[kiteki]

I remember when iPod Nano's were selling from China for $10 per piece, and then a few forums went crazy "why so much mark-up, Apple?" and then these black-market Nano's shot up in price when they realised they're worth more than $10 lol.
 
Of course iXpertMan won't listen, he thinks Apple is worth the mark-up and IEM's aren't, for some mystical reasons.
 
Anyway for someone that has never heard a single IEM I think he is pretty arrogant.
 

 

[Currawong]

For ANY product you buy in a store, you are paying only a fraction of the price for materials. God forbid you found out what it costs to make generic furniture or clothes -- you'd never buy new again.*  The majority of what you pay is distributed across the costs of many people's wages, logistics and store costs.  When I worked in retail where iPods were sold some years ago, the stores actually made a loss on all iPods sold as the margins were so small.
 
As for IEMs, or any other product, the costs involved in getting a product together are enormous and costly. It's not as simply as just flying to a factory in China, having a chat and signing some papers. Sure the materials for most headphones cost stuff-all. Everything else though involved adds up to a lot.
 
*A hint: Anywhere that can sell at 50% or higher off is making a killing on whatever it is they are selling. Fashion shoppers, for example, are paying mostly for the shopping experience.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Quote:

 
The Etymotic HF5 is made in China, he wrote earlier he doesn't believe in anything made in China because it's too expensive.
 
 
The ER-4B is designed, manufactured and measured in the U.S., and it's basically the only IEM I can think of that follows his unwavering philosophy of how he thinks all headphones and IEM's should sound (he made a thread asking head-fi why we don't equalize everything).
 
 
"ER•4B earphones are for the binaural recording enthusiast. The ER•4B is an ideal earphone for use with material that has not been equalized for loudspeaker playback. It was developed from the ER-1 earphone that is referenced to a flat diffuse field and used primarily for speech reception research, where the goal is to produce the same frequency response at the eardrum as would be produced in the live situation."
 
 
Ironically, it's the least popular IEM that Etymotic has released.

 
@kiteki: that's a long way of saying that the ER-4B is designed to correctly reproduce sounds recorded by microphones mounted on the ears of a dummy head (what the "flat diffuse field refers to") and would correctly reproduce the sounds of binaural recordings (it's ER-4B for Binaural, duh) faithfully.  Since there are very few binaural recordings, the ER-4B is understandably unpopular.
 
To listen to mainstream music correctly, it is necessary to equalize the frequency response so that sounds coming from the earphones sound like they are coming from loudspeakers placed in front of you instead. (and apply crossfeed, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms).  That's why a flat FR is not desired.
 
Excuse me for quoting myself from his other thread:

 
Quote:

The problem [with "equalizing to get a flat frequency" (whatever that is)] is
1. it is hard to get a flat sound in hardware (equalizers can address this)
2. it is nigh impossible to measure the response *at the eardrum* (without measurements, you are equalizing blind; the best measurements you may see are those made inside of a dummy head costing thousands of dollars, that try to mimick the acoustics of the innards of a human ear)
3. you DON'T want a flat frequency response *at the eardrum*, because music is by and large recorded for and mixed for playback on loudspeakers, so headphones need to simulate the frequency response of loudspeakers.  While loudspeakers sound near their best when equalized flat (even this has its caveats), sound at different frequencies are attenuated to different degrees on their way from a typically positioned loudspeaker to the eardrum.  This is called the "Head-Related Transfer Function" and is different for everybody.
add to that the fact that
4. people's preferences for musical signatures are all over the place; even though pros mix on standardised equipment and theoretically music should sound best when your equipment produces similar sounds to their pro equipment, people's actual preferences are all over the map; people can and do want all their music coloured the way they want it.
 
--and you have a situation where the ideal of flat frequency response for everybody is simply FUBAR'ed.  Manufacturers are kind of stuck throwing phones with different sound characteristics all over the place and see what sticks.  No matter how off the beaten track of "ideal" (for the average ear) a pair of headphones' FR may be,
i) some people will find the coloration to their liking
ii) there will almost surely be someone out there whose head / ear / ear canal is shaped so strangely that his / her HRTF matches the whacked-out FR of the headphone and it will almost actually be "ideal" for him / her.
 
There remains other aspects of sound for which there are more objective ideals (but are harder to measure), such as transient response and freedom from harmonic distortion and resonances.  High budget earphones will usually be better in these regards and should sound better than low-budget earphones once the FR has been tweaked to your liking using EQ (which I see you have no qualms about).
 
In conclusion, yes equalizers can be helpful, but getting them to actually help you is much more complicated than finding some non-existent frequency response chart off the net and cancelling it out on your equalizer.
 
A scheme that might work is here
http://www.head-fi.org/t/413900/how-to-equalize-your-headphones-a-tutorial
and my addendum to it
http://www.head-fi.org/t/413900/how-to-equalize-your-headphones-a-tutorial/645#post_7905590
But it doesn't really work on your beloved Mac

 

 

[goodvibes]

It's called binaural (B) and been around a long time. Not very many music recordings done that way. No crossfeed needed as it will be a natural part of the original in space realtime recording techique.

 

[Coq de Combat]

Quote:

For ANY product you buy in a store, you are paying only a fraction of the price for materials. God forbid you found out what it costs to make generic furniture or clothes -- you'd never buy new again.*  The majority of what you pay is distributed across the costs of many people's wages, logistics and store costs.  When I worked in retail where iPods were sold some years ago, the stores actually made a loss on all iPods sold as the margins were so small.
 
As for IEMs, or any other product, the costs involved in getting a product together are enormous and costly. It's not as simply as just flying to a factory in China, having a chat and signing some papers. Sure the materials for most headphones cost stuff-all. Everything else though involved adds up to a lot.
 
*A hint: Anywhere that can sell at 50% or higher off is making a killing on whatever it is they are selling. Fashion shoppers, for example, are paying mostly for the shopping experience.

Highlighted part is actually interesting, because about 10 years ago I worked with selling mainstream "hi-fi stuff" in a larger swedish electronics chain. We had different tricks to know which gear would generate highest salaries for us salespeople. For example, all prices that ended with a '7', i.e. 3997, meant that we got a commission of 5% of the total value, and so on. This was because we wanted to sell the oldest stuff first, as they actually were not beneficial to keep at the store, taking space from newer stuff that would generate more money to the store, and so on. It was basically pretty much a "scam" - we had to tell people that the gear we wanted to get rid of first, was the better gear as opposed to actually better gear but that didn't generate as much income to the store. Basic sales "science" (if you can call it a science but that's another discussion) so to speak.
 
Anyway, what was interesting was that no matter how much or how expensive the stuff were for the customer to buy, it generally generated little to none incme for the store. Of course, having the newest and most buzzed about gear in the store generated more sales. But as to a pure winning from a TV or a receiver, was actually little to none. The way they handled it, was to start selling insurances. Let's say your TV falls down and breaks, we would happily fix it or exchange it, if the customer had an insurance. THESE generated a truck load of money to the store. The more we sold hifi stuff, the more insurances we sold which meant the more cash the store generated.
 
One of my older colleagues went far enough to say that we actually sold insurances with a free TV or a free stereo system.
 
None of which the customer knew about - of course - so it has been a sneaky little "scam" (it's not a scam, but you know what I mean.. I'm swedish and english is my fourth language, so my supply of synonyms might not be as great as someone who's native toungue is english). I didn't work there for long though. I didn't feel good about screwing with customers like that, and it turned out that the store/chain was actually ripping sales people off too. They are long gone now, but from what I hear, it's not that uncommon in other chains either.

 

[some1]

Quote:

Highlighted part is actually interesting, because about 10 years ago I worked with selling mainstream "hi-fi stuff" in a larger swedish electronics chain. We had different tricks to know which gear would generate highest salaries for us salespeople. For example, all prices that ended with a '7', i.e. 3997, meant that we got a commission of 5% of the total value, and so on. This was because we wanted to sell the oldest stuff first, as they actually were not beneficial to keep at the store, taking space from newer stuff that would generate more money to the store, and so on. It was basically pretty much a "scam" - we had to tell people that the gear we wanted to get rid of first, was the better gear as opposed to actually better gear but that didn't generate as much income to the store. Basic sales "science" (if you can call it a science but that's another discussion) so to speak.
 
Anyway, what was interesting was that no matter how much or how expensive the stuff were for the customer to buy, it generally generated little to none incme for the store. Of course, having the newest and most buzzed about gear in the store generated more sales. But as to a pure winning from a TV or a receiver, was actually little to none. The way they handled it, was to start selling insurances. Let's say your TV falls down and breaks, we would happily fix it or exchange it, if the customer had an insurance. THESE generated a truck load of money to the store. The more we sold hifi stuff, the more insurances we sold which meant the more cash the store generated.
 
One of my older colleagues went far enough to say that we actually sold insurances with a free TV or a free stereo system.
 
None of which the customer knew about - of course - so it has been a sneaky little "scam" (it's not a scam, but you know what I mean.. I'm swedish and english is my fourth language, so my supply of synonyms might not be as great as someone who's native toungue is english). I didn't work there for long though. I didn't feel good about screwing with customers like that, and it turned out that the store/chain was actually ripping sales people off too. They are long gone now, but from what I hear, it's not that uncommon in other chains either.

 Interesting, it reminds me of my general feeling that many but not all seperates and consumer electronics manufacturers put last seasons electronics in new enclosures every 6 months to a year, give it a new model name, and sell it for more because its allegedly an upgrade.

 

[goodvibes]

Quote:

Highlighted part is actually interesting, because about 10 years ago I worked with selling mainstream "hi-fi stuff" in a larger swedish electronics chain. We had different tricks to know which gear would generate highest salaries for us salespeople. For example, all prices that ended with a '7', i.e. 3997, meant that we got a commission of 5% of the total value, and so on. This was because we wanted to sell the oldest stuff first, as they actually were not beneficial to keep at the store, taking space from newer stuff that would generate more money to the store, and so on. It was basically pretty much a "scam" - we had to tell people that the gear we wanted to get rid of first, was the better gear as opposed to actually better gear but that didn't generate as much income to the store. Basic sales "science" (if you can call it a science but that's another discussion) so to speak.
 
Anyway, what was interesting was that no matter how much or how expensive the stuff were for the customer to buy, it generally generated little to none incme for the store. Of course, having the newest and most buzzed about gear in the store generated more sales. But as to a pure winning from a TV or a receiver, was actually little to none. The way they handled it, was to start selling insurances. Let's say your TV falls down and breaks, we would happily fix it or exchange it, if the customer had an insurance. THESE generated a truck load of money to the store. The more we sold hifi stuff, the more insurances we sold which meant the more cash the store generated.
 
One of my older colleagues went far enough to say that we actually sold insurances with a free TV or a free stereo system.
 
None of which the customer knew about - of course - so it has been a sneaky little "scam" (it's not a scam, but you know what I mean.. I'm swedish and english is my fourth language, so my supply of synonyms might not be as great as someone who's native toungue is english). I didn't work there for long though. I didn't feel good about screwing with customers like that, and it turned out that the store/chain was actually ripping sales people off too. They are long gone now, but from what I hear, it's not that uncommon in other chains either.

Needing to and choosing to are 2 different things. Not all retailers follow this program and the risk factor is high if a consumer is aware. The shop was going to make less money on the old gear by likely allowing discounts and greater commission. Should be enough to get it sold without tall tales.
 

 

[Coq de Combat]

Quote:

 Interesting, it reminds me of my general feeling that many but not all seperates and consumer electronics manufacturers put last seasons electronics in new enclosures every 6 months to a year, give it a new model name, and sell it for more because its allegedly an upgrade.

Yeah, I often get this feeling too. Though, I can't say for sure if this happens in other electronics stores, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does.

 
Quote:

Needing to and choosing to are 2 different things. Not all retailers follow this program and the risk factor is high if a consumer is aware. The shop was going to make less money on the old gear by likely allowing discounts and greater commission. Should be enough to get it sold without tall tales.
 

Of course, I hope I wasn't interpreted to claim that all retailers do this. I don't think they all do, and even if I did, I wouldn't have any proof. This was merely an anecdote of mine - an experience I was willing to share. I'm not even sure that my story is even comparable, or applicable, to american standards and stores since you have different kinds of taxes and whatnot.
 
I just found it interesting in the context of his story, that they lost money selling the iPods.

 

[YGuyG]

Earlier on the point that kiteki touched on about putting IEMs in your ears and having them sound like a real concert and how that obviously wouldn't happen. To further that point: Hows that suppose to work unless their is no amplification what so ever, no mics, no speakers, no electric guitars, no keyboards, etc? Those all have their own frequency curves as well and then that changes more when they are outputted to amplifiers and speakers which also have a frequency curve. Nothing in the world is in any case, including audio is perfectly flat, it's impossible.  

 

[goodvibes]

Who cares if it's just like the concert hall if you get enough of a sense of the space and can more easily understand the message. At that point it's already ahead of the game and worth more money. Different strokes and it's all good but when some judge what another can or can't appreciate, it fraught with fail. If you don't notice personally, it could be that you're not very acute (unlikely) or have set your self up for failure with 'knowing' all DACs are the same, usb is just bits, buffers don't matter etc. etc. Self fulfilling prophecy.

 

[YGuyG]

^^^This exactly. 

 

[kiteki]

Quote:

@kiteki: that's a long way of saying that the ER-4B is designed to correctly reproduce sounds recorded by microphones mounted on the ears of a dummy head (what the "flat diffuse field refers to") and would correctly reproduce the sounds of binaural recordings (it's ER-4B for Binaural, duh) faithfully.  Since there are very few binaural recordings, the ER-4B is understandably unpopular.
 

 
 
I'm missing something here, have to read more... like... don't we measure other headphones and earphones in flat diffuse field? - http://en.goldenears.net/388
 
http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=ko&u=http://goldenears.net/board/1581546&ei=B43iTvC8EoWSiAfC0v3mAw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ7gEwAg&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgolden%2Bears%2Ber-4b%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26biw%3D1288%26bih%3D620%26prmd%3Dimvns
 
 
 
Quote:

Earlier on the point that kiteki touched on about putting IEMs in your ears and having them sound like a real concert and how that obviously wouldn't happen. To further that point: Hows that suppose to work unless their is no amplification what so ever, no mics, no speakers, no electric guitars, no keyboards, etc? Those all have their own frequency curves as well and then that changes more when they are outputted to amplifiers and speakers which also have a frequency curve. Nothing in the world is in any case, including audio is perfectly flat, it's impossible.  

Not to mention if the IEM was so good it sounded just like a real concert then who cares there's a spike at 7kHz and 10kHz and dips at 40Hz and 400Hz? =P
 
 

 

[ianmedium]

This is one of those questions with no satisfactory answer. Something is worth what you are willing to pay for it. For some spending over $30 on a pair of IEM's is a waste of money and yet those same people might thing nothing of spending $500 on plain white cotton shirt that has a designer label on it!

Everything has a profit built in to it. I bet in truth those people like Maxell who sell $10 earbuds at the 7eleven are making an even greater profit that Shure is for it's $500 535!

When you break down the cost of anything the consumer is left in shock, for instance remember when munching on your $5 happy meal thinking about this that it actually cost around 50cents in raw product and wages! The food and hospitality industry has the highest mark up of all!

You could look at your tax bill and say, hmm, was that amount really worth it for what I am getting!

See, it is not something that can be answered!

Perhaps the cheapest way out of this conundrum is to simply forgo all together a music system and hum the tunes to yourself!

 

[kiteki]

 
It seems iXpertMan has left us.
 
Why was he fixated on the Westone UM1 or UM2 anyway?  He thinks they're highly overpriced metal and bit of plastic, and they aren't even popular IEM's in sound-quality lol, who talks about the UM1? I think it's a pretty weak IEM.
 
Despite all these answers, I'm sure he'll buy his overpriced UM2's for xmas anyway, it seems he only came to head-fi to share his knowledge that we are fools buying overpriced garbage and we don't know how to use an equalizer.
 

 

[neoplay]

Quote:

If you buy a Dr. Dre 50% of your money is paying for advertising, 40% to their pockets and 10% is paying for sound quality. (just approximate random figures)
 
 
 
 

Haha, I like this one.