The margins they have are insane.
The entire headphone is not more than 50$ to produce, generously.
Obviously this should be not news to anyone, they can offer HE400SE for 99$ with the same headband, similar amount of metal parts, magnets, printed foil etc. And remember even on that one they are making a profit.
Its just its positioning in the market (in terms of sound), and the brand image they want you to have of them, allow it to be listed at whatever price, they can pick 499$ or 209$ it really makes no difference. They're still running a 5x margin even with that.
I mean the driver is made out of two sandwitched FR4 or FR3 plates they get very cheaply from PCB industry. If you have never opened the headphone up, refer to image on page 1 of this thread. Its on the order of a dozen cents per piece. With two generic thin wires, leading to a generic jack, all at high volume, so far we're barely a dollar in cost. Film and despositing a conductor probably done in house but once you have the roll and the machines, the recuring cost is trivial. They get these on kilometer long spools.
Their "big" cost up until now was neodymium magnets costing them upwards of 10$ per driver, but they've found a way to do away with that pesky cost with the new edition XV and even brag about using non-neodymium magnet in advertising materials. but its ok folks, they "reach similar performance as neodymium due to geometry optimisation". Why they would even openly say it to you like this is beyond me. We could have even achieved higher gap flux density if we did the same optimisation but with neodymium, but we would rather pocket to give you a similar product just cheaper for us to make (and not pass it on to you of course).
Obviously rest of headphone is mostly cheap plastics and stamped & bent metal, anyone who held it in their hands knows already, everything very simple and cheap to make. Exception being the cast aluminium grille which ironically is so resonant you can play it like a harp with your fingernails, it does not really matter but its the one place using some plastic that is much more damped could probably been better for performance, but then headphone would have no basis to even pretend to be premium.
Earpads are also cost optimised to hell, just generic fabric with the cheapest foam inside. You can buy identical pads right now, in small volume, for 11$ a pair, then its no more than 5$ a pair to them. And that is if they're subcontracting them out.
Of course the real takeaway is what sound you could be getting at peanuts cost if the hifi industry decided to run on margins any other industry has.
