Simple. Lower the price : )
Oh, we're
trying to do that --- make no mistake. It's easier said than done, though, and with LUNA, it's simply not possible.
Beryllium foil material is very expensive, in part because of the stringent safety measures that must be put in place during the fabrication process. Additionally, making acoustic-grade beryllium foil at the 10 mm size is different from how it is with full-sized headphones and speaker drivers. The shape of the beryllium diaphragm in the LUNA, because of its curvature and morphology, needed to be uniquely tooled only for the LUNA. This means we had to pay Materion and our materials supplier all of the tooling costs for stamp/mold creation, as well as pitch in with the costs associated with hazardous waste disposal, in addition to the 20+ iterations of the driver design --- each instance of which required costs associated with rapid prototyping. Lastly, workers are not free. The cost of labor in China is not nearly as 'cheap' as what people think it is. Wages have increased substantially. We also believe in providing our technicians commensurate compensation, and the specialized glues involved in the LUNA driver fabrication process require us to staff its production line with our most experienced technicians.
Amusingly, there was a reviewer (whose background is that he used to work for a Chi-Fi company, but we won't name shame here), who a while back sarcastically remarked that he found out from his 'insider sources' that our drivers could be made for 800 RMB (around $112 USD), as a means of questioning why we weren't handing out review samples like candy. We don't disclose these specific costs, but aside from the fact that he was off the reservation in his remarks, he was also far off the mark, as he didn't account for any of the aforementioned development costs.
Look, we know how it looks: a company that used to sell the $35 DN-12 Trident now sells a $1699 product. We could be mistaken for yet another company that just wants to pump out products with inflated price tags in the guise of high fidelity sound. In this case, however, a vast majority of the retail cost is non-negotiable. DUNU is not large enough a company that we can offset development costs with proceeds from other product lines.
All this doesn't stop us from trying to make LUNA and its derivative technologies more affordable, though. Our development directive following the release of the LUNA was to implement trickle-down technologies and fabrication methods to our lower end products. So folks will be seeing more LUNA-derived tech in lower end models. The upcoming ZEN model is such an example.
Or... Customs? I mean, if you already launch a Studio series, the idea might not come completely out of the blue, right?
People forget that DUNU offered a CIEM, the
DC4, way back in 2012. All that can be said now is that we're not leaving anything off the table!