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NMPacella
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I have no skin in the game, and if you can find a better price on a set that makes you happy you should go for it, just pointing out that it is not the same exact model. Cheers!
Realize that a company like Beyerdynamic buys their components direct, meaning they work with a dedicated sale person from the given components company, and probably have access to that companies "back-end" engineers. Or they may work with a distributer, that works for a third party, but still they have some influence on how things are done on the back end.
So even if you are smart enough and figure out the schematic and the associated passives and semi components are on a device like this headphone, and see that the devices sold via Massdrop and via Wal-mart are the same values from the same vendors, they may not be the same. Simply because a given component has multiple skews that are offered at different prices. The skews are the variants appliaed in components outgoing test. Ever single semi-conductor component you buy has been tested, probably multiple times. i don;t know about the passive components, but essentially every single component is somehow screened. So the skew is how loose or tight the test constraints are, or if the constraints are shifted one way or the other. Throw in Temperature, Source power and clocking variants into the mix of testing contraints, you have one massive matrix of different types of a single component, that all pass and work, but cost different amounts.
It is very easy for component guys to do this, because of their equipment. They use huge "Testers". For a new program I would develop the hardware that sat between the component and the test head. Write the test program to run it. Get it dialed in. And transfer it to Asia. A marketing guy typically would contact me and tell me what a customer wanted. A lot of time they wanted tighter specs. Modify the program, see how much the yield will decrease, and they would come up with a higher price. Or, marketing would say company Y wants to a cheaper part, I would look at our most recent yields and what test was failing, modify, run some tests and experiments and come back with, can they live with this parameter loosened, or getting rid of a non-critical function. Negotiate, New price for company Y with a new test program that has a higher yield. We may call the the program xxxxx.yy WM skew (WM for wal mart). This type of work, and other types is what all the engineers do at a given Semi-con company. Not everyone at Intel is the "lead designer" of the Pentium, despite what a lot of people put down as their titles :-)
Oh, and parts are typically multi sourced. What I am talking about above is just what one single component company provides. (We all know why AMD is allowed to exist by Intel, because a computing companies never wants to be in a position where they are working with a single source). A given company will also work with different electronic manufactures. They may have one of their products made in China, probably Shenzen, like Foxconn, and another more sophisticated product made in a boutique manufacturer in the US. This allows them to form a relationship with Foxconn and all the other important players. The next logical step is to have to different versions of the same product. The foxconns of the world are experts and getting the board cost, and the design manufacturing friendly. Typically the trade-off here is less excpensive vs robustness (less noise susceptible).
When I see people mention Wal-Mart I think of the following scenario. Beyer. guys fly into Arkansas, and prepare to meet with Wal-Mart with their Beyer. core compentecies presentation describing what a great company they are. Wake up from horrible night sleep at the La Quinta, find that breakfast consists of cold hard boiled eggs, sugary pastrys and bagels (the guys from Fram Oil filters took all the cream cheese), and three "contains some juice" drinks, and then drive to Wal-Mart HQ. They start their presentation, a minute into it the Wal-mart dude says "what's your current ASP, and what price are you asking of us." They tell him. He laughs, stands up walks out of the room and says "come back with a quote for $5 per headphone and we will talk, Sandy will see you out, Enjoy Arkansas." In the parking lot they call Jill from Avnet and ask her to set-up a meeing with Foxconn. They next call their admin and have her set-up flights to Shenzen-
Foxconn, Avnet and your most expensive component. rep figure out how to squeeze every f---ing penny out of your design. They all correctly assure that although this is an inferior product, people expect less when they pay less. This is true.
Does this happen with TV's and slightly less expensive products, hell yes. I remember Sony used to ever so slightly change their model number for their TVs sold via Costco. I rarely see that practice anymore, although for a product you drop over $500 on, people get more discerning.
BTW none of this illegal, or really a bad business practice. It is just transparent.
Does this happen with this particular headphone. Probably not. I am sure some aspect of it does though. If their channel includes Wal-mart then they are moving some volume, which makes it more likely. It all depends how much profit margin exists on their device, or if they have expertise in house to manage this type of stuff. They may just drop their pants when they walk into Wal-Mart.
But never assume the electronics are the same.
BTW, I worked the back-end, test and manufacturing, and in the field, technical sales with this stuff. When I worked in the core of the company, I never heard of this stuff. For one thing, you rarely work with these engineers. Plus this is hardware activity. So many of the "engineers" on these audio boards work in Software, simply there are not that many real Hardware Jobs. So this post may get a lot of, "I work for..... this does not happen."
The Fostex TH-X00 are bass heavy, hardly neutral. My cable mod (above) resulted in a more balanced presentation, but still favoring bass. Chose the the headphones that sound best to you; everybody's hearing and tastes are different.