I don't understand how a pair of headphones can be $549 meanwhile the Macbook Neo is $599
The pricing on these always seemed a bit crazy to me, like the value is way off compared to other Apple products
The pricing on these always seemed a bit crazy to me, like the value is way off compared to other Apple products
That is literally the sole moat of these companies: minimum orders from china and the fact we can't spend the ad money they can to move that volume quickly. Not tech or offering a good deal. Just being there already with money and doing the inevitable. Being the more productive drug dealer quicker to move the kilo to the captured audience and bankrolled to get the next several and scale.
Picked up a spider-based power meter for around £290 and a big computer for £150. Both are great, and work just as well as their western counterparts costing significantly more.
e.g. Bowers & Wilkins PX8 ($699), Focal Bathys ($849), Sony WH-1000XM6 ($399), Kef Mu7 ($399), Bose QC Ultra ($449)
Don't pay the novelty price shortly after release, these go down quite a bit after introduction, ie last year Sony are basically the same device.
Where do you see these at 150? Lowest I see is 250.
Yeah. We know. It's just hard to understand how anyone can value headphones at this price. It's lunacy.
I have a lot of Apple gear, these would be obvious next choice because of integration, but I struggle to justify why otherwise. They heavy, going to pain to repair and cost much more.
It's kinda like, who decided that TVs and phones should cost the same? Or who decided that a khinkali should cost 3 times as much as a xiaolongbao?
> The cost of something doesn't always correlate with the technology, components, and material
Doesn't this actually contradict what you claimed originally, though?
You just casually threw in these claims without backing them up, when it has been proven that the Sony model (and even the others) you listed outperformed the Airpods pro in those exact departments at the time of its launch.
I also have "etc" in my first sentence, which may include such things as: a stylish aluminum exterior, bells and whistles such as spatial audio, a more seamless bluetooth connecting experience with Apple devices, and so forth. These do not matter for everyone, but some people clearly care about that.
It seems that you are quite belligerent and trying to pick a fight across many of my comments. Why?
Sorry, this is not the case at all, I am just trying to understand the justification for your original comment on the justification of the price (and quality).
Apologies if it came out too aggressive.
The difference is also Apple neither has the audio legacy of those companies nor the quality of those products to warrant that kind of premium. To Apple, it is just another market they can go after, but a lot of those companies built their entire foundations on audio. You are not going to convince me Apple is in the same category as the company that invented the Walkman and CDs.
Also, if you look into the teardown videos, it's really a cheap driver from China - all plastic, not even using aluminium for the basket, just literally hard-glued onto the body. It's not repairable nor eco-friendly. It's anti-consumer. Sony uses Aluminium housing for their drivers and they are the cheapest in the lot.
Ex studio tech here. Legacy doesn't cover contracted manufacturing.
I'm not defending apple here, but using chinese drivers (which I assume is a synonym for poor quality) is fine so long as they are binned for performance, and matched/tuned to housing. I'm assuming the mic inside the ear cup is there to do dynamic EQ.
Also the drivers are screwed into a solid aluminium housing, so they aren't glued.
NS10s which are the standard reference mixing speakers were chosen not because they were high quality, but because they were average. If you could get your mix to sound good on those, it'd sound great anywhere.
So yeah, they are expensive. Would I buy them? probably not. I'm reasonably happy with my plantronic jobbies. Are they perfect? no, are they comfortable? yes. Is the active noise cancelling actually effective? also no, but then ANC is only really useful for a small subset of noises types. (even on Sonys. )
I also have nice, but not over the top equipment. Yes, some of them sound nicer and more detailed (you can't compare large, 100W/channel bookshelf speakers with headphones, can you?), but for getting 95% of what they provide without any effort is pretty worth it.
Last, but not the least, Apple used Wolfson DACs in their iPods for most of their lifetime. Their replacement DACs are not worse than the Wolfsons, but probably even better.
this is something you believe about yourself, but an oxymoron for everyone else.
Its meaning has distorted as much as how the word hacker is distorted.
Yes, I love listening to music and quality audio, but don’t have a soundtrack to benchmark systems. My bar is simple: Do I enjoy what I hear? It doesn’t have to fit into a recipe. It should be enjoyable, period.
A pair of Apple AirPods can be as enjoyable as two $10K speakers powered by a separate stack costing $20K. It’s akin to loving that hole in the wall restaurant as well as that Michelin rated one. Both are enjoyable in its own sense.
Well, I use the same amp, turntable and tuner for the last 30 years, and the same CD player and speakers for the last 10 years.
Changed the speakers since I had no space for the older Akai set, and replaced the CD player since the older one was acting up.
Replaced the Logitech Bluetooth receiver for a Fiio DAC last week since I found one for a bargain.
Everything is connected with high quality yet 30 year old cables.
I believe that’s a pretty sane evolution for someone who grown up with music, and performed some.
THe biggest difference that most people hear is EQ. (oh these are very bassy, or too clean, etc, etc)
The people that have external DACs are almost certainly hearing a difference in EQ rather than _quality_. Is that a problem? for me I couldn't care less. However when that starts bleeding into advice or gatekeeping, then it becomes an issue.
(I am a former sound technician for both recording studio (analogue and digital) theatre and TV)
Given the same set of speakers, I'm pretty sure that almost anything I throw in to the chain will sound pretty similar (unless it's designed to color the sound some way). This is one of the reasons why I don't plan to change any parts of it .
For me the DAC has some serious benefits in the sound quality department, though. First, it doesn't have the 3dB loss like the Logitech, second I can stream AAC or aptX to it, which really sounds better than SBC, given the song is mastered correctly and has the detail which can be carried by the codec itself.
I listen to some of the albums I have as CDs in streaming services and even though it's labeled as "lossless" I can hear that the files are butchered pretty badly.
That's only for spatial audio.
From my experience, Apple can sometimes “forget” to tell things.
Adaptive EQ? Apple says otherwise [0].
What I was talking about was the "realtime" adaptive EQ tuned by pods' inward facing microphones.
What I argued was, this adaptive EQ also uses the calibration data from personalized spatial audio data.
The Apple tax makes me extremely skeptical that I would get $500+ worth of sound quality, however ANC upsets that equation quite a bit. For around the same cost I could get a much better set of DAC+Amp+Headphones but it would sound objectively worse in a noisy environment.
You also can't experience true lossless on any bluetooth audio output device, for what that's worth (many "true" audiophiles would fail an A/B test for AAC).
The previous generation were also REALLY bassy, and there's nothing wrong with that, bassy headphones are how to make things sound "fun" and that's why the likes of Beats make so much money. That categorically makes it not audiophile, though, because it just takes an EQ/pre-amp to achieve the same effect (which can be toggled on and off).
Ultimately, my most basic issue with these is that if you're willing to blow 500 bucks on headphones, then going modular (DAC+Amp+Headphones) will give you more room to explore something that you apparently really enjoy.
Leaving the rest of your equipment aside, those would be the first options I'd consider in the Airpods price bracket.
Pretty sure you can... there's no technical reason you cannot use BT purely as a digital-only lossless data carrier. Whether or not current devices exist that work this way may be another story though.
I have a nontrivial listening rig in my house. I've spent thousands in headphones over the years (which happens quickly at $300-500 a pop). The finest ones I've owned MIGHT edge the Max out in certain conditions, but
- The Max add ANC - The Max are wireless - The Max are seamlessly integrated with the rest of my Apple gear
so to me that makes them the go-to -- so much so that I actually sold off the other headphones when we moved last year. I just wasn't using them.
The tl;dr is that the Max -- even the first gen -- do indeed perform very, very well.
Before hearing-tuned EQ became a thing, trying headphones was like trying food. No matter what someone else said it was no guarantee you'd like the sound. Conversely, you might find a cheap pair that sounded spectacular to you. The APM will sound very good to just about anyone, with the hearing test EQ applied.
I think every headphone maker (or better yet, DAC maker) should have this feature. Audiophiles are often old, a hearing test EQ can make them hear music like they're 20 again, and they'll pay for it.
Anyway, I own a Meze 109 pro, and cheap iems with 3M hearing protection that I use when my commute is too noisy. Replace nicely my old ANC headphones.
Can I ask which, please?
And also I am a bit apprehensive for long term hearing lose with ANC headphones.
$549 is pretty reasonable if the headphone has the sound detail it's advertising. Given how AirPods Gen 3 sounds, I'm sure that thing sounds pretty amazing.
Premium products usually have higher margins.
If you want Apple-quality headphones to go with your MacBook Neo, the USB-C Earpods are $19:
On the other hand, the flagship Sony is quite a bit less than AirPods Max.
As long as a pair exists on the demand curve, Apple can charge that price.
I say this because I was able to compare them to my own $400 Sennheisers (which are somewhat awkward because they're wired, and really require a headphone amp to shine), and found the Max to be just as good.
There are also a number of online reviewers who've said the same thing, among them developer, Tumblr millionaire, and headphone addict Marco Arment. He famously described the Max as his favorite closed-back headphone.
To give 3 examples:
1. The marginal value of these products is in the mind of the individual buyer. No individual is buying both the AirPods Max 2 AND the MacBook Neo for personal use. You can’t compare marginal value across two different individuals.
2. The MacBook Neo has a different set of substitutable goods vs the AirPods Max 2. This affects margin. AirPods Max 2 buyers are likely heavily bought into the Apple ecosystem already.
3. With the Neo, Apple are in some sense subsidising entry into the Apple Ecosystem and ‘getting them young’. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s zero or negative margin. With the AirPods Max 2 they are exploiting people who are already bought into the ecosystem. Margins will be high.
Every single one of their products is overpriced to appear premium.