting around $500, the margin of improvement in sound quality, compared to lower priced headphones is so small, it's not worth it IMO. For speakers, it really depends. In my opinion, after $1000, speakers are better. 
 

Can't quite say that's the case with the new orthos.  There was a drastic difference between my HE-4s and my LCD-2s, well worth the increase in price.  For a lot of other cans, the discrepancy between the $500 mark and the $1000 mark isn't worth it, though.
 
Quote:

fearsc549 said:

Starting around $500, the margin of improvement in sound quality, compared to lower priced headphones is so small, it's not worth it IMO. For speakers, it really depends. In my opinion, after $1000, speakers are better.
 

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If headphones are anything like what regular audio used to be like, you are paying 50% of the price, at least, in a store, for the running of the store.  It isn't as bad as fashion, which can be marked up hundreds of percent. Internet shopping and mass-manufacture costs going down have cut margins to some degree, however.  New products are always sold at the highest premiums initially.  There has to be enough margins for retailers and to give discounts during sales.  
 
As for Ultrasone, I'd say it isn't so much that they overprice their headphones as that they spend too much of their R&D on making them look pretty at the expensive of them sounding better.  The Edition series are all insanely overpriced relative to their sound quality.  You could get almost as good as an ED9 by modifying the HFI-780s at a third the price.  The ED8s are demolished by most headphones considerably cheaper than them too. The ED10s distort more than $200 Shures. With orthos now in the picture, there is no contest.

Bose
 
Monster
 
Klipsch

Im sorry but I was under the impression that all companies are blatantly overpricing products.  Considering that in most cases every part of the product is mass produced I would love to see the profit margins on a lot of the popular headphones around here and Im sure most would find it surprising.

The problem with threads like this one, is that there is no point of reference (in fact no point at all, but that is a different story), I mean define "blatantly overpricing".  When you say "love to see the profit margins on a lot of headphones", whose profit margin?  Manufacturer?, suppliers?, retailers?, distributors?
 
And by profit margin, do you mean gross profit or net profit? 
 
"Editions are overpriced but other Ultrasones are not?"  One is mass produced in Taiwan and the other handmade in Germany.  I own both (ED8 and Pro900) so I am just saying.  If they represent value how are they blatantly overpriced?  So the next thread is at what price point do headphones lose their value, OH we have already had that one.
 
 
EDITon't confuse sound quality (or at least your perception and preference for sound quality) as having anything to do with being overpriced.  Just because you don't like the sound of a Beats Pro or an LCD2 doesn't make them "blatantly overpriced".  If that was the case then, if you think they sound great they are "good value" not overpriced, and if they sound bad (according to you) they are ripoffs; now that's a very sound argument.

 
Quote:

keanex said:

Yes I know value and so forth is subjective, but I think it's hard to justify the price jump from the D1001 to the D1100, and the price differences between the HD555/HD558 and the HD595/HD598 are hardly justified.

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What are you talking about? I got my HD598s for $175, NOT $250. You live in America. There's no excuse for you to not have called J&R and at least TRY bargaining. HD558 easily go for $119, which is NOT $50-80 more