[ampgalore]

There is a thread in the amp section talking about a high end headphone amp made by a Japanese company called Luxman.

This gets me thinking.

Japan has Sony, Stax, Audio Technica.
Germany has Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic.

Any good American headphone manufacturers?
The only ones that come to mind are Etymotic research, Ultimate ears, Sensaphoric, Shure, but these are not as well known as the Japanese and European brands (Koss if you want to count them, but it is not of the same caliber).

It's a pity almost all of the high end cans are made by overseas companies.

 

[fewtch]

What about Grado Labs?

 

[Eagle_Driver]

You left out Grado.

EDIT: Darn it, fewtch, you beat me to it!

 

[fewtch]

Beatcha, nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh...

 

[ampgalore]

Oops, forgot about Grados.

Any others?

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Not that I know of.

And sometimes, headphones may carry a U.S.-based brand name, but are actually made overseas (recent Koss headphones are now manufactured in the Far East). And most Shure products are assembled in Mexico (south of the border). Which leaves Etymotic Research and Grado Labs as the only U.S.-based headphone manufacturers which actually manufacture most of their products within the U.S.

 

[ampgalore]

It's a real pity. I guess Americans are not as audiophilic as the Europeans and the Japanese

(hides in a corner waiting to be beaten up).

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ampgalore It's a real pity. I guess Americans are not as audiophilic as the Europeans and the Japanese (hides in a corner waiting to be beaten up).

Actually, the Japanese are equally as guilty as Americans of not being very "audiophilic". It's a cryin' shame that the biggest Japanese companies are very good at marketing crappy-to-mediocre, run-of-the-mill headphones as "high-end".

 

[Sovkiller]

Koss was one of the pioneers of the ehadphone related stuff, they have also electrostatic headphones, andsome of the regular line sound good...nothing fancy though, but the portapros and the KCS35 are supposed to be hard to beat as a bang for the buck choices...

 

[KR...]

Grado and Koss are the US biggest and best Headphone makers. Though most Koss headphones are not hi-fi.

http://www.gradolabs.com/

http://www.koss.com/

 

[KR...]

Quote:

It's a real pity. I guess Americans are not as audiophilic as the Europeans and the Japanese (hides in a corner waiting to be beaten up).

oh boy, well we created Audiophile and Hi-Fi, there are more American Hi-Fi companies than any other country, so what the heck are you talking about?

And Head-Fi is an American site

 

[Sovkiller]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KR... And Head-Fi is an American site

Are you sure??? The servers are located in America, but that does not make Head-fi an "american site". IMO there is no site in the web that could be considered property of any country, the web is a huge world net, members-wise talking, in fact Head-fi is a universal site, we have members from all over the world, and even of the ones who live here in US, some of them are not US natives.....

 

[skitlets]

none of us are american natives! except native americans...the rest of us are immigrants

 

[mi1stormilst]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skitlets none of us are american natives! except native americans...the rest of us are immigrants

so true...

 

[ampgalore]

There are no indigenous Americans!

All of us a descendants of Africans!