Warning: Long Rant Post
A reply to a post found on another thread
i don't/can't own any of these high-priced CIEMs , so my thoughts are 100% unbiased - so here are my 2 cent
i find it funny(at least) people bashing (edit) and not Noble which charges the prestige series an extra ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS for something which is only better than the K10 in the SHELL materials (if i am wrong here, please correct me)
let's go one more time -people paying AN EXTRA ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS for no sound improvement,whatsoever
really ?
it's a free market/capitalism thing , but i can't help but think there are too many wealthy/stupid people in the audiophile community if you are a CIEM company and think there are enough customers out there who are going to pay an EXTRA ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS just for the looks of their CIEM -and i didn't see any bashing over at the Noble thread
maybe i am wrong....maybe. or maybe not.
The Prestige is a product that contains the internals of the K10.
The K10, happens to be the top ranked CIEM currently on head-fi, and the most reviewed CIEM on head-fi as well. (I think the number is 14-15 reviews, all resulting in 5 stars)
The K10 sound signature can be purchased at 5 price points.
- K10 CIEM customer designed $1,600+ (the retail price is the same as the universal, but there are more shipping fees, ear mold impressions, & customers time)
- K10 Wizard Design Reprint $1,600 + 200
- K10 Wizard Design $1,600 + 400
- Prestige $1,600 + $1,000 (+/-)
(By the way your comparison isn’t an “apples to oranges” comparison, as the product in question is an IEM that is retailing at approximately $2,500. An apples to apples comparison would be an IEM retailing at $2,500 to an IEM retailing at $1,600)
Further more, Noble has never made any bones about the Prestige and what it is. It is an exercise of excess, which is something commonly done by enthusiasts in essentially any hobby.
Examples are:
- Watches
- Cars
- Shoes ( for many years I was a victim of fashion for years…. I loved Johnston & Murphy)
- Fishing (cheap to expensive fishing gear)
- Guns (hand made gold engraved pieces of art to an over the counter Wal-Mart special)
- Bicycles (Rico Suave has a bike that he drafted the frame. It is a 100% bespoke titanium frame, the fee for such a frame is around $3,000)
The list can obviously go on
i find for instance than noble is selling thin air to the prestige customers and i see so many people there kissing noble's ass , it's also hilarious.
it all comes down to 3 things - what sound you are after , how much money you have to spend and how stupid/smart consumer you are
You are preaching your life style. You may decide to spend your hard earned money on other things that people find silly. Who knows, maybe your thing is “pencils” or even “gourmet popcorn.” Regardless, it is your choice and freedom to do so, just as is others.
But as far as the Prestige is concerned, the $1,000 fee is perfectly justifiable, as there are so many extra costs in building the prestige, not the least of which is time. The idea that some red-neck from Vidor, Texas could develop a new way to build CIEMs is really ludicrous. The truth of the matter is the subtractive technology to carve out a CIEM has been around for a long time.
Why it probably has never been done before is the sheer amount of time that is required to do it, (or no one has been crazy enough to attempt it) a milled CIEM is far from a “scaleable” product. It is simply a poor business move….. but like I said, I’m from Vidor, we aren’t exactly known for our business acumen. (or our spelling)
When an earmold impression is sent to our office in the USA, the office forwards the ear mold impressions to our undisclosed “Bat Cave” located on the other side of the world. There, the ear mold impression is hand carved, and a CIEM shell is made. Then the shell is sent back to the USA, and there the shell undergoes a laser scan, which requires about 2 hours per side.
A normal hearing aid scan require about 5 minutes, but we want the most data points our equipment can gather…. so we don’t rush things. Then, the data is fed to our super duper state of the art CNC machine, and on average each piece (left/right) of the CIEMs require 10 hours of milling. (So that is 20 hrs of milling time per CIEM)
Then after that, the milled out ciem blank is then sent back to the Bat Cave on the other side of the world, where they carefully “drill out” the solid blank, carefully hollowing the blank out, such that it becomes a shell.
Once it has been hollowed out, and polished inside as well, the K10 internals are placed. After that, the CIEM is closed off with the same material as the shell, thus making it a CIEM built from a solid block of material.
Every step in the process has to be done without a single mistake, because if a mistake is made, such as carving too much of the impression material, poor scans, grinding out the shell walls creating a “blow out” of the wall, getting the wall too hot, causing burn blemishes
ANY MISTAKE in the process will result in a total start over
Beyond this, Noble did not state that there was NEW vapor technology being utilized in the Prestige and thus a price increase was warranted. We didn’t need to as the results were self evident.
Materials used for a Prestige are not cheap either, and not all wood is created equal. Due to that, we buy the best grades of wood, and then we have it stabilized. The wood is placed in a pressure chamber along with resin. The resin is forced into the pours of the wood, binding the wood, essentially forming the wood into a block of plastic.
We do this in order to insure the CIEM will not “split” due to humidity/climate changes, and will not explode while being milled. This procedure also insures that a CIEM is as strong as a standard acrylic CIEM if not stronger.
As stated before, the Prestige is an exercise in excess, and every step of the build process is as well. While $1,000 is a lot of money, we feel our efforts justify the price. Ultimately we give the consumer several options when it comes to purchasing a K10, they decide if they want to go conservative, or total luxury, the choice is their own.
