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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, 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.