So I went on to Reddit yesterday and I saw this thread, and I just had a couple of things that I feel like I could contribute to this now that I've had a little bit of time to be on the manufacturing side of things. Mostly what

it is, is 64 Audio has this IEM called the Solo. It is around $400 US, and people have found that the planar drivers used in it are $55 a piece from Alibaba. And in the comments, a lot of people are pretty displeased that you

are essentially getting $50 drivers in a $400 IEM. Now I have a lot of thoughts on this. I want to, not as a disclaimer before I get into any of this, that I work at headphones.com. This is a company that sells the 64 Audio Solo, so take

whatever I say with a grain of salt. Uh, but there's my disclaimer to you. I think this would apply to just about anything across the board, but $55 is a really high price for a driver, like a really, really high price for a driver. Balanced

armature is the thing you'll see, you know, maybe 12 of or six of in a really high-end IEM, are pennies. $2, especially when you're buying them from an OEM. $55 if 64 Audio is actually paying that, which I doubt they are.

They're probably paying notably less than that, but if they were paying $55 for a single driver, $110 for a pair of drivers, that would be wild, like that would just be insane. And again, normally drivers for IEMs are pennies. Normally drivers for full-size headphones are

notably cheaper than this like within the several to maybe upwards of $10 if it's a planar and they're a really small manufacturer or less like notably less then it circles back around to this question what are you actually paying for in a product like this if the

drivers are normally so cheap if you know balanced armatures are normally pennies $2 or if in this case even if 64 Audio was paying you know $55 a driver um and then charging $1,400 for the IEM so you're like where's all that money

going that's a really good question and I don't know exactly uh but looking at their imagery there's a few things that I can see in here I know they say they tune this with Helmholtz resonators uh but they're clearly also using some sort

of passive analog filter network right here to tune these IEMs and on their site especially on their product page they claim that this has linear impedance here it is linear impedance design which is something that does take a degree of expertise to be able to do

especially when you are using a passive analog filter network or something like this to try and add some degree of tuning to the device but you're not just paying for that usually in a product like this you're paying for the brand name the tuning the comfort the

experience of the brand not just their R&D but like you could probably buy just some other random IEM that has the same driver in it and I highly doubt that it would sound anything like 64's IEM but that's because 64 is a company that's

been around for a while they've been tuning IMs for a while they've been talking to creators they've been talking to stores they've been talking to all kinds of people they do a lot of measurements and they're not just

slapping an IM in a chassis and calling it a day they're tuning it and a lot of what you're paying for is their time that goes into it and the tuning expertise and the building expertise that leads to the final product that's

how it is with most things with a lot of things you're not directly paying for the bill of materials because then companies wouldn't be able to stay in business that's just how it is in fact a lot of things in this hobby especially in the high-end are substantially cheaper

to make than they actually sell for and there's plenty of things that are in the many of thousands of dollars price points that don't cost that to build at least when you look at the material standpoint you start looking at labor and things like that the prices go way

way up and you start looking at the time it took for them to produce it R&D of course the expertise how much the people cost on their engineering team that are able to design those things that are able to provide their experience on these products depends on if they're

doing things in-house or if they're outsourcing stuff how much that's going to cost either way if it's in-house they're going to have a lot more control of the things that are regularly happening and changing in their design I'm sure they had to go through a bunch

of different iterations of the PCB that's in here and so on and so on it continues I saw another good comment in this thread from valonic here heya I've worked with a few IEM companies in modeling and tuning so I think I should

be allowed to put a bit of insight into this $100 a pair is actually a lot of money that's what I was saying earlier the binning process which I didn't even account for that if you were binning your drivers and matching them the yields are

going to be pretty low so you're going to probably pay six seven times that the binning process or having uh drivers to a standard is what drives up value that's true that does bring up the price a lot along with assembly QC R&D so on yes it's not

uncommon for companies to use off-the-shelf drivers in fact almost everyone does it they say everyone here it's really almost everyone there are some companies that use in-house drivers like odyssey's done that uh the likes of larger manufacturers actually advertise

exactly what bass they use that's balanced armatures and people do not bat an eye with them being off the shelf same thing with the price of those because those BAs are cheap especially when you're buying them directly from an OEM as a manufacturer so none of this is

to try and justify um the price of high-end audio but I do want to kind of give you guys more of an insight as to what it is that people are paying for in these things it is almost never the price of the driver drivers are universally one of the cheaper

components in the construction of almost any audio product and in many ways what the driver should do is it should just be something that is low in distortion, linear and able to be tuned to the target that is best suited for your application. That is the purpose of the

driver and ideally something that's durable as well. But aside from that the driver is not really what's going to predominantly determine the tuning of your IEM and the sound quality of it. A lot of that's going to come down to the

design and engineering of the rest of the product and that intangible facet is what people are paying for. So just my two cents on this and uh if you think think I'm a 64 shell I actually think that the Mega Fest Mega 5 EST is a much

better IEM at like uh maybe a third of the price of this, a little it's a little over a third of the price between like a third and a half, maybe like two fifths of the price of this. So take that how you will, but I do think that 64 audio is

a pretty good company. So just a little rant today. If you like this video leave a like down below, comment let me know what you want to see in the future. I will catch you guys pretty soon, but I just want to comment on this today. Till next one guys, peace.

$55 drivers in a $1400 IEM... Is this okay??

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