Question is what they can do in 1 month.
Cheap feel (plastic):
- Difficult to update physical design, like thicker plastic housing. You have to create new mold. For low volume product, it is not cost effect to create new mold. Unless Moondrop has money to burn. Or they have good confidence Void will be a big seller and worth sinking the cost for new molds.
- They might use different plastic with the same mold, assuming they can find upgraded material with more premium feel/weight to it.
Audio:
- Extremely unlikely to modify or change the driver in 1 month. Unless they already have those changes in the works. I doubt that they had those changes in mind. Because if they did, they could have (or should have) just waited 1 more month for release with new audio design.
- They can do some optimization by adding or removing foam, insulation, earpads, etc. That is definitely possible. But again, these are simpler changes that if they could have done it, they should have done it.
Lastly, on QC and Reliability. Often we hear reports of poor QC from smaller or startup Chinese companies, I always wondered if they do any long-term testing. Typical electronics companies care about QC and reliability. New product and any changes (like physical design, electronics, components, material, supplier, etc) require reliability tests. Reliability can both environmental and/or electronics. This is like running hundreds of units in high temperature and high humidity chamber with maximum power going into the units. This is typically 500 hours for consumer product, which takes around 30 days to run. It's 500 hours because that is what is required to extrapolate the lifetime to around 2-4 years for consumer grade electronics. And if change is significant, 2 rounds of reliability are required, which means approximately 60 days.
Issue is the duration. Typical flow is:
- Build hundreds (if not thousands) of engineering units. These units are used for process control and tolerances. This might take weeks to a month to build, assuming material and components are readily available.
- Some units from #1 will then go thru reliability testing, which takes 1 month for 1 round; possibly 2 months for 2 rounds.
- If everything is good from #2, then start production. Then it will take weeks to a month to get those units out to customer.
They can take the risk and do 2 and 3 in parallel. That would be building at risk with unqualified product. If something goes wrong with #2, then products will have to be scrapped. Typically companies can take risk with incoming components, because they are cheaper and also to shorten the lead time for components. They usually do not do this with final product because that will be expensive scrap.