Redcarmoose
Headphoneus Supremus
So I have been running around Indonesia for about two years. I came with a good selection of portable headphones as well as home audio rigs. I wear headphones a lot 4-8 hours a day. I use them to walk the dog. I put them in my pocket. I leave them in cars. I basically have some type of headphone with me all the time. I even sleep with them.
I guess you could call me a headphone junky. So during my time over seas I have ended up replacing headphones. I had friends bring them from America and I also did my fair share of third-world headphone listening.
There is an interesting phenomena due to the average income of the population as well as import tax. The headphones range from $2-$20 and due to the import tax ending up being almost 100% ultra-cheep China productions. After talking with retailers we came to the conclusion that the cost of the headphones must be about a single US dollar to produce so the import tax can double and the profit area can double to make an average $ 4 dollar headphone for sale.
With this ultra low cost base-line in place it seems a little daunting to even look for something that could even have a chance of sounding good. Let's not forget about the 1000s of bootleg copies of Bose and Skull-Candy. So we also have ultra low cost copies of
Skull-Candy which is placed in perfect packages so even the retailers don't know and think it is original. The bulk of headphones for sale end up being what are called disposable headphones. If you go on-line you will see lists of Chinese manufactures which make runs of 1500-10,000 sets of disposable headphones. These are truly the bottom of the barrel and end up being used in plane flights as well as presentations and are really made for a one time use. In some countries these end up being the main headphones used in computer set-ups.
So your wondering maybe what I have found for $4 that I use and love? The true answer is nothing! I have to say even $1500 headphones are not perfect but after two years of buying and using ultra-low cost headphones, there are very few that can hold my love. There are some though that I can use for a day and get by. They always make using a normal pair sound that much better at the end of the day. In these two years I have even learned new ways of judging them and using many of the descriptions you read in Head-Fi about normal priced headphones. I have also come up with my own personal set of descriptions to help me make sense of it all.
The amazing thing is a person goes through many of the same mental gymnastics as with expensive headphones. You have the fun EQ curve. You have the cave sound. You have the fun at first but boring later effect. You really still are looking for many of the same issues as with expensive headphones only you need to be more forgiving and set your expectations lower even from the start.
The fun part of all this is that after trying hundreds of headphones you do end up with a couple that are worth owning. I am not going to list the names or brands as Americans trying to buy them end up with a whole new set of issues attempting to get low cost Chinese headphones which really don't make the experience practical in ways. Some $4 dollar headphones get sold only for $4 in runs of 1500 pieces. Others are $27 dollars when you only buy one, then there is shipping fees. I have though found some Chinese low cost manufactures to watch as they keep sound quality and construction at a premium if you could even use that word. One such company would be YongLe. Other times the game is very hard to figure out with small runs of headphones being fakes or named other than the manufacture. YongLe seems to be trying to do it the right way and make headphones well and use their name half the time on the product, which ends up being a good marketing play. They will even place a symbol and the big YongLe name across the drivers so everyone can see who made them! Other times they may use stars or just bright colors as a marketing tool on the headphones.
There are really too many brands in the end to even mention. I would hope in the future to find other big manufactures like YongLe who try to use the economy of volume to make runs of headphones which sound good.
I guess you could call me a headphone junky. So during my time over seas I have ended up replacing headphones. I had friends bring them from America and I also did my fair share of third-world headphone listening.
There is an interesting phenomena due to the average income of the population as well as import tax. The headphones range from $2-$20 and due to the import tax ending up being almost 100% ultra-cheep China productions. After talking with retailers we came to the conclusion that the cost of the headphones must be about a single US dollar to produce so the import tax can double and the profit area can double to make an average $ 4 dollar headphone for sale.
With this ultra low cost base-line in place it seems a little daunting to even look for something that could even have a chance of sounding good. Let's not forget about the 1000s of bootleg copies of Bose and Skull-Candy. So we also have ultra low cost copies of
Skull-Candy which is placed in perfect packages so even the retailers don't know and think it is original. The bulk of headphones for sale end up being what are called disposable headphones. If you go on-line you will see lists of Chinese manufactures which make runs of 1500-10,000 sets of disposable headphones. These are truly the bottom of the barrel and end up being used in plane flights as well as presentations and are really made for a one time use. In some countries these end up being the main headphones used in computer set-ups.
So your wondering maybe what I have found for $4 that I use and love? The true answer is nothing! I have to say even $1500 headphones are not perfect but after two years of buying and using ultra-low cost headphones, there are very few that can hold my love. There are some though that I can use for a day and get by. They always make using a normal pair sound that much better at the end of the day. In these two years I have even learned new ways of judging them and using many of the descriptions you read in Head-Fi about normal priced headphones. I have also come up with my own personal set of descriptions to help me make sense of it all.
The amazing thing is a person goes through many of the same mental gymnastics as with expensive headphones. You have the fun EQ curve. You have the cave sound. You have the fun at first but boring later effect. You really still are looking for many of the same issues as with expensive headphones only you need to be more forgiving and set your expectations lower even from the start.
The fun part of all this is that after trying hundreds of headphones you do end up with a couple that are worth owning. I am not going to list the names or brands as Americans trying to buy them end up with a whole new set of issues attempting to get low cost Chinese headphones which really don't make the experience practical in ways. Some $4 dollar headphones get sold only for $4 in runs of 1500 pieces. Others are $27 dollars when you only buy one, then there is shipping fees. I have though found some Chinese low cost manufactures to watch as they keep sound quality and construction at a premium if you could even use that word. One such company would be YongLe. Other times the game is very hard to figure out with small runs of headphones being fakes or named other than the manufacture. YongLe seems to be trying to do it the right way and make headphones well and use their name half the time on the product, which ends up being a good marketing play. They will even place a symbol and the big YongLe name across the drivers so everyone can see who made them! Other times they may use stars or just bright colors as a marketing tool on the headphones.
There are really too many brands in the end to even mention. I would hope in the future to find other big manufactures like YongLe who try to use the economy of volume to make runs of headphones which sound good.
