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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: 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.