[X] My Assistant

physically, i do not see a reason a couple coils and magnets on a band should cost multiple hundreds of dollars (note that I am not talking about the open backed ones or anything like that, just conventional headphone technologies). Even with nice leather pads. Especially not when produced in huge quantities.

This is having done speaker repairs as a job in the past. Sure, some speakers have better frequency responses than others,

My guess is most of these multiple hundred dollar headsets cost about $20-30 to make AT MOST (if cost of machinery is divided between every unit shipped). Even wireless ones or noise cancellers (maaybe $40 for noise cancellers). My guess is most conventional passive wired ones, in the quantities they make them, cost about $8-15 a pop.

If you add rechargeable lithium ion batteries, I can see it pushing $50.

I think 100% markup is more than reasonable, but I guess people's concept of what headphones from these enormous companies should cost is fucked.

The particular headphones i have cost 200-300 labor and parts to make. It would cost me about $400 to get my hands on the spare parts to solder and put a pair together myself which I was thinking of. They do have cheaper headphones for $100 that are constructed in China rather than the US. The speaker quality probably only improves marginally as you go up the price tiers but the materials get more exotic (though still marked up).

You also add labor or machine time for hand tuning and balancing, though not sure how much that costs.

Apart from labor you also have a bunch of other fixed and variable costs. But the mark up does go up as you get further up the product stack.

Anyway, wired two-speaker headphones definitely should not cost more than $30 or so to produce.

Consider for a moment that the price target for the enormously complicated capacitive sensing keyboards of IBM ("Model F") was $30 in 1981, according to their inventor, Richard Harris.

Yeah but it was sold as part of a package with a computer that costs equivalent of $5000 dollars now with software OS and packages costing equivalent of $1000. IBM made most of their money of the computer and especially software rather than the accessories manufacturers do now.

TL;DR: Conventional wired two speaker headphones are not a new or groundbreaking product, and I am sure Monoprice could undercut even the prices of a decade ago significantly and still make a good product with good profits.

EDIT: lol monoprice is robbing people blind, too. I guess this "monolith" line is a "lets see if we can break into the stupids market" tactic.
[www.monoprice.com] https://www.monoprice.com/pages/headphones_earphones_sale

[www.monoprice.com] https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=43235

Their 'Air motion technology' drivers sound a bit bunk. They were only $250 a couple of years ago, so inflation has hit hard. Air motion, just sounds like any speaker tech, are they actually electrostatic or planar magnetic?

Edit: shit, these and the over ears are so cheap, even combined, that I might actually buy a pair of each and report in on them. Costs about what a good Game Boy Advance or NDS game used to cost ($35-40).

You could by a new gameboy for $90, headphones should be $10.

You could by a new gameboy for $90, headphones should be $10.

I have never paid over $10 for a game boy (mine wasn't new, but it did have the expansion cover, owners' manual, and carrying case).

As for the rest...

If you go into the realm of hand-built headphones, I can't really say much there. I was more referring to the cost of Sony, Bose, and so forth. The mass-produced ones.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jan 30 2022, 08:41

Update:
Just took the plunge, $28 (after tax) over-ear headphones and $25 memory foam pads for when the ones with the headphones invariably turn out to be shit. I'll let you know my thoughts (for whatever they are worth) when I get them.

I don't think I've gotten new (proper) headphones since 2011 or 2012.

Also, I think there might be a pair of audio technica over-ears of some nature in my parents' house with a broken, non-removable cable that I could hack up a fix for.

I fully expect to be buying some female TRS jacks in a few days or weeks, in any case.

I'm proud of my loudspeakers and amp, though; 1970's cherry wood four-way beauties with two sealed mids and a "fried egg" tweeter. JVC R-S5. Just 25 watts per channel; the numbers may say it should be "meh," but my ears say "those are a very different 25 watts." Sort of like how a 90's dodge viper feels much, much scarier than other cars with similar power.

Sounds better (and louder) than with my far newer (also 8-ohm) late 2000's Yamaha amp. Maybe that's just because of their weasel words - "dynamic power/channel." But if I read it right it should be 105 watts with only two eight ohm speakers.

You have to give the JVC a love tap after it's warmed up for a few minutes to get rid of the 60hz buzzing (I know that's not actually a fix, but I just can't be bothered).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jan 30 2022, 10:47

Finally got Argyll CMS' tools to work properly for me via command line. So I can get rid of displaycal soon.

I have never paid over $10 for a game boy (mine wasn't new, but it did have the expansion cover, owners' manual, and carrying case).

Thats pretty good, their price seems to have gone way up.

As for the rest...

If you go into the realm of hand-built headphones, I can't really say much there. I was more referring to the cost of Sony, Bose, and so forth. The mass-produced ones.

I used to get lower end models for free... So I can't really disagree.

Bose generally was the most overpriced and monster.

Sennheiser has come to have a huge mark up all the time.


Sony has a pretty broad range, so its possible to get relatively cheap headphones.


edit:

I found a site selling totally legit OEM replacement parts for popular headphones. Just on hardware value, the mark up increases from 100% to 700% as you go up the product stack.

For the brand I like their top flag ship costs less than one their older flag ship because of the materials.

For example: Old flag ship raw component price $388 retail $1500

New flag ship raw component price $300 retail $1700

Decent mark up. I'd never pay that, but I might buy all the individual parts and construct it myself lol.

This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Jan 31 2022, 14:17

And you know the site is making money off of these lower prices, too.

Just ran 'strings' on hdparm. Wonder how long it'll be before Linus fucks this one up, too.
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/DpY9pALg.png)

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Feb 1 2022, 17:10

Updated some stuff on my Firefox to prepare for next update, forgot to update, don't want to go through logging in all around the places again, so it will have to wait a few more weeks/months (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

And you know the site is making money off of these lower prices, too.

Yeah. They acquired some of the parts when production partners went bankrupt and they bought the inventory cheaply, and other parts through back channel sources.

I think they would probably be making 10% on the original base cost, but then thats probably 30-40% on top of what they paid.

It also shows the risks of outsourcing your production to overseas, if you don't want your products undercut by virtually identical products.

wrote an emacs macro yesterday that adds line breaks at column 80 on the current line (or the closest earlier beginning of a word, so it word wraps).

First real interactive emacs macro I've written. Was a bit tricky finding some of the function names, even with apropos, but overall it was a lot easier than I'd anticipated.

It helped that I already knew enough about lisp to be literate in it, though.

emacs is one program my powerbook can actually run smoothly, so I was writing it on there since I was on it to make a blog post for a personal site that I won't link to. My blog is entirely hand-written HTML with a few scripts to generate the boilerplate stuff on each page.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Feb 1 2022, 17:11

emacs is one program my powerbook can actually run smoothly, so I was writing it on there since I was on it to make a blog post for a personal site that I won't link to. My blog is entirely hand-written HTML with a few scripts to generate the boilerplate stuff on each page.

vi is lighter... do it, come to the dark side

I'm a fucking idiot. I accidentally perma-deleted most of a year's music acquisition and cataloging (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

I'm a fucking idiot. I accidentally perma-deleted most of a year's music acquisition and cataloging (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

Can it be restored? If you haven't used the drive it may be possible.


Not sure if restoration on SSDs works as well though.

vi is lighter... do it, come to the dark side

No, I like my '80 column wrap' macro. And my ebook reader. And my lisp. And most of my keybindings.

If I need lightweight I use something like OpenBSD's 'mg,' MicroEMACS, or Zile. Nano is also okay, although I don't love it.
I have evil-mode for if I really want to torture myself with a modal editor.

I've tried on many occasions to get used to 'vi,' and actually used it before ever using emacs. It just never stopped feeling annoying to me, though.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Feb 2 2022, 09:04

I'm a fucking idiot. I accidentally perma-deleted most of a year's music acquisition and cataloging (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

I miss MS-DOS, where deletion meant only losing the 1st character of the filename from a recovery point of view.
At some point I lost lots of stuff too, tried to use a software to recover, but it definitely wasn't as simple or effective than good old MS-DOS Undelete. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

Headphones should arrive today. Not the memory foam pleather pads just yet.

Only noticed they were pleather after placing the order, or I'd have gotten velour for the durability. Oh well.

I love this site's smarminess: [vanilla-js.com] http://vanilla-js.com/

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Feb 3 2022, 20:19

Recently had to add a new rule for hentaiverse on Firefox:

CODE

https://hentaiverse.org^privateBrowsingId=1

Funny that I never needed it before, especially since I forgot to update when I should have done it due to things happening on the side

This post has been edited by uareader: Feb 3 2022, 21:01

Recently had to add a new rule for hentaiverse on Firefox:

CODE

https://hentaiverse.org^privateBrowsingId=1

Funny that I never needed it before, especially since I forgot to update when I should have done it due to things happening on the side

What did you need this rule for?

Got the new headphones ([www.monoprice.com] Monoprice #16150: "Modern Retro").

The replacement pads haven't arrived yet, but I tried them anyway.

First tried them on my X201; I found they sounded okay, but I've always known the headphone output on this laptop is weak (very good signal-to-noise ratio, but the actual signal levels could be better). Then tried them on on my PowerBook G4 which by all accounts has by all accounts has a better amp.

And I would get a USB headphone driver, but I won't until I see a really nice deal on a good one.

Anyway, listening on the powerbook, I could get a lot more power out of them. These definitely aren't "flat," but I can confidently say they are pretty nice. Especially at the ~$27-30 (after tax) price tag. Definitely heard a lot of details my well-used Bose OE2's lose.

However, I almost immediately had to take the pads off and tape some toilet paper (once-folded two-ply) over the drivers to try to attenuate them. The treble was ridiculously harsh. Maybe it's placebo, but I think it did make a bit of a difference. I find them easier to listen to now.

I'll see what difference the replacement pads make when they come. Since they aren't velour, my guess is it won't attenuate much of the treble.

Anyway, they still have strong treble, but it is now more listenable. When I'm not snowed in, I'll get some supplies and try putting dampening behind the drivers.

Even in totally stock form, I'd claim they sound much nicer than my Bose OE2's. And the treble only really got nasty at high volumes (the sort that you shouldn't listen to for long or you'll hurt your ears). So yeah, overall, I think this was ~$28 well spent. The stock pads feel ok so far, but I get the feeling they will start to hurt after a few hours. We'll see. Still beat my stupid Microsoft headset's rock-hard pads hands down though. I'm happy with these.

Oh yeah. The pad up top feels fine to me; maybe my standards are too low but I can't think of much to complain about there. I bet the plastic "rail"/right ear wire conduit tube will break at some point as these get brittle, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Edit: I also plan to replace the fixed cord with a female 3.5mm jack. But that has to wait until I can go get a jack from the hobby shop. But I'm quite pleased with these, since I sort of like projects and these already sound pretty good.

Anyone who claims they are "references" or "production" headphones has never heard what production headphones sound like, but they are still quite good.

Update: still feel ok, an hour and a half later.

Also, I've heard it said that headphones "break in." I could very well just be experiencing that.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Feb 4 2022, 02:57

Recently had to add a new rule for hentaiverse on Firefox:

CODE

https://hentaiverse.org^privateBrowsingId=1

Funny that I never needed it before, especially since I forgot to update when I should have done it due to things happening on the side

What did you need this rule for?

Apparently, allowing popup when pressing C on an equipment in hentaiverse worked only on tabs, not on the popup hentaiverse, without that.