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Originally Posted by stevenkelby /img/forum/go_quote.gif
It's great that you improved the sound. I sometimes wonder if HP companies don't know about these things, but choose not to do them so there is room for improvement with more expensive models.
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I can't speak for the German headphone companies, but regarding mass-production violin factories (which is the origin of virtually all "hand-made", "artist-quality", "professional" or whatever BS they use to cover the fact that the instruments are a factory product, violins in the range below about $4000) , when people ask me what's the difference between the different prices of the violins they make, the direct answer is that they build each line to sound better than the ones below, and worse than the ones above, which is why many violin makers make a lot of money by taking cheaper, nice-looking older violins, which were made with great materials, but cheaply, putting a little work into making them right inside (which the original maker could easily have done, too--it's just a matter of applying the right set of numbers) and selling them for more money.
We do something similar to headphone modding in my shop: the profit margin on pretty good Chinese instruments is huge--big enough that we can spend a lot of shop time inside them, turning a $3500 viola into something that sounds like an $8000-10,000 one, for instance. Then we sell it, easily whumping all the competition, for $3500, make money, AND keep our shop employed. All because they intentionally build crippled models to keep their higher-priced models selling. Up to just below the level of single-person-made (that is, things you won't and can't order from a catalogue) instruments, the whole business is structured this way, intentionally, and historically to provide something for every market price point, as much as possible.
That's why when I bought my Ed9s, I did it just assuming (correctly, I guess) that everything below was a crippled version of the Ed9, in various ways. So first I did a lot of Ultrasone research to figure out if I'd like the general product line's concept, then just bit the bullet and bought the obvious conclusion rather than tying up a lot of money in bad purchases along the way.
(JK)
