[sperandeo]

I have listened to and owned some great headphones in my time and I recently purchased a pair on NAD Viso HP50's on the recommendation of Tyll Hertsens great "I Love These Headphones" review on the product. 
 
When I first got them home, I opened the package and thought they were not the nicest looking cans. I also thought the build quality was a little on the cheap side. I plugged them into my iPod and was thrown back right away at what I was hearing. It's a very well balanced tone between the low and high end. At this point I would say these headphone are really really good. The next morning I went to listen to them again and found that I lost about 66% volume gain on the headphones.  I took them back to the shop and they said they have never seen this issue before, they exchanged them for a brand new pair. 
 
I thought it might be fun to hook them up to my Cypher Labs Solo and Blackbird SR71 headphone amp. As soon as I pressed play, I could not believe what I was hearing out of a pair of $300.00 headphones. I immedietly started to wonder why on earth I've been paying THOUSANDS of dollars for a pair of headphones that are in the same league. I'm not saying they are the best headphone I've ever heard, but I just can't believe the quality of sound to price. The price of these headphones give me faith that it is possible to make a high end headphone for little money. I also think that the sound difference between these headphones and my Audeze LCD2's make the LCD2's not as great as they should be for the $1000.00 I paid for them. In other words, if NAD can do what they are doing and sell it for $300, I expect 3x's the headphone for $1000.00. I would also expect a 17x improvement in sound when listening to a $5000.00 headphone and at this point in time I have not found this to be true.
 
I started getting worried about this a few years ago when companies started charging $1500+ for a pair of headphones that I thought were just okay. 
In regards to the HP50's I'm not crazy about the build quality, I had a defective first pair,  I have an issue with the cable being to short (this could easily be replaced with a better and longer cable), but over all I have to say these headphones are the best thing I've ever heard for $300.00 ever!!. 
 
More importantly I wanted to say "Thank You" to NAD for bringing the price bar back down to where I think it should be. We are seeing $5000.00 headphones, $2500.00 music players, $10,000.00 headphone/amp combos etc. It's really nice to know that there still are a few companies out there (Like Schitt and NAD), who feel that they don't need to make a 5,000% profit margin on every single item they sell.
 
Just thought I'd share these thoughts
 
Thanks

 

[Stuff Jones]

Isn't one of the most widely known "rules" of audiophelia that there is diminishing SQ returns to price? In other words, you shouldn't expect to get 3x the SQ from a HP costing 3x as much as another one.

 

[sperandeo]

I understand that you truly are not going to get 17 times better by spending 17 times more. But the thought of it being possible to make something this good for $300.00 is what excites me most.

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

Yup. These are the benchmark for price/performance ratio.
 
No, you won't get 5x the performance with $1500...but you should get 2x at least...and I'm pretty sure we're not getting that on average.
 
Glad you're enjoying them.

 

[Astropin]

  Yup. These are the benchmark for price/performance ratio.
 
No, you won't get 5x the performance with $1500...but you should get 2x at least...and I'm pretty sure we're not getting that on average.
 
Glad you're enjoying them.

To me the scale (of diminishing returns) seems more exponential. So for 5x the price your going to hear 1.056x the performance.
 
Really the higher you go (once you pass approximately the $200-$400 range) you are mostly paying for exotic materials, exclusiveness, and rarity.......not sound quality........but that's just me.

 

[sperandeo]

There is a part of me that would love to own a Stax system with a BHSE, but the thought of spending that kind of cash and not hearing it really freaks me out.