If Massdrop ever did a collabo with Senn or HiFiMan, I'd be all over it.

WillBright

Koss ESP95X

I was just thinking how Koss made legendary products decades ago that are still used today like the KSC75, PortaPros, and the ESP950. However, it seems they're not quite as celebrated for their more recent products. Perhaps massdrop can give a collaboration that will jumpstart their name? Their electrostatic, the ESP950, is known to be decent, competing well with lambda stax, though it's held back by the provided amp. Definitely improvements can be made there, along with a physical makeover to bring them out of the 80s. They retail for $1000, but are sold each year during cyber monday for $600 so it's not too expensive. There has been a resurgence in orthodynamic headphones lately, but the electrostatic scene has remained mostly the same and too pricey for most. Could massdrop lead a electrostatic resurgence?

That or partner with stax, though koss seems like a better choice since they haven't been on the front lines of audiophile products and this might provide them that opportunity, and they don't seem to care about potentially competing with/cannibalizing sales of their own ESP950 since they haven't bothered to change it in decades. It'd be free money from sudden boost in sales of a stagnant product for them.

I would LOVE a Massdrop'd ESP950, but I don't think that's gonna be happening 

sonido said:

@WillBright

Koss ESP95X

I was just thinking how Koss made legendary products decades ago that are still used today like the KSC75, PortaPros, and the ESP950. However, it seems they're not quite as celebrated for their more recent products. Perhaps massdrop can give a collaboration that will jumpstart their name? Their electrostatic, the ESP950, is known to be decent, competing well with lambda stax, though it's held back by the provided amp. Definitely improvements can be made there, along with a physical makeover to bring them out of the 80s. They retail for $1000, but are sold each year during cyber monday for $600 so it's not too expensive. There has been a resurgence in orthodynamic headphones lately, but the electrostatic scene has remained mostly the same and too pricey for most. Could massdrop lead a electrostatic resurgence?

That or partner with stax, though koss seems like a better choice since they haven't been on the front lines of audiophile products and this might provide them that opportunity, and they don't seem to care about potentially competing with/cannibalizing sales of their own ESP950 since they haven't bothered to change it in decades. It'd be free money from sudden boost in sales of a stagnant product for them.

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Hey Sonido, 
 
Would love to do something like this. I contacted and pitched Koss on this exact idea las year (updated ESP950, accessibly priced estat) but they weren't ready to do anything at the time. A big determining factor in these collabs has to do with the direction that partner company is heading at the time. Koss was trying to optimize something else (not trying to be vague, have no idea what they're doing) when we spoke last year.
 
That said, it's been some time since I reached out. The Fostex TH-X00, CEntrance DACport Slim (which not too many people realize was also designed in large part by Massdrop), and Grace m9XX have come out between then and now so it could be worth reaching out again. 
 
It's a common occurrence for us, Massdrop reaches out, we get told "no" (in so many words), 6 months later we come back and everyone wants to be friends. Works for me, only wish the turnaround time was shorter. 
 
STAX is another one I'd love to do something with. Had a quick conversation with a representative at CES, but I'm not sure how much he retained. Collabs are a new and hard to grasp concept, especially if it's your first time hearing about Massdrop. TBH tho, based on the publicly available info (STAX sold to Edifier couple years ago for ~$900k USD) it seems like they need a hand so maybe we'll be able to do something. Who knows, still have to followup with them. 
 
Taking a step back though, estats might be a hard category to meaningfully expand. I've heard from lots of people that manufacturing costs are higher on average, due to the additional QC steps needed to ensure nobody's getting free electroshock therapy. That said, every time I've been told "Trust me, this is really expensive to make" I've discovered they were BSing me. Turns out almost nothing is that expensive to make. 
 
Anyway, we'll see if we can put something together, but I like where your head's at. Shoot me a PM when you have the chance, have something to discuss. 

grizzlybeast said:

That's true... Just dreaming on the jdlabs balanced dac

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Well, realistically that wouldn't work for different reasons than what vapman discussed (I'm going to address his post in a sec, good opportunity to explain more). Realistically, JDS is pretty pissed at Massdrop right now, primarily because of our O2+ODAC. JDS built their business on an product with open licensing, and after enough time watching people pay their unnecessary premium (IMO, don't use up space in this thread debating pls, make another thread or PM me if you must) we decided to work with contract manufacturers to produce the O2 and list it. 
 
Sold a couple thousand, and contacted the guy (George @ yoyodyne consulting) who makes and distributes the ODAC boards (it's under a different license than the O2, can't make it yourself, have to buy from yoyodyne) about purchasing some to send our contract manufacturer so they could produce O2 + ODACs for us. 
 
Listed those, another success, ~1000 sold in the first few days I think. This prompted pretty dramatic reactions from JDS and Mayflower, eventually resulting in the most recent plot twist. Notice how we haven't run our ODAC or O2+ODAC recently? It's because Yoyodyne has signed an agreement with JDS and Mayflower making them the exclusive American distributors for the PCB. 
 
And guess what guys, they aren't interested in selling us any ODACs! What a surprising turn of events lol. TBH, I thought they'd offer them for sale to us, just at some super silly price (cost on those PCBs is normally $75, which is insane anyway, real manufacturing cost is closer to $20 max) but as it is... nope, have not heard back. 
 
Anyway, at this time, I can't think of a product where JDS would be the optimal partner. 

Hey vapman, really appreciate you taking the time to post and your thoughts, thanks for trying to help people think a little deeper about these collaborations. That said, there are a couple points in your post that I wanted to address.
 
Quote:
 

vapman said:

  I think you guys who think Massdrop is a catalyst for designing new products with companies have the picture twisted. Pretty much every Massdrop exclusive we've seen so far are based on existing products. Basically a factory-made Frankenstein.
 
I wouldn't expect to ever see it on Massdrop if you couldn't make it in your garage, provided you had all the parts to make the original product the Massdrop tweak was based on. Note how Will mentions three months were wasted on trying to tweak a flagship model.

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With these collaborations, it's not our goal to make something new and different for the sake of being new and different. If AKG has a headband on one version of the K-series that we can use in our collab, you bet we're going to use that. They've already got the supply chain solved for that product. Could have asked them to make a new headband with triangle shaped bumps, but that'd be stupid. 
 
Now that said, when we want to achieve something with a product, and we need something new and different to achieve that thing, we're not afraid to do it. Best example is probably the Grace m9XX followed by the CEntrance DACport Slim. Both are products that didn't exist in any form before our collab.
 
I'm not going to waste resources and make something more expensive than it has to be for the sake of making it something you couldn't do in a garage. If you can do the same in a garage, awesome, more power to you, and I'll make sure the rest of the population can get the best a manufacturer is capable of, sans-garage. 
 

 Originally Posted by vapman /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
I don't think it is helpful for anyone to propagate the myth that Massdrop has a team of engineers on hand that are able to talk with the designers of any headphone and make it even better. When we think about how Massdrop works with these companies to come up with these exclusive products, it is only helpful to realize the limitations of what both entities are capable of.

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Yea dude, know how many people are on our custom products team right now? Two. And only one works on Audiophile stuff (trying to hire another, if you know anyone with ~15 years experience in audiophile manufacturing, design, and biz dev, pls point them my direction). 
 
Thing is... we don't need a team of engineers. Why would we? Fostex, Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, HiFiman, etc, all have engineering teams, let them do the engineering. What we have is insights, and an ability to synthesize what the Audiophile community is looking for. The process works like this, we do an analysis on MD sales and discussions to determine which manufacturers we should work with for what product types and pricepoints (not going to make a $400 closed back with Sennheiser even if they wanted to, Fostex is clearly the better partner for that). From there, I'll put in some time and make 1-2 paragraph spec, eg "K702 65th annie, all black everything, slight decrease in highs, removable cable". At that point, I reach out to some trusted community members to get their feedback.
 
90% of the time, the feedback is all the same. Everyone agrees on a few things that have to happen for the product to be successful. From there I reach out to the manufacturer, have a "is this a possibility if I order $XXXXXXX worth?" conversation, and iterate from there. 
 
I paint the broad stroke impressionist vision of the product, community members help bring it up to Bob Ross detail level, then our partner's engineering and design teams go full Michelangelo filling in all the fine details you need to fill in a complete product. 
 
Hopefully that helps give an idea for what's possible. Short version is, anything is possible really, some things are higher probability, some are lower, but given a long enough time scale, I'll be surprised if we can't make everything we want to. Like I mentioned in another post, it's common for people to tell us "no", but it's less common for them to tell us "no" 3 months later (because of how quickly we're growing). 

willbright said:

With these collaborations, it's not our goal to make something new and different for the sake of being new and different. If AKG has a headband on one version of the K-series that we can use in our collab, you bet we're going to use that. They've already got the supply chain solved for that product. Could have asked them to make a new headband with triangle shaped bumps, but that'd be stupid. 

Now that said, when we want to achieve something with a product, and we need something new and different to achieve that thing, we're not afraid to do it. Best example is probably the Grace m9XX followed by the CEntrance DACport Slim. Both are products that didn't exist in any form before our collab.

I'm not going to waste resources and make something more expensive than it has to be for the sake of making it something you couldn't do in a garage. If you can do the same in a garage, awesome, more power to you, and I'll make sure the rest of the population can get the best a manufacturer is capable of, sans-garage. 


Yea dude, know how many people are on our custom products team right now? Two. And only one works on Audiophile stuff (trying to hire another, if you know anyone with ~15 years experience in audiophile manufacturing, design, and biz dev, pls point them my direction). 

Thing is... we don't need a team of engineers. Why would we? Fostex, Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, HiFiman, etc, all have engineering teams, let them do the engineering. What we have is insights, and an ability to synthesize what the Audiophile community is looking for. The process works like this, we do an analysis on MD sales and discussions to determine which manufacturers we should work with for what product types and pricepoints (not going to make a $400 closed back with Sennheiser even if they wanted to, Fostex is clearly the better partner for that). From there, I'll put in some time and make 1-2 paragraph spec, eg "K702 65th annie, all black everything, slight decrease in highs, removable cable". At that point, I reach out to some trusted community members to get their feedback.

90% of the time, the feedback is all the same. Everyone agrees on a few things that have to happen for the product to be successful. From there I reach out to the manufacturer, have a "is this a possibility if I order $XXXXXXX worth?" conversation, and iterate from there. 

I paint the broad stroke impressionist vision of the product, community members help bring it up to Bob Ross detail level, then our partner's engineering and design teams go full Michelangelo filling in all the fine details you need to fill in a complete product. 

Hopefully that helps give an idea for what's possible. Short version is, anything is possible really, some things are higher probability, some are lower, but given a long enough time scale, I'll be surprised if we can't make everything we want to. Like I mentioned in another post, it's common for people to tell us "no", but it's less common for them to tell us "no" 3 months later (because of how quickly we're growing). 

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I am a busy man as I imagine you are and I think it's great that you guys have such a positive outlook on certain brands. There is also a lot of good industry information here, I was always curious to know how much the buying public has an influence on the design, but isn't it decided on by the time it's for sale? It doesn't seem like there would be time for you guys to risk losing a lot of money designing a costly product and buying it in bulk if the buyers decide they don't want that drop. It sounds then more like a kickstarter situation with you guys?

@WillBright
 
Ever gave thought to doing a Final Audio Design Hope ''VX'' collab?
 
I'm a huge fan of what this headphone brings to the ear and is at the same time an ideal candidate for improvement. The cups are prone to sliding down and thin earpads makes you feel the grills which becomes outright painful. On a personal note, audition these phones if you've never heard 'em. Awemazing.

So let's see.
 
DAC/Amp : Grace Design m9XX, Centrace Dacport Slim
Headphones : THX00, K7XX
 
I believe there was the custom in ears  collaboration with Custom Art as well if I recall. So why not:
 
Universal in-ear monitors : That Japan exclusive JH Audio release of the old triple-fi 10 would have been my call. Don't know how that would work out in terms of the exclusivity. Or maybe would have suggested to take on that Hyperdynamic I heard in CanJam from Jaben.
 
DAP : If there's a remake of the Calyx M (BETTER BATTERY LIFE, maybe less sluggish UI) that would be great.
 
Just a couple of suggestions here so please take it with a grain of salt. I mean of course I would love to have the HD800S, LCD-4 and the other TOTL headphones collab sold at a lower price for us but I guess the company can't just do that.

And if we're talking Ultrasone if there was a possibility to make an actual portable headphone based on the Edition 9's (I know there are the Pro 900, I just don't prefer them) that would be great.
 
And cheers @WillBright for your responses.  

I would be happy to see a retuned MDR-Z7. More sub-bass, maybe clearer treble.

I'd like to see a HeadRoom Massdrop collaboration. Anyone else?
 
We have a couple new amps in the works and I'd love to sell $XXXXXXX worth to @WillBright

ejong7 said:

  And if we're talking Ultrasone if there was a possibility to make an actual portable headphone based on the Edition 9's (I know there are the Pro 900, I just don't prefer them) that would be great.
 
And cheers @WillBright for your responses.

 

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Ultrasone is easily the most confusing company in Audio. Usually I can spend a couple hours researching an organization and get a pretty good idea of their strategy, where they're going, etc, not with Ultrasone. 
 
Can you explain them to me? Dead serious, have no idea why they do what they do. 

obsidyen said:

  I would be happy to see a retuned MDR-Z7. More sub-bass, maybe clearer treble.

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Yea man, you and me both. I'd really want the MDR3000 or R10 brought back, but I don't think Sony's ready to make that happen. 

vapman said:

I am a busy man as I imagine you are and I think it's great that you guys have such a positive outlook on certain brands. There is also a lot of good industry information here, I was always curious to know how much the buying public has an influence on the design, but isn't it decided on by the time it's for sale? It doesn't seem like there would be time for you guys to risk losing a lot of money designing a costly product and buying it in bulk if the buyers decide they don't want that drop. It sounds then more like a kickstarter situation with you guys?

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Not sure I understand. The buying public has a huge impact on the design, but it's not done via public design-by-committee. The process we have allows highly dedicated enthusiasts to share their thoughts and meaningfully impact a product without having to quit their jobs, go to design school, and setup shop in the Audio industry. 
 
Hopefully that answers your question, let me know if not.