Right now, AKG still has the know-how and solid processes from the Austrian production, it takes some time till the Chinese-made headphhones drop in quality. Sennheiser doesn't even develop the consumer-stuff in Germany, it's designed in Singapore and made in China because the Chinese wanted...

Just found this thread again and noticed I haven*t answered important questions, so if anybody cares:     Quote:  Not everybody but the "average" Chinese is in fact a slave laborer for the western consumers and worldwide upper-class.   Quote:  German manufacturers usually...

The average cost in production is about 0.60$/h in China. Workers are "trained-on-the-job" for a few weeks at best. Somebody has posted images of an usual OEM - that's "Made in China". The average cost in Germany is 50$/h, but what you get is a trained (several years, usually within the...

The Sennheiser HD800 and the Beyerdynamic are pretty much the best headphones I know of. They are entirely new designs, state-of-the-art driver-technology with powerful and experienced family businesses behind them to finance these expensive developments (including rigid scientific research and...

I'm not a fan of their design, either. But once you see them with your own eyes and hold them in your hands, you will notice that they're better made than most "luxurious" looking headphones. They also incorporate more metal on invisible parts, while most other manufacturers use metal as an...

@Necrolic & majkel Just pick any cable manufacturer who claims to improve sound, or what about the guy who made the cables which aren't even able to work reliable (pictures in this thread)? Cables used in Hifi under normal circumstances don't sound, period! That's not an opinion...

So you want this to be a pleasant place for average members as well as people who betray and rip-off others with false statements and worthless products instead of having a real debate to rule out false information? What's when I would say I can tune your HD800 by sending it to me and paying...

"but lets not get into the cable/sound debate here, especially since neither of us have heard them in HA's system" No debate, just facts: stick with the stock cable of your expensive headphones! I really enjoy this forum, even if I have to struggle with my English it offers unique...

What does "quality" mean in this discussion? - The luxurious feel and image of the materials used? - The fit & finish? - The long-term quality and reliability? The overall best build headphone/amp ever made is the Sennheiser HE90/HEV90 - no surprise given their price... The...

"If the cable does not affect the sound, why do the Sennheiser HD 800s ship with a silver-plated copper cable when they could save money by using all copper?" From what I've seen the HD800-cable-system is very well thought out, much better than the cheap and fragile system of my HD580 which...

I don't know about other headphone-makers but Beyerdynamic and Sennheiser are both engineer-ruled, fairly big companies. They don't work after the trial & error-principle like many small high-end-brands. They not only have the equipment to actually measure every aspect of a headphone (not the...

Sennheiser has to make profit but Sennheiser is not driven by Shareholder-value, I'm sure the investment into the HD800 was a risky move and not their most profitable headphone (in %) - they propably sell some of their 100$-headphones 50 times as well, there's no way the HD800 could catch up...

"industrial grade plastic is pretty much non destructible... I think people are more into the visual thing when saying it need to be metal. Using metal at joints is a big no no just look at the percentage of HD 650 headband breaking. more weight if you happen to drop them they have a bigger...

We don't have a working market there anymore - that's the sad truth. The dealers became too powerful, they dictate the prices, the margins and to a certain extend even the brands we buy. Sennheiser/Beyerdynamic doesn't want to lower the prices by 10% next year and another 10% in 2011? Well, so...

My dealer (in Germany!) expects the first delivery this week but it's just one headphone and he has already 5 customers waiting for the following ones... The Online-Shop says "8-10 weeks"... I wonder why they waited so long to come up with high-end-headphones again? Sennheiser is selling also...

The HD800 is made by specialized suppliers, most of them located in Germany and assembled (+driver production) in their HQ in Wedemark - the other headphones "from Sennheiser" are not made by these suppliers, most of them are made by chinese OEM, a friend of mine broke three headsets (PC-Series...

I'm sorry, with "OTHER headphone..." I meant not all but most. I wouldn't overrate the size of the company, I don't think it makes much difference whether Beyerdynamic (300 people in HQ) or Sennheiser (1000) starts to develop and manufacture a headphone, as long as they real focus their...

A plastic watch for 1400$? Odd, but when it has a nice calibre from Patek inside... I've seen the HD800-drivers, they're perfectly crafted and you don't have to be an engineer to see the difference to "normal" drivers. I would have preferred metal because it has unique characteristics in...

Thanks back for bearing my English-experiments ;-) @subtle You had the chance to compare the O2 with the HD800? What was their problem regarding build quality? The images of them looked fine... @Gamerphile I had the chance to work with a high-end-brand and was shocked by their standards...

Without lock on the prices, it would be very likely that some dealers lower their prices - nothing wrong with that, margins for dealers are high in the hifi-sector. But consumers would start to expect nothing but the lowered price level, value of HD800 on the market goes down (when I buy such an...

Stax sells low-mechanical-quality plastic headphones for over 1000$, Denon sells Chinese slave-labour for over 1000$ (despite aesthetic appearence much less carefully manufactured and assembled) and let's don't start with Grado and their manufacturing processes... Leona is manufactured by a...

You have to see it in a historic context. Sennheiser was once a manufacturer of high-quality consumer-products sold by many dealers. About 20 years ago, those dealers died and were replaced by a few hugh electronic-stores (in Germany it's the Metro with it's Saturn and Media-Markt brand, in the...

Let's define "overpriced": 1. Too expensive to justify the cost despite quality Some aren't willing to pay even more than 10$ for headphones - I don't think that's reasonable without caring about sound, craftsmenship... 2. Too expensive regarding it's performance I agree, but...

Many so called "high-end" headphones are manufactured under ridiculous conditions in China - wages are about 100$/month (16h/day, 6 days a week) and headphones which are manufactured within a few hours (including components and sub-assembly) are sold for up to a yearly wage! THAT's overpriced!

I forgot to write that this team worked for 2 years on it (12 people x 2 years x 100,000€/year wage = 2.4 mio. €) We had this discussion before regarding the HD800. Final assembly takes 45min, that are about 50-150€ alone.