This whole debate over whether or not the APMs sound like $550 headphones seems strange to me because what exactly is a $550 headphone?
The more I read headphone reviews and the more I learn about the current state of the industry, the more I’m starting to realize that the entire concept of price points starts to break down after $200.
I mean, if you were to take the 5 best headphones at $500-$1000 and compare them to the 5 best headphones at $200, is the difference really significant?
For example, how many $500 headphones offer better clarity than the HD 560S? How many $500 headphones offer better mids than the 6XX? How many $500 buds sound better than the AirPods Pro? How many $500 headphones are more detailed than the DT880?
I personally don’t yet have a lot of personal experience listening to most of the headphones discussed on this site, but I’ve done a ton of reading and have seen so many reviews and analysis, and I get the distinct impression that the entire concept quality increases basically stops at $200. It’s not even just a matter of diminishing returns kicking in; it’s a matter of many expensive headphones simply not sounding all that great. Once you go above that $200 price point, you’ve entered a world where headphones cease to be a piece of cool technology and they’ve started to be a piece of craftsmanship.
It’s like with watches. You can spend $10,000 on a Rolex or even $300,000 on a Patek, but they won’t keep time any better than your cheap Timex will. You’re paying for the amazing craftsmanship and artistry, not for the actual performance.
With headphones, there are of course high priced headphones that perform better than any low or mid priced headphone possibly could by virtue of the amount of time, effort, materials, and technology that went into it (ie. no $200 headphone will sound like an Orpheus or Abyss 1266). But those top performers seem to be the exception, not the rule. From what I gather, most $500 or even $3,000 headphones will sound worse than the top performing $200 headphones.
People think of price and sound quality as this linear relationship, where the two increase together, and then perhaps SQ starts to increase at a slower rate once diminishing returns kicks in high up on the curve. But even that’s not correct. It’s not even just that expensive headphones get better more slowly as you increase price; it’s that they often don’t get better at all. A $3,000 headphone may not sound any better at all than a $2,000 headphone or a $1,000 headphone, or even a top performing $200 headphone.
That’s why this whole debate seems silly to me. Saying that the AirPods Max don’t sound as good as a $550 headphone isn’t a statement that means much. If the APM can even hang in there with a good performer in the $150-$200 range and then the APM add all the cool Apple computation features on top of that, then I’d say yes, they’re absolutely as good as any “$550 headphone”, whatever that means.
But maybe I’m wrong. I personally haven’t had much hands-on time with many $1,000+ headphones, so I could be way off here. But I don’t think so.
