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from the audiophilia-for-the-1-percent dept.
El Reg reports
Sennheiser has announced a new pair of headphones it says will cost "around €50,000" (£35,314 or US$54,279).
The forthcoming "Orpheus" model boasts silver-plated copper cable and "gold-vaporized ceramic electrodes and platinum-vaporized diaphragms ... exactly 2.4 µ thick, the result of extensive research that shows that any thinner or thicker would be sub-optimal." The accompanying amplifier boasts "comes from Carrara in Italy and is the same type of marble that Michelangelo used to create his sculptures.
The tubes "rise from the base and start to glow", and "the control elements, each of which are crafted from a single piece of brass and then plated with chrome ... slowly extend from the marble housing."
We could go on, but fear doing so may induce ire among some readers. Know, then, that there's a very gushy website here [ecmascript required] full of all the jargon a rich audiophile could want.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday November 06 2015, @12:40AM
I very much doubt this is anything more than a viral marketing campaign.
Sure they will sell a few of these to super wealthy idiots, but I think the most value will come from breathless articles and idiots having an opinion about this on the internet and thus gaining exposure.
Not a dumb move and it hurts no one that is not stupid enough to buy the product.
So I say: Well played, Sennheiser!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 06 2015, @12:48AM
Guess there wasn't enough money left in the budget for cross-browser development. I'm watching it now, and the soundtrack and graphics are right on par with the original Myst, maybe Phantasmagoria since I'm feeling generous. Wow. So modern. Jesus Christ, where's the fucking spec-sheet? Hold on, the page is loading again...
25Hz - 75 Khz, 118db sensitivity, .1% THD.
And if you're gonna spend that much, why not get a whole goddamn home-theater rig? Headphones are for joggers and gym-rats, people who watch porn in their rooms while mom's home, and DJ's 'n' shit.
...Welp, whatever that nasty Senheiser site did to My Firefox, my Firefox just choked even 2 sites later after leaving the site sputtering in disgust.
Huh, I'm reading the spec sheet for the Senheiser HD650 headphones, around 500 bucks, having a frequency response from 10Hz (more bass than the rich kid) to 39.5 KHz with half the THD of the rube model. Maybe the 50K headphones are made so that the pet bats of the rich can listen too?
And what of the amplifier construction? Not the marble, but the electronics. Is that shit on a PCB? You could buy the 500 dollar phones, build your own tube amp with point to point wiring, ceramic sockets, with all new-old-stock components and cloth-wrapped wire, and have an equivalent or better sounding rig for probably a total of 750 bucks.
And the 50K headphones aren't really even remarkable-looking. Why not get a pair of these [net-a-porter.com] if you want to show everybody how much money and taste you have?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday November 06 2015, @01:10AM
It's never about how they perform, it's about being seen with them.
The marble amp is a talking piece, a high-end version of the coffee table book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @01:32AM
Why are printed circuit boards considered harmful? Is it because the heat from the tubes causes them to discolour? I can see how there could be a snob factor in owning hand-wired, "artisanal" electronics.
That Dolce and Gabbana headset wouldn't appeal to most men, I wouldn't think. Except while listening to Liberace's recordings, that is.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 06 2015, @01:43AM
The point I was trying to make is that you could have a more traditionally pure and honest system for far less money, and not knowing electronics is no longer an excuse.
There are plenty of readily-available schematics online, and if you can read a coloring-book and operate a soldering iron without taking out an eye or burning your house down, the battle is already won.
Oh yeah, PCBs do suck. You get one faulty component like a power transistor, voltage regulator, whatever; it blows or otherwise warps the PCB, all your layers are fucked and everything connected to the PCB no longer works. If the product is new, then chances are you're an unwitting beta-tester and elusive hardware bugs haven't yet been worked out. Even a separated surface trace is an ugly and often unrecoverable situation for a PCB. Open up any piece of electronics you own, if you see any jumper wires, then the shit wasn't designed right the first time.
Sure, they'll replace it under warranty, but then you have to explain to your rich buddies why your status symbol has to disappear for a few weeks and then magically reappear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @04:13AM
...and people with small children who go to bed early.
---and people with spouses who don't share the same taste in music.
It appears that you and number6 (below) have never had such encumbrances in your lives.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday November 06 2015, @05:19AM
And people who listen to music at work, or pretend that they are to people bother them less. That said I picked up some bamboo-housed headphones on sale for $20 and they're great.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday November 06 2015, @12:08PM
And people that fly
or take the train/subway
Active noise cancelling is amazing, rather than cranking my phone up to 11 I can hear it at 2 or 3.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday November 06 2015, @04:35PM
In those situations, the cheapest (comfy) noise-cancelling headphones achieving a decent attenuation are all you need, because the remaining noise is still way too high to bother with high-end reproduction, of your MP3 and streaming crummy audio.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday November 06 2015, @07:43PM
I've not found anthing more comfortable than a pair of Bose QC15s or 25s. Trouble with headphones is you need to wear them for a few hours to determine if they're ok for 2 hours or 20 hours.
US airways give out QC15s on their TATL flights, which sold me on a pair.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @02:25PM
And if you're gonna spend that much, why not get a whole goddamn home-theater rig? Headphones are for joggers and gym-rats, people who watch porn in their rooms while mom's home, and DJ's 'n' shit.
I'm not an audiophile, but my understanding is that if you want good (read: as close to original recording) audio as possible, you want to be using headphones. The manufacturers have a lot more control over the environment when using a headphone, as they have a guaranteed amount of space, equipment-to-listener positioning, configuration, and other variables. A home-theater has numerous other advantages over headphones, but as far as true-to-life audio quality you definitely want high quality headphones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @01:22AM
This reminds me of auto racing. Having a racing team lends prestige to the marque. But also, the wealth gap means that there are tens of thousands of people for whom €50 k is affordable. If these are overpriced, well, so much the better because it'll be conspicuous consumption.
I searched for Sennheiser on amazon.com and the most expensive item was their "HD 800 Audiophile & Reference Headphones" (ASIN B002NV1J2C) on offer for $1600. So this new product would appear to be a jump of a couple of orders of magnitude for Sennheiser, price-wise.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday November 06 2015, @03:25AM
For most people there's no reason to pay more than $70 for a pair of over the ear headphones or probably $200 for a pair of ear buds. I've got a pair of $70 Sennheiser headphones from years back and they're better than most of the audio sources I have. I had to re-rip my entire collection at the time because they sounded like crap all of a sudden. I couldn't previously hear most of the artifacts. And some artists, like the Eagles are really tough to listen to like that because you hear most of the problems with their vocals.
Ear buds are obviously a bit more expensive because the engineering is tougher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @03:28AM
If you're into video production, Sennheiser makes *the* mics that you use. Period. Their lavalier mics are simply the only thing that many producers will even consider.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @01:41AM
So do you have an opinion about this...on the internet?
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday November 06 2015, @03:30AM
Not directly about the device itself or its price.
I am meta commenting on the advertising campaign and the discussion it was created to invoke.
But nice try.