Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
Firstly, the links to a thread on Headfi about the G109A are informative, mostly because of the comments by Fried, owner of Lake People/Violectric.
Dropping the price to $299 should attract more buyers. At the current low drop price there is simply too much competition from "trendy" models and Oamp/dac which cosmetically appears to be the same thing. Lake People does not seem to be well known in the US vis-a-vis US headphone amplifier manufacturers, even though their amps are class leading, spec-wise, in terms of power and low noise. (A quick comment on power, most planer headphones are underpowered, and while they sound halfway decent they do not sound anywhere near its potential. A lot of buyers do not seem to know that low noise and high power are the first things to look for, and to a somewhat lesser degree where its made, when buying an amp.)
Simply by getting more amps out there in the right hands should/will create more awareness and if the amps really are what the specs say they are then sales should increase. Of course this is most likely one of the reasons the amps are on Massdrop.
Lake People should not be concerned about going too low, considering that "Cyber Monday" is tomorrow and going low is expected, if not forgiven.
The O2/ODAC and Modi/Magni combos are recommended only due to their price point and word of mouth rehashed advertising. The Asgard 2 is very lackluster in direct comparison as well. FiiO has some cheap offerings to boot. None of these meet the performance of The G109 and above imo.
I paid MSRP for my Modi/Magni/Asgard 2 as well as my HPA V100 and V181. Would I have loved to save some money? Yes, of course. Was the cheaper amplification as enjoyable? No. Not even close. I'd argue that it was detrimental to the enjoyment of my headphone collection at the time.
If you can manage to squeeze out the funds for this drop, I recommend doing so. I'd also like to suggest selling any other amps that you have lying around to help pay for it. Nullifying the purchase cost entirely if at all possible. This is what I've done personally when buying my Violectric HPA V100 and V181 amps. Sold everything to pay for the V100. Sold the V100 to help pay for the V181. I do wish that I bought the V181 the first time, but I wasn't expecting to pursue fully balanced listening at the time. Oops. Lol. Upgraditis is real.
I admit that I'm biased towards preferring Violectric (Lake People) amps over others as my experience has led me to this conclusion. My ears don't lie to my brain. There was a distinct audible improvement to be heard with power hungry headphones. Same thing goes for clean power and black backgrounds. The Violectric (Lake People) amps measure incredibly well and you can hear it in actual use scenarios.
I agree that a lower price might amount to more interest and participants, but the main reason why they're less known is that they don't waste a ton of money on advertising. Any money put towards advertising inadvertently raises how much your product needs to sell for in. order to meet the same profit margins. Beats spends a ton on advertising and their number of sales are insane. Violectric and Lake People spend almost none of their budget on advertising and believe in their product offerings.
Just because you sell a lot of a product doesn't make it good. Just because you sell very little of a product doesn't make it bad. Everyone is fighting for the same audience's dollar in the audio market. What price point the consumer deems is their ceiling will sway them in one direction or the other. Unfortunately for those who buy entry level amps and aren't always pleased with them (like myself), they'll likely never branch out and spend more right out of the gate on something of excellent value like the G109-A. Instead, they'll go from budget to budget amp, dac, headphone, etc. and continue to miss out on what "may very well be the only amp that they'll ever need". *cough* Sound familiar? *cough*
On another note, Violectric and Lake People could benefit from having more of a presence at local audio related meets as I so often see on head-fi.org. That's really the best way to advertise. Get the product into the hands of potential customers and let them hear/experience what "could be" first hand and for themselves instead of being limited to reading about it online.
- preach brother, preach!