Audeze LCD-4

• FWIW, zdfx has been responsible for several billion in product sales in the past few years at an well known Internet company.
• SuperBAF can't and won't solve the USA's problems.

 

I work on consumer hardware. I've had a direct hand in the creation and launch of 5 smartphones and two tablets and various accessories that we have successfully launched and many failed products that we haven't. We're the manufacturer of record, merchant of record and seller of record for many of them. As you know, the workings of these devices are vastly more complex than they have ever been, with just the SoCs requiring billions of transistors, so no, I have not designed and shipped one product end to end by myself, but I have had to work on almost every part of the process from product inception and design, to planning and bringup, to software development, to launching care centers, to supply chain and logistics (forward and reverse), to hand EFF analysis at my desk, to EOS, to forecasting and ordering unique parts for long term repair and who knows what else on one project or another.

I've also launched online retail directly into 17 countries and had to navigate trade compliance and consumer protection in some of the more difficult markets including Korea, Germany and India. I tried unsuccessfully to launch Brazil and China for a couple of years, but both were too large of a task given the resources I had on hand (including my own time). It's not easy: each country is a slog, each SKU is a challenge, compliance can kill the whole product, sourcing and negotiation component price is non-trivial even in the 100s of thousands or millions of units, and you're constantly hounded by product decisions made a year prior. I've had to deal with component choices I thought were a sane choice but unexpectedly EOLed, despite a guarantee from large OEMs for sale and support for the next 3+ years.

I've made more mistakes than I care to admit to, but I've learned how difficult manufacturing and distribution is through the process. I'm not saying you don't know any part of this, but I am saying you are trivializing the costs involved with a product's MSRP. Are any of these headphones worth $4000 to me? No. Do I think they represent $4000 of value to any consumer? Hell no! Can I believe that a company has to price a particular product in $4k+ range given how small the TAM is, how small a piece of the MSRP they realize in actual revenue, and how many operating expenses (expected and unexpected) they will incur over the entire lifetime of the product? Hell yes.

I'd say they were selling snake oil and I would never recommend someone purchase their product.

I wouldn't throw around hyperbole and take massive shits on the internet, though. I've done that many times in the past and it has never worked out well, nor has it ever really accomplished anything. I talked to an employee of a company I actually like (whose products I don't always like) at a meet recently and I came to the realization that I was guilty of letting my dislike of some of their products and the value they represent translate into a dialogue that craps on the company and founder online. That's not cool at all and I've been making a concerted effort to avoid being a dick about it.

 

I am locking this thread for the following reasons:

1. No one here has heard the LCD-4.
2. The groans of in-credulousness regarding the $3995 pricing (given the concerns regarding the consistency and reliability of Audeze headphones; and how the new Fazor headphones exhibit worse transient response than the non-Fazor headphones) have been well stated.
3. We have gone off-topic with no attempt to come back to the topic.
4. This thread is looking like a long chain of useless babble a la HF (but instead of the hype, we have the opposite.)
5. God is getting angry.