[tienbasse]

  They probably wouldn't go into specifics but R&D cost quite a bit
 
Beats spent millions before getting to manufacturing

You'd be surprised how little R&D costs these days, because you know what ? These are usually very little underpaid teams of people.
It's not the 90's anymore. Nowadays, R&D is not seen as the essential backbone of companies anymore, it's the 5th wheel of the wagon, and most of the fixed costs in a company go towards marketing / sales positions.
So easy to let start-ups takes all risks and work their ass off, to buy them when they approach launch, when you're a big company. With the consequence that internal R&D in large companies has shrunk to indecent size and miserable budget.
 
If you want a live example, I lead R&D for a whole range of medical devices in one of the top 3 pharmaceutical companies in the world. With a billion dollar in sales revenue per year for the products we create, our budget is less than 5% of this, and we get paid 20-30% of what marketing people get for positions with similar grades. Our budget was halved in the last 5 years while our sales revenue has tripled due to very successful new products.
Do you see the trend for R&D ? End of digression.
 
Summary:
What you pay has not much to do with R&D costs these days, people should stop thinking that prices are related to actual costs for R&D/manufacturing/whatever, it's ONLY marketing strategy (including ****ty market studies to see what people are willing to spend).
 
And as long as there are people with "too much" money in their hands, and no common sense (which is tightly related, since you tend to lose contact with reality when you have very high income), prices will continue to inflate. Emerging countries are such a wonder for this, along with the slow decline of scientific education (why studying science only to get underpaid jobs ?).
The more it goes, the more people make completely uneducated decisions when it comes to hobbies, making marketeers life easier and easier.
 
When you see Sony selling a microsd card making music "sound better" while music is stored numerically, any bulls**t will do the job fine !

 

 

[Naim.F.C]

  They probably wouldn't go into specifics but R&D cost quite a bit
 
Beats spent millions before getting to manufacturing

 
Do you have a source for this? Also, my guess is the money they spent was likely predominantly on marketing, celebrity endorsements etc, rather than on actual audio R&D, especially given how poor Beats headphones audio quality actually is.
 
There have also been numerous articles and parts breakdowns by analysts etc that report the true manufacturing cost of their popular $200 heaphones for example, being only $14 to $18, which sort of further highlights the issues debated. We're talking about a mark up of over 1000%. Besides being prohibitively profitable, Beats products essentially rely heavily on marketing and branding, more than anything else. In many ways that is the same for countless super popular or prominent brands.
 
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/apple-said-to-be-in-talks-to-buy-beats-for-3-2-billion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=3&
 
http://www.techspot.com/news/61060-200-beats-headphones-actually-cost-18-make.html
 

 

[Whitigir]

IMO, it is ridiculous to have headphones in the current price range line up. Yeah, tuning and designing with appropriate materials for wearing comfort could be pricey, but when it is done, the productions is massive to offset so little R&D. Not to mention that drivers technologies are as ancient as Radio technology. Magnets are not expensive in relative of strength for speakers and headphones drivers, unless we are talking about Muscular motors and or MRI equipments or the likes....etc. I still don't get why some drivers, a headband, cups, and pads can be worthy of 4-5k. Amplifier and portable players are harder to tune and develops than Headphones as a facts, and they are not going to punch into 10-20k anytime soon. However, with the pricing of these current headphone trends, we may be seeing them soon....astronomical

 

[p4s2p0]

 
You'd be surprised how little R&D costs these days, because you know what ? These are usually very little underpaid teams of people. 

Really just depends on whats being made and how long it takes to achieve desired results. I am sure entry level products take less R&D to make than premium products other than bigger companys willing to invest more than smaller ones.
 
 
Beats spent more than a million the first time around. Now that they have their design and sound signature down I'm sure they spend far less. I would think most of their focus is on the latest trend wireless technolgy.

 

[Porteroso]

Fortunately, there are great headphones that are affordable to most people (in the western world). This is a strange time in technology, and headphones in particular. There has been such a rush of information in the past 20 years, more people know about more headphones, by far, than ever before. And so there are a ton of small startups cashing in on the fact that you can be a little guy in the headphone world, and make a killing. And you know what? Good for them.
 
It won't be too long, next 15 years at most, before some big giants come into the headphone world, figure out how to make incredible sounding gear, and price it to kill off everyone else. It's certainly profitable enough right now to attract them.

 

[ruhenheiM]

  While I did have some pretty good sounding headphones 20 years ago. I do think they sound even better nowdays and they wouldn't have been able to make IEM's back then
 
Speakers tend to have better coils and bigger magnets than they used to 

 
20 years ago was the 90s. even in 60s, good sounding headphones has been around but probably not in the affordable price.they almost costly as decent speakers. back then they put a lot of emphasis for low cost and high performance
 
 
@tienbasse
yea.its all about marketing.if you market and advertising it right. people will come for you

 

[p4s2p0]

   
Do you have a source for this? Also, my guess is the money they spent was likely predominantly on marketing, celebrity endorsements etc, rather than on actual audio R&D, especially given how poor Beats headphones audio quality actually is.
 
There have also been numerous articles and parts breakdowns by analysts etc that report the true manufacturing cost of their popular $200 heaphones for example, being only $14 to $18, which sort of further highlights the issues debated. We're talking about a mark up of over 1000%. Besides being prohibitively profitable, Beats products essentially rely heavily on marketing and branding, more than anything else. In many ways that is the same for countless super popular or prominent brands.
 
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/apple-said-to-be-in-talks-to-buy-beats-for-3-2-billion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=3&
 
http://www.techspot.com/news/61060-200-beats-headphones-actually-cost-18-make.html
 

It was discussed in interviews, marketing/celebrity endorsements would be on top of R&D and manufacturing. 
 
Dre listened to each test model created before deciding what he preferred, more than just putting his name on a product 
 
The manufacturing estimates vary and only take parts into consideration.
 
I use urbeats at $100 which has several major brands in the price range so I don't feel like they are overpriced. 
Though I would like beats to come out with a cheaper entry level model as they did with over the heads like the beats EP
I tend to prefer major brands as they are easier to find in stores.

 

[ubs28]

IMO, it is ridiculous to have headphones in the current price range line up. Yeah, tuning and designing with appropriate materials for wearing comfort could be pricey, but when it is done, the productions is massive to offset so little R&D. Not to mention that drivers technologies are as ancient as Radio technology. Magnets are not expensive in relative of strength for speakers and headphones drivers, unless we are talking about Muscular motors and or MRI equipments or the likes....etc. I still don't get why some drivers, a headband, cups, and pads can be worthy of 4-5k. Amplifier and portable players are harder to tune and develops than Headphones as a facts, and they are not going to punch into 10-20k anytime soon. However, with the pricing of these current headphone trends, we may be seeing them soon....astronomical

​Focal spend 4 years into R&D for the Utopia headphones. Since the same engineers worked on their TOTL loudspeakers, they are senior engineers most likely so they earn around $80.000 per year probably if not more. Not sure how big their engineering team is, but let's assume the team consist of 10 senior engineers (their team is probably much bigger), it's $80.000 x 4 x 10 = $3.2 million just for R&D salaries.
 
Let's assume that the entire headphone cost $0 to make (which is not true ofcourse), then Focal needs to sell $3.2 million / $4000 = 800 headphone just to breakeven for the salaries. And considering how difficult it is to make the headphone, they can't let it go for cheap. The real costs are much higher though.

 

[Whitigir]

​Focal spend 4 years into R&D for the Utopia headphones. Since the same engineers worked on their TOTL loudspeakers, they are senior engineers most likely so they earn around $80.000 per year probably if not more. Not sure how big their engineering team is, but let's assume the team consist of 10 senior engineers (their team is probably much bigger), it's $80.000 x 4 x 10 = $3.2 million just for R&D salaries.

Let's assume that the entire headphone cost $0 to make (which is not true ofcourse), then Focal needs to sell $3.2 million / $4000 = 800 headphone just to breakeven for the salaries. And considering how difficult it is to make the headphone, they can't let it go for cheap. The real costs are much higher though.

Yeah, I don't believe those stuff. A driver consist of magnet, disphgram, and surrounding pieces. 4 years to do just that ? Lol, I would fire my guys

 

[ubs28]

Yeah, I don't believe those stuff. A driver consist of magnet, disphgram, and surrounding pieces. 4 years to do just that ? Lol, I would fire my guys

​Well, quite strange that Focal didn't hire you then since you could have done it in 1 day?

 

[p4s2p0]

   
20 years ago was the 90s. even in 60s, good sounding headphones has been around but probably not in the affordable price.they almost costly as decent speakers. back then they put a lot of emphasis for low cost and high performance
 
 
@tienbasse
yea.its all about marketing.if you market and advertising it right. people will come for you

Sounds about right I started using headphones around 1985.
 
Marketing is apart of business but if product fails to meet consumer expectations not even marketing can save it.

 

[p4s2p0]

Yeah, I don't believe those stuff. A driver consist of magnet, disphgram, and surrounding pieces. 4 years to do just that ? Lol, I would fire my guys

Drivers are more efficient these days and the amount of tuning it takes to make that happen i'm sure takes more time and effort

 

[Whitigir]

​Well, quite strange that Focal didn't hire you then since you could have done it in 1 day?

Even if I could have it done in one day, which I couldn't. Then why wouldn't I jack the price up since it is always welcome, then I would throw the icing on top of it as (it was under development for 10 years)

Drivers are more efficient these days and the amount of tuning to make that happen i'm sure takes more time and effort

I am sure of that, but 4 years for it....I don't believe it. If you are telling me that you engineered your own DAC, and it took you 4 years to do the tuning and specific engineering then I would believe that.....hell, how long does Intel take to develop a new CPU ?

 

[p4s2p0]

I am sure of that, but 4 years for it....I don't believe it. If you are telling me that you engineered your own DAC, and it took you 4 years to do the tuning and specific engineering then I would believe that.....hell, how long does Intel take to develop a new CPU ?

That does sound like a long time but sometimes progress takes a long time, it took beats 2-3 years the first time so I would believe it. Some people are prefectionist and can obsess over such things
 
A entirely new CPU takes a few years normally. The first 32 bit amd athlon series lasted quite a few years with only mhz increases before they came out with 64 bit cpu's

 

[Whitigir]

It took beats 3 years the first time so I would believe it


A entirely new CPU also takes a few years normally. 

And developing a driver is harder than CPU ? Lol ....marketing can just say about anything to sell their stuff, period. It is ridiculous to me the way flagship headphones pricing are nowadays. Suddenly, Sony is the cheapest