A boutique maker of high-end headphones has just brought out a new model. Audez'e offers the LCD-2 for about a grand; it's a popular headphone amongst afficionados. I haven't tried the LCD-2 so I can't say anything about it; I haven't the slightest urge to sample anything else for the time being, given my utter contentment with the combination of a Sennheiser HD-800 with a Luxman P-1u headphone amp. But from what I've heard the LCD-2 is a fine headphone, especially at its price point.
But the LCD-3 is $2000, twice the price. That prices it well above the Senn 800s, the Grado PS1000, and other such luxury fare. It still doesn't traipse into the rarefied heights of the Stax models, but nonetheless $2000 is a big chunk o' change for a pair of headphones.
Folks who hang out on audiophile forums tend towards passion—it's an involving hobby—and some of the discussions regarding this headphone have turned a tad nasty. Name-calling and the like aside, it seems to me that the meat of the issue under question is whether or not the LCD-3 is worth its purchase price. It's a fair question, but not one with a simple answer.
That's because small companies are obliged to pass on a lot of their basic operating costs to a relatively limited number of customers. If you sell only 24 items per year, each of them exquisitely hand-crafted from the finest materials and fussed to utter perfection, the purchase price must of necessity include 1/24th of your business costs plus whatever profit margin you think is justified. But if you sell 100,000 reasonably-priced widgets over the course of a year, then your salaries and electric bills and health insurance and Internet service and the like are spread thinly. And if in addition to those 100,000 widgets you also make a full line of wodgets and wudgets, all of which sell reasonably well, then all those operating costs can be absorbed much more easily. And if you're a big company that buys a whole lot of components, then you can qualify for volume discounts and keep your prices down even more.
That's why Bowers & Wilkins speakers don't actually cost anywhere near as much as they ought to, given their design, build quality, materials, and patrician sonics. B&W manufactures a healthy catalog of speakers at almost every price point, including those dazzling 800 Diamond jobs. But the top of the Diamond line, the 800D, still comes in at under $30,000 per pair. Now, that's hardly chump change. But $30K for speakers at the 800D's level of performance and quality is actually quite reasonable—more than reasonable, when you get right down to it. There are surely better speakers than the 800D, but not for $30K; you'd probably have to hit the $60K price point in a boutique manufacturer to reach the same level of sophistication and audio savvy.
Ditto Sennheiser headphones. The HD-800 is a pricey beast at $1400, but most of Sennheiser's headphones, even the exceptionally good HD-650 and HD-600 models, hover around or below the $500 price point. Sennheiser doesn't have to pass a lot of extra costs along to the consumer in the HD-800; they make everything from $20 earbuds on up, not to mention a very impressive line of microphones. HD-800s are luxury items that reflect Sennheiser's current best effort in headphone making; they're even made one at a time by specially trained craftspeople. You pay for that sort of thing. But not anywhere near what you would pay if Sennheiser were a three-person company operating out of a rented space in West Covina.
I've noticed in my own audio purchases that I tend to shy away from the boutique vendors. I don't mind paying a hefty sum for fine audio equipment, and I'm fussy about fine design, beautiful woodwork and sharp build quality—stuff which may or may not contribute to the actual sound quality. But I want my purchase price to be mostly right there in the product itself—and that includes the R&D—and as little as possible on less tangible items like catering bills or carpet cleaning or last month's utility bill. So I own Bryston, VPI, Rega, Luxman, NAD, B&W, Sennheiser, all responsible, customer-oriented companies with track records in producing great stuff for a fair price. I'm considering buying two more products once the budget allows: a Bryston 4SST-B power amplifier for Fasolt & Fafner, the lordly B&W 803Ds in the living room, and Luxman's beautiful dual-input phono stage for my paired turntables (one for 78s and the other for LPs). I don't have to worry whether they're good products or not: they are. And I don't have to worry whether they're worth their purchase price: they are.
But I'm not going to even consider Audez'e LCD-3 headphones. I have no doubt that they are excellent products boasting undoubtedly fine sound. But there's a fair amount of boutique in their $2K price, the equivalent of the "designer" marque that turns a humdrum pair of jeans into an expensive purchase. Should I buy another pair of high-end headphones in the future, the odds are that they'll be Sennheiser's latest and greatest. I'm not only a discriminating consumer; I'm also a faithful customer who believes in rewarding great products with repeat business.