It’s hard for me to believe that another planar iem won’t come out at half the price and be just as good (wishful thinking). The planar tech is not above and beyond, and if anything is probably easier to produce than a BA iem. One chamber, one flat disc. The lowly **** has a planar disc in it ($20) and sounds great (not directly comparing of course). I don’t see the jump in price as a good thing, or necessary thing in terms of advancement. You could get a Fostex T50 for that price, so there’s the conundrum. Support (what I consider) overpricing or just wait for the next guy who will use the same (not proprietary) tech and make it better and cheaper. Says the frugal and skeptical audiophile...
Sure cost of production, competition and brand recognition / what margins you can take is one thing.
However can it not also be a case of there being a cost to start making these and that and production and such they want covered and it's hard to know how many will sell or at what price so they have to put it somewhere and settled for $150 which if they get 2000 of pre-orders maybe they didn't needed but they didn't know how many they would get.
I don't know how low the others have sold before or how often or how soon. Before I imagined if there was something too soon improve they would release a P2 or Pro or ... but now I've seen that the T1, T2 and T3 doesn't use the same driver setup so then I become less sure about whatever they would tweak one with the same driver. Then again they could of course do planar + BA or dynamic or whatever as the one you listed for another one.
"planar tech is not above and beyond"
It's more, there's implementation, tuning, materials, etc. and other factors. Toneking BL1 cost more but are not better. Same tech but implemented incorrectly. Fail.
But considering it seem like BGGR guy kinda meant they couldn't sell the first one because of measurement and they fixed that don't that make you wonder how good they are at it considering they had missed that? Also in a week how much can be done? I have no idea what was done but clearly it went fast.
Off-topic: I don't know if I should buy these or not. One store sold the A1M2 cheap and I liked their sound without anything to compare with. I listened to M60X vs DT770 vs HD 660S vs HPH-MT8 using my phone and I prefer MT 8 over M60X vs DT770 as far as sound quality goes there however I wanted to use it outdoor for walking and such and felt the M60X win in size and ear warming vs MT 8 I guess. The 660S sounded very nice but for other use case. I've had the DT990 at home and liked them for orientation in Overwatch but played them much too loud and the treble and bass was killing me and I had lots of ringing in my ears then. The later was because of the volume but while I liked how cleared they sounded and positioning in the game I didn't liked how little of male voices I could hear (as I'm used to the Alessandro MS-1 for comparision.) Saw the Moondrop Kansas Pro was liked too (and I've seen the T2 review) and that seem like it may be a safer "good IEM" whereas this may more of a "special sound IEM." I don't know if I should have IEM even but maybe it's a better choice for outdoor use than A1M2/M60X/MT8 or such? I don't know.
If there was no discount I wouldn't order but wait but since there is .. then again I know the old ones sell below $50 nowadays.
Almost off-topic too: Anyway yeah as far as putting a speaker or whatever together just about anyone could slap a bunch of elements into a case and make some crossover and be done with it. Whatever that would be amazing and better than other speakers though ... If throwing the element into whatever case for it with a hole to your ear was all what was needed why would the end results differ
I also have no idea how IEMs vs over-ears vs speakers do as far as neutrality between them. It would to me seem like much harder to fit a 10 mm thing in some other small thing and make it function well than much bigger things in normal speakers. I have the impression frequency curves are flatter for speakers then again they are placed in a room and you may not be in the same place in that room and that will screw it up, on the other hand I have no idea how much differences in people´s ears change things either. Also it seem like you quickly become used to what you listen to and it kinda become more "normal" automatically. Also in the case of technical performance / speed and control of the membrane vs frequency response I'd you could be more forgiving for the later than the former as far as EQ goes. Then again I've seen the amps have transient response settings too. Personally I have no dedicated amp whatsoever. I have a B450-F motherboard, had a Denon AVR-1801 but it doesn't work and have a Galaxy S5 but I've broken the headphone output on it. Guess I'll get something from Xiaomi, RealMe or so soonish. Wanted LG G7 before but as updates aren't happening ...
Would bass improve with larger driver? If they did so for a "P2"? Or is it more likely that they mix stuff to try to improve it? I could wait, I don't even have a phone, then again now is summer and perfect time to go out for walks and be outside, then again I always have a gym membership and I have a cat who want to go out so I don't need to go on walks and listen to audiobooks (and even if I did I have some Sony brass IEMs and some AKGs from Samsung phones too.)
A decent speaker would unlikely measure like this:
https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/q_...s/2019/06/Tin-Hifi-P1-frequency-response.webp