Wmcmanus
President treasurer secretary and sole member of the Cayman Islands Head-Fi Club.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2002
- Posts
- 11,830
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If Sennheiser plays it right, they could get quite a few speaker-based audiophiles to discover high end headphones for the first time. Unfortunately for Senn, but not necessarily for us, they didn't couple the HD800 with a matching headphone amp as they did with the HE90/HEV90 combo way back when. Whereas the market wasn't ready for a $15k headphone/headamp combo in the early 90s, it's more than ready for a $3k combo at this point.
For Head-Fi loyalists, it doesn't really matter because we have all sorts of awesome amps to choose from at this point, and its nice that Senn's efforts weren't in any way distracted from the HD800s themselves--because they sure did it right! At the same time, even though a lot of the early HD800 sales will be Head-Fi based, the broader market yet to be explored are the long-time audiophiles who have yet to discover this aspect of the hobby and/or take it seriously.
Let's face it, for walk-in retail customers who are not internet freaks like us, the HD800s will seem to be crazy expensive--especially when they plug them into the headphone jack of their receivers. So in a sense, we're the only crowd that "gets it" and understands that a fine musical instrument like the HD800 will terribly under perform without being placed in a system that will allow them to shine. Other long-time audiophiles will "get" this, but I think they'll need to be coached a bit in terms of what else is out there in the headphones world, and too many of them have turned a blind eye to it for too long that Sennheiser can't realistically expect to tap into this (much broader than Head-Fi) market without doing some coaching in their market efforts.
As a stand alone product the HD800 is great, but with a matching amp it could have gone a lot further in terms of market penetration. Even if they included some simple statements in their literature about allowing their experts to recommend an appropriate headphone amplifier (or to that effect) it would help to send that important message to the uninitiated audience--and that's the vast majority of people who will encounter the HD800s in one way or another through their marketing efforts.
For Head-Fi loyalists, it doesn't really matter because we have all sorts of awesome amps to choose from at this point, and its nice that Senn's efforts weren't in any way distracted from the HD800s themselves--because they sure did it right! At the same time, even though a lot of the early HD800 sales will be Head-Fi based, the broader market yet to be explored are the long-time audiophiles who have yet to discover this aspect of the hobby and/or take it seriously.
Let's face it, for walk-in retail customers who are not internet freaks like us, the HD800s will seem to be crazy expensive--especially when they plug them into the headphone jack of their receivers. So in a sense, we're the only crowd that "gets it" and understands that a fine musical instrument like the HD800 will terribly under perform without being placed in a system that will allow them to shine. Other long-time audiophiles will "get" this, but I think they'll need to be coached a bit in terms of what else is out there in the headphones world, and too many of them have turned a blind eye to it for too long that Sennheiser can't realistically expect to tap into this (much broader than Head-Fi) market without doing some coaching in their market efforts.
As a stand alone product the HD800 is great, but with a matching amp it could have gone a lot further in terms of market penetration. Even if they included some simple statements in their literature about allowing their experts to recommend an appropriate headphone amplifier (or to that effect) it would help to send that important message to the uninitiated audience--and that's the vast majority of people who will encounter the HD800s in one way or another through their marketing efforts.
