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What I am saying is that they (Stax) set a niche. They want to play at the blue ocean, with no competitors.
There are two main ways to avoid competitors (to have your own niche): the luxurious path (very subjective) or the technological path (very objective).
Humm, so sound quality is not sufficient because it is subjective? I would argue that technology improvement as judged by non-technical people is very subjective and based on the quality of the mumbo jumbo put together by the marketing department. I think it's quite difficult for the common people to distinguish real innovation from magic dust because few people have the skills to make objective engineering judgment.
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If we were talking about B2B (i.e. Stax to NHK, Stax to JVC etc.), engineers would like to see distortion plots (THD and IMD), to examine the real-world behavior of the membrane with a laser vibrometer etc. And as engineers they estimate the cost of the manufacturing process (or call their friends on metallurgy). It would be an objective way to evaluate the improvement. And I would love to see that data, as much as Boing want to see fuel consumption of and airplane engine...
But this is not going to happen with consumers. There are few people interested in technical data. To say the truth, most consumers make their buying decisions based on their feelings. They say "trust your ears", "an objective measurement cannot describe the whole performance of a transducer"...
I don't think there is such a large portion of the audience who would make use of such rational data. Additionally, there is a thin line between advocating your product and revealing all your trade secrets to a potential competitor (although in Stax case, there's no competition at the moment).
Frankly, it's probably a good thing that more people judge with their ears rather than their brain because we would probably be missing on a lot of good sounding gear otherwise. There are still a lot of mechanisms of sound perception poorly understood, and design of exceptional sounding gear is not all a technician / engineer's game, it takes talent to make something sound good eventually.
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Originally Posted by jgazal /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Subjectivity can lead some of them unconsciously to the before mentioned luxurious marketing path. Their impressions about sound quality might reflect not the sound, but the price they paid for such equipment. I also cannot refuse the fact that many consumers buy a headphone because they want a luxurious good and they do not mind if the sound is slightly worse (I think the ordinary consumer, which is not a head-fier, is not completely unaware of sound quality)..
I think at the prices we're talking about here, this is not common behavior, at least not in the long term. People will likely justify their purchase in the short term but will eventually come around, especially when new kids hit the block. For those people who spend in audio gear as a mean to establish social status, well, I think headphones are not bling bling enough or expensive enough to satisfy their needs. They need a crap sounding 100kUSD+ dang awful bright sounding speaker system for this.
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While it can be/is that Stax is doing some real research and sound-oriented engeneering,
it still does not mean they will never try to artificially create certain demands for their products, using eg community like this
and various "friendly insiders". Their "smallness" is not a measure here: this dirty practices are often done by much smaller,
garage companies who I believe exist solely due to the hype created on various forums.
Stax is not in this kind of business I believe. They're celebrating 50 years in existence, that should tell you something. They're also not famous for joining the bandwagon for whatever is popular at a given time. I am pretty sure they don't give a rats ass about what is being said in any forum but rather follow their own line to derive new technology and or sound signature. This is not a one man shop, internet savy 20 year old something boy using Facebook and whatever media he can to promote some home made sauce.
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I for one am happy to see Stax as a company tweaking their designs forward. When the product is as fundamentally "right" as Stax headphones are, major technological breakthroughs are going to be rare. The only approach that promises certain improvement is refinement. Rather like BMW's approach to performance driving machines, as opposed to say the Japanese manufacturers (who are known for seeking technological breakthroughs and change systems as if each generation must have as little in common with the previous as possible. Apologies ahead of time for the generalizations). Develop systems where everything works together with positive synergy and improve where you can.
The new driver technology addresses a limiting aspect of the previous manufacturing techniques. That is called improvement, or at least an attempt at improvement. I have been a Stax customer for thirty-five years and am very happy with the direction they are headed in. I hope this terrific small company survives and prospers. They have never been about bells and whistles and I find that refreshing in today's market. Stax is a quality company and a class act. In my admittedly worthless opinion, seeing a kindly older man's quiet enthusiasm for the latest developments as hype generation is a very warped read on the situation. Not to be contentious; that is just how I personally see it.
Stax is not the only Japanese niche company like this. Look at Nitto, the bicycle component manufacturer. Compare them to Shimano and you will see what I mean.
Clark
So well said.
Not sure if they don't refer to the 4070 though, as this one was initially made for the Japanese TV.
