HiFiMAN RE800 In-ears

[Frederik S]

The HiFiMAN RE800 is a new high-end in-ear featuring a completely new driver from HiFiMAN. This new driver has a topology-optimized membrane that should reduce distortion. The RE800 launches at $699, which puts it straight into a highly competitive segment. We take them for a listen and see if the new housing and driver can make an impact.

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[mouacyk]

Holy! Have their $100 version and although sound was warm and balanced overall, it just didn't have any bass oomph versus my stock Samsung in-ears. I'm very likely criticizing something I don't fully understand though.

 

[xorbe]

$700 almost buys an 86 pound 600 watt 15" internet direct subwoofer (with crossover and phasing) that will actually shake your house. I wonder how much less than $10 the RE800 actually costs to build.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Yeah, no, if they want that kind of money, they need to make something that at the very least looks nice and not like a pair of free airline headphones.

 

[Frederik S]

Agreed on the looks thing, but some will probably like the gold coating. Making a sub woofer that performs well is pretty straight forward compared to designing an in-ear and a high performance 9.2 mm dynamic driver.

 

[xorbe]

Making a sub woofer that performs well is pretty straight forward compared to designing an in-ear and a high performance 9.2 mm dynamic driver.

That must be why there's only 3 "budget" brands that get recommended by the community, and from there the prices spiral. No, making a quality sub actually takes design work also. (There's so many junk subs on the market.) This is my dream sub but no room in the house for 2 of them (also 160 pounds each!) ... http://www.rythmikaudio.com/FV18.html

 

[Frederik S]

xorbe how big is your room? People tend to forget the physics when buying subs And you get a long way with one of the open source designs in thick plywood, as long as you can source the correct parts.

In-ears are very tricky to design and require a lot of expensive tooling, especially with the way they add the coating to the diaphragm.