[RaghavSomani05]

My experience with high end earphones and headsets has been pretty extensive. But recently I’ve met some people that use earphones from manufactures that had never heard of before. Even as I’m travelling, I can see more and more people using headphones that I don’t even recognize. There are many names that I come across now and then but two have been more prevalent than the rest. One being ‘Ant Audio’ and the other being ‘Boat Audio’. I got pretty curious about them so I went ahead and got myself a headset from ant by the name of H82.

To my surprise, they reminded me of my old P22’s from SoundMagic. That got me thinking about what this could mean.

Are we really coming to the time where great headsets become much cheaper?

Because they come at a fraction of a cost. Of course there are some cutbacks here & there but the audio deliverance was something that I didn’t expect at this price. Surely I’m going to be spending more time with these earphones to see how all this pans out.

Have any of your come across such headphones? What are your thoughts?

 

[GREQ]

The rise of Chi-fi (Chinese hifi) has been well documented the past few years and there are quite a few threads on head-fi following the VAST number of brands and products.
So it's nothing really new in our circles.

As far as I recall, Xoami started the boom with the 'Piston' IEM some years ago.
Currently one of the most popular brands is KZ, which recently released a 10-driver IEM for less than $40.

In the full size headphone world, Superlux has been a strong Chinese brand having made some very obvious clones of AKG and Beyerdynamic headphones that also sound great.
And the Creative Auvana Live! from Singapore, which uses Chinese made Fostex-developed biocellulose drivers, is a giant-killer for it's price.

So yes. Great sound has already been available cheaply for a while.