In one of the interviews guys for Austria Audio said that they wanted to buy the machine that makes the driver for the K812 shown above, but Harman wouldn't agree to sell it to them.I stand corrected. Perhaps composer 2 can get rid of such heavy front damping in favor of back damping and engineered acoustic management system, including different venting strategies to achieve the desired tonal balance.
so AA bought out the AKG assets? nice.
Such a machine is an expensive piece of gear, but not that expensive that only companies with billions in revenue can buy or build one. Especially if you don't need to produce a huge range of drivers. As far as I understand, guys at Austria Audio are producing only two types - the one for the Composer and the one for the rest of their headphones (probably with small differences).