I just want to clarify my math here. I estimated 50 man years, not years. Man years is a function of how many people are assigned to a project and how long they are assigned. If 30 people were assigned to the Orpheus project, once the initial R&D and preliminary engineering was done, and it took...

Meh, I don't agree. They both use internal combustion engines slightly tweaked. What's the big deal? How does Aston get away with charging so much? How about I log into a car forum, go to a Aston Martin thread, and start telling everybody how their car isn't worth the price. I don't even need to...

First of all, I think you are way off on your sales expectations. Being familiar with some other high end gear, like the Fostex HP-V8, original Orpheus production, etc. - these things tend to sell in the tens/hundreds. I believe Fostex made about ~30 total HP-V8, it took Sennheiser years to sell...

At the same time, the HD 600 is still available, the existence of other headphones does not devalue your HD 600 in any way, and the existence of other more expensive headphones should not impact or impair your ability to enjoy your HD 600. A company releasing a new headphone, at any price...

This isn't even true, especially when you get to the flagship absolute most expensive products. Famous high end flagship loss leaders are everywhere, including the original Chevrolet Corvette. The Lexus LFA was priced at 375,000 and Lexus lost money on each one. Is Sennheiser even making a...

You can't just look at a headphone driver's impedance and make assumptions about their tuning. The HD 600 and HD 650 had the same driver size and impedance as well, but they weren't the same. There are a lot of assumptions floating around this thread right now. We have to wait a little while...

I think there's a fair amount of subjective bias at play too, especially when you hear a headphone without the context of other headphones at something like a convention. Going in, knowing it's a closed headphone, you might be preparing your ears to be bathed in an ocean of warm enveloping bass...

You guys heard it here first. The community has successfully designed a DIY HD 800 which bests Sennheiser's best engineering talent. Why didn't the great minds of Sennheiser think of this? Simply amazing engineering:

I just gave my air conditioner a hug. Can't imagine not being able to use my favorite headphones because it's too hot.

Actually I do find it a bit funny how many people enter this thread, having zero intention of buying a closed headphone, who are prejudice against closed headphones, who continually want to pick out quotes to justify why they are short changing themselves by not even giving this headphone a...

It's pretty exciting that Sennheiser is investing seriously into closed back audiophile quality headphones, period. I think the HD 630VB are a great headphone, which I think gets unfairly passed over because it's mobile friendly and has that variable bass feature which many find gimmicky (but it...

Dualala - I'm not sure why you are so fixated on figuring out the "successor" relationship here, can you explain? Sennheiser marketed the 650 as a successor to the 600, it was priced higher in the line, it was marketed as superior by Sennheiser, and yet the HD 600 was produced alongside the 650...

Very limited impressions. I've read maybe 4 or 5 so far, and half of which commented on the noisy CES exhibition floor making accurate impressions impossible. I also want to highlight a quote from the above linked Japanese interview (apologizes for the google-level translation): So it seems...

If Sennheiser referred to the HD 800 as their "open back" flagship and the HD 820 as their "closed back" flagship, what could you infer about the product positioning? Which one does Sennheiser think is better? Seems like you could partially look at the product code (820 > 800). You could...