[1911]

hey,
i hope sennheiser makes oodles of money as it keeps the r and d up..and it is one of the companies that actually has a good build quality

although i must admit..they have too many choices and it gets confusing...the headphone line needs to be streamlined somewhat..

 

[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1911 hey, i hope sennheiser makes oodles of money as it keeps the r and d up..and it is one of the companies that actually has a good build quality although i must admit..they have too many choices and it gets confusing...the headphone line needs to be streamlined somewhat..

Wow, you headphone guys just crack me up. A computer guy myself thinks that 20 different models is nothing, when your looking at video cards with 8 different versions (xt,xtpe,gto,regular,gt,etc) and 20 different manfuacters creating it, all within a price range of $20 of eachother.

 

[skyline889]

I think what he means is that Sennheiser has three top of the line headphones all from different lines. It still sells the HD590 which comes from the older 500-570 line, the HD595 which comes from the newer HD515-HD555 line and it also still sells the HD650 which originates from the HD580-600 line, and all of them have near identical specs, so it can be a little confusing.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

you would think that a company like sennheiser and akg would be able to better control their processes to that there would be less losses during manufacturing while holding tighter tolerances

just the opposite.

the more goods you make the less control you have over each one and when the smaller formerly "hand made one at a time" goes big they pull maybe one in every hundred off the line for the full QC while the one who is still a small operator treats every single product as if it is the only one ever made.

you pay a premium for this because it costs more to make smaller quanities of something than it does to mass product then toss "outsourcing" parts into the equation to keep prices competitive and you lose even more control over the final product.

Mass production means : Get it built,get it packed,get it shipped YESTERDAY !

 

[JahJahBinks]

There is material cost and labor cost.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

There is material cost and labor cost.

again using the mass production vs small operator example :

the more parts you order the less you pay on a per-part price so the product cost can come down or the profits go higher the more you make and ship.

On the labor side-small means you hire a craftsman usually that will be with you until that person retires and not only is he skilled at the product and in fact knows it inside out but for this will usually be payyed accordingly as a "valued" worker and not as a walk in would.

a mass production assembly line is all about "no skills required" and is set up so each person is closer to an aminatron thana living breathing human.inlike the former this person only need know their particular part,say earpads,but not the entire product which is someone elses responsibility.
Low skill level = low salry and again a cost savings at the manufacturing end

 

[Gullanian]

I'd be suprised if they cost Senn more than $20-$30 to make each pair.

Don't forget in the cost is:

- R&D (Research and development)
- Staff wages
- Support

Materials = very cheap, other services and stocking up on enough cash to continue research is expensive.

 

[Lightnin Joe]

It is absurd to assume that because the 600 and 650 are similar that it did not take massive R&D $$$ and effort to produce the 650. Or that even though the 580 and 600 have the same drivers that the same doesn't hold true for the 600. I work in R&D at a tech company and can tell you first hand the work that goes into prototyping and pre-production, but I'll try to apply my experience in terms of upgrading a headphone model line.

Engineering and design is not an off-hand endeavor. You meet and discuss and argue for a good amount of time before you even settle on parameters for an even incremental improvement. What do you want to achieve? What is the end result? Can we improve on the existing design and if so how? Or do we need to do a blank-sheet design? The difference between an HD580 and an HD 600 might seem minimal to you, but it most certainly is not. The most obscure change in the shape of the enclosure will surely have drastic consequences to the sound of the item. You don't just change the shape for aesthetics. It serves a purpose. And rapid prototyping is does not work in this instance. It only works for shape, form, and aerodynamic work. Doesn't work for materials testing and so forth. So each prototype is hand built. Changing to carbon fiber? Hypothesis: Carbon fiber will reduce resonance. How do you prove this? Well, you experiment with density, shape, composition, etc, until you come up with what you think is the solution. But it might not be. So you hand-make another prototyple part. On and on and on and on. And then on top of everything else you have to make the end product pleasing to the eye of the consumer (subjectively or course, even Apple products have their aesthetic critics). So you have to accomodate industrial design engineering as well as material, electrical, and audio engineering. Next you have to take mass production into account. So you have to adjust your design further to accomodate mass production while producing the required end result. And we haven't even produce tooling for the plant yet. Do we have space for it or do we need to acquire physical plant or sign a co-pro deal with another company? Then deal with teething problems, QA issues, marketing, sales, so on and so on...

Still with me? And this is something as inoccuous as a pair of dynamic headphones. Try putting 300 million transistors on a piece of silicon the size of your pinky fingernail...

 

[Lightnin Joe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaGWiRE Well, I don't know much about headphones, but when they do development video cards and so forth, R&D kills them, and most of all, the tools needed to create something like a cpu are unbelievable. They have such complex processes, it really doesn't matter what the supplies cost them to create it. I used to wonder all the time how much things cost to manufacter, but now that I realise everything required, it doesn't really matter. It would be a lot more important if somebody could just go and assemble there own cpu or whatever you may have themselves by buying the materials uesd, but the machines used to create the cpu and run them cost so much it'de be a joke for anybody.

Indeed. Wanna blow your own mind? Try wrapping it around the concept of transistor breeding. At nano-scale. Or the fact that traces are rapidly reaching the point where they can't be made smaller by traditional methods because they will be the width of a single photon. As if 65 billionths of a meter isn't small enough. How do progress from there? Plus fabs for microprocessor production can cost billions with a B of dollars. Not gonna make a world beater with your pcb prototyper and o-scope in your garage.

 

[Ferbose]

I bet the accountants within Sennheiser can't even answer the question.
Because you have to factor in so many things, including research, distribution, advertisement, service and repair.

 

[Mercuttio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1911 hey, i hope sennheiser makes oodles of money as it keeps the r and d up..and it is one of the companies that actually has a good build quality although i must admit..they have too many choices and it gets confusing...the headphone line needs to be streamlined somewhat..

If anything, they need more closed headphone options. I mean, the HD280 can't be IT for Sennheiser's closed line, can it? That'd make me sad...

 

[Naris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mercuttio If anything, they need more closed headphone options. I mean, the HD280 can't be IT for Sennheiser's closed line, can it? That'd make me sad...

What about the HD202/201/205/25-SP/25/and probably a couple of others? But yes, I agree that Sennheiser needs more closed headphones at the level of the HD580/600/650s

 

[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lightnin Joe Indeed. Wanna blow your own mind? Try wrapping it around the concept of transistor breeding. At nano-scale. Or the fact that traces are rapidly reaching the point where they can't be made smaller by traditional methods because they will be the width of a single photon. As if 65 billionths of a meter isn't small enough. How do progress from there? Plus fabs for microprocessor production can cost billions with a B of dollars. Not gonna make a world beater with your pcb prototyper and o-scope in your garage.

Haha! Our post count is about the same. This is the type of stuff I was talking about, but I didn't want to bring it up. We right now are at I believe 65 nanometers, aka 65 billionths of a meter. I don't know how much we can go, this will get pretty complex, but remember, I or you, probably wouldn't even have the capability with all of our education to build a computer from 20 years ago, or let alone 60-70 years ago from WW II and before. That's what I find so amusing about computers. The way they are manufactered is so complex, anything that they did build 60 years ago which wasn't so complex, was still probably too complex for us. We now know the basics of what materials are used, transistors and stuff, but even if we had them, what would we be able to build? The people who got us here are truley geniuses.

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mercuttio If anything, they need more closed headphone options. I mean, the HD280 can't be IT for Sennheiser's closed line, can it? That'd make me sad...

Yeah, I agree. The 280 is the limit in the Sennheiser range. If people are looking to spend more they'll go to other makes. To be fair though I think Sennheiser aren't particularly fond of closed cans? If they had their way none would be closed, no one moans at the Grado lack of closedness.

 

[Lightnin Joe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaGWiRE . The way they are manufactered is so complex, anything that they did build 60 years ago which wasn't so complex, was still probably too complex for us. We now know the basics of what materials are used, transistors and stuff, but even if we had them, what would we be able to build? The people who got us here are truley geniuses.

Of course the difference is that they used tubes and wire back in the day. LOTS of tubes and LOTS of wire. I guess what you're saying is basically that today's computers are extremely simple but their core components are monstrously complex. The reverse is true for machines from the 40's through the 70's. The components (PCB's, wire, tubes) were simple but the computer itself was complex.

I'm remembering back to the 8088 through 3x86 days and soldering 1K SIP memory sticks to the motherboard to upgrade and fiddling with dip switches to get a fussy internal modem to actually work in DOS. Setting IRQ's with jumpers. Setting the SCSI channel using binary on the Seagate drives. They do get easier to use as they get more complex. Quite the paradox.