Whirlio

^^^ a fair point. Although I can't help but bring up the fact that these have been suggested as a candidate in the sticky 'best headphones' thread and so someone thinks they are audiophile I guess. Anyway, while I do take your point, it seems we both agree that they shouldn't have $158 spent on them to make them sound better?

I bought the KSC-75s as a replacement for my Ety er6i headphones that I left on a plane, as a stop gap until my wife let me buy I could afford the ER4Ps. I really hated them by the end - and never understood why they have so many fans... uncomfortable / painful, easily broken, sounded annoyingly unrevealing compared to anything I would call 'audiophile'. The only thing that would make them more annoying would be to spend $$$ on them and then comtemplate all the other things I could have bought or saved up for with the money Although I haven't heard the modified product... $158 cables for $25 cabs just sounds like the ultimate upsell... madness! "Would sir like some virgin hand-reared unicorn milk with your Nescafe coffee?"

Hehehe you guys! Any poor guest on these forums would think that RSA kit makes your iPod sound like the ass of a rhino that lives off a diet of cabbage and beans. Battery life is ok allthough I really don't think it's much above 100 hours, nevermind the 400 hours people talk about. Sound quality is a nice, noticable improvement over the stock ipod under the right conditions - I came to work without it today and am actually missing it. Finally its size, it still fits in my jacket pocket which is a big bonus, I don't fancy a hifi backpack on the London underground Enough to make it worth my while, although those around me are constantly bemused at me spending money on portable music. I can imagine a sound with tighter bass and more interesting mids / highs, and it would be nice to be able to plug it into the PC without the interference sound... you see where I'm going, but it still doesn't make me regret getting the Tomahawk... much.............. errr................ Damn I need to stop thinking about it!

Hmm. I still think RSA will sell 400 of them eventually. Maybe not 500 as he is up against what seems to be a great product. I really like my Tomahawk now that I've figured out it needs to be on the high gain setting when used with ER4S Etys, but I have to admit my next amp will probably have a dac and will probably be a pico. This is an eye wateringly expensive purchase for a guy in europe (shipping) and a wife (hint: it took me 2 years to get broadband) but I'm going to make it based on the opinions I've formed from reading a couple of websites! I think this is the problem with the industry where the catchment community is relatively tiny for a manufactured product and all opinion is shaped on web forums apart from the occasional meet-up event and people who are happy to buy blindly. The winds change quite quickly. He'll probably sell less than 25 more Tomahawks now as well despite its many plus points, another peril of the industry & community. I'm sure RSA knows that better than most people and has set his margins accordingly.

160 x $425 initial price = $68,000.00 245 x $400 (average between non-dac and dac) = $98,000.00 not including orders that aren't on the headamp preorder page Both are happy!

While the graphs are interesting and empirically conclusive, I think we need some perspective here... the Predator will, no doubt, sound incredible (if you don't get the hiss when plugged into a PC) and plenty of people will like it a lot. From what I can gather there are probably 160 Predators and maybe 300-350 Picos that have been sold... and there will be 500 or so happy customers there (along with 2 happy vendors). Why all the trashtalk when we could have a big love-in?

Ah yeah I deliberately ignored the sub $100 amps on ebay but I probably shouldn't have. I still struggle to see the numbers approaching or overtaking 10,000 owners or even devices in the wild. Although those figures would match up with the current market of maybe 5-10 successful manufacturers and another dozen or more who find it worth the time and effort to create these things. I got stopped with the Tomahawk through Innsbruck airport a couple of days ago and they'd never seen anything like it before... I tried to explain that it made the iPod sound nicer and they just got a bit confused

I should have pointed out that I am in no way an expert on the techonolgy or market of portable audio, and all figures and musings are fairly speculative. I apologise to Ray if my figures are wildly off, but I hope my point came across regardless.

I'm just wondering how big the worldwide market for portable headphone amps is. In october I bought my first - a Tomahawk, and it's serial # 697. With reading the various hifi websites, I'd guess that the Tomahawk has at least 30-40% of the market, or it did until the Pico / Predator came out. I live in London and have never seen anyone else with a portable amp, despite the fact that millions of commuters use portable audio. I've actually seen more Ultimate Ears 10-pros (1) than headphone amps! Of course this is hardly empirical; I've never met anyone else with Etymotic phones and I know they are relatively popular. By that very rough estimate, there would be 2000 - 3000 portable headphone amps out there. Doing a check on ebay shows a few unbranded and mostly cheap options, but not loads of recognised maket leaders. (I know about the H-F sale forum too). It gets a bit complicated when I think about all those who have multiple portable amps. Maybe it's just a few vocal posters but it seems like perhaps 10% of these people have more than one. So let's say there are 2000 people buying portable headphone amps, and most of them have 1 at a time. Almost everyone has to buy direct from the manufacturers because it's not worth a shop's time to stock them (I only know 1 shop in the UK that has them for instance). My question is - why is the market so saturated then? Some of the more technical people than me can lay out the probable r&d and production costs, but surely most of these devices need to sell in runs of over 100 to make them profitable or worthwhile to the creators. The 'blockbuster' Tomahawk with it's perhaps 750 sales generates 750 * $295 = $221,250.00 which is surely a great profit for a device that probably costs $100 of Ray's time and all costs. (nearly $150k profit there). If he'd only sold 100, that'd be $29500 - 10000 = $19500 profit which is fine for a product he's probably spent 18 months creating and selling, but it's hardly a ticket for the gravy train. So anyway there are 750 Tomahawks out there, and Ray's done well. What about the other 25 or so manufacturers? They have live off the rest of the pie - perhaps 1500 to 2500 sales. I suspect they are not spread out evenly - Xin, Pico, Predator, Headroom and maybe Qables products are imho the other major players, off the top of my head. They generate sales by signing up to forums sites like this one, and by word of mouth by other forum users and the very occasional audio review site. My estimate of the market is this - there is enough for 1-2 manufacturers to make very good money, then maybe another 5 to make good money, but everyone else will either lose money or treat it as a second income or perhaps break-even hobby. Do you guys agree? I think I'm seeing why people here warn me against using my portable rig as my main one - the market just isn't mature enough to go really high end. By the time I get a Pico to replace my $350 Tomahawk (including postage), that will hopefully work well with my ER4P + S cable ($300 again) and ALOAudio cable (heh) I could actually have got the UE-11 Pros which I imagine would blow all my equipment out the water. Bah!