John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#21

Post by cunidev » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #19

Tangential: is it just me or speakers made a huge leap forward over the last 20 years? I mean for given price range. Laptop speakers, headphone speakers, car speakers, any minisystem/potrable stereo speakers. Was there some prominent techonolgical improvement or just a miriad of small improvements? Also RIP to mister Koss.

On the value side, I totally agree. Early 2000 offerings were just... sad, partly due to the over-digitalization (I own a Marantz from that time, which forces many optimizations, Dolby support and similar, but in the end sounds considerably worse than its cheaper predecessors).

For how I see it, in the last year there has been a huge increase of sound quality over price, probably partly due to the growing Chi-Fi competition (especially on headphones).

I bought some sad Sennheiser IEMs in 2015 for around €160, and in 2022 they sound like garbage compared to some €40 offerings from China IEM brands (KZ, TRN, ... whatever).

Also, awareness of Bluetooth and wireless sound quality has thankfully brought to something beyond extremely expensive devices that just sounded like excessive DSP and compression.

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#22

Post by marincounty » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #16

tetrahedon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you are referring to their lifetime warranty and replaced them free of charge when they broke! Top company. https://koss.com/blogs/stories/use-koss-headphones-limited-l...

I never understood how they could make money on that deal. Those headphones were not built to last. I went through at least one pair a year back when I used them. Maybe it was the sort of loss leader that's financed by the marketing department.

1. The cost from the factory in China couldn't be more than $5.00 on their priciest model.

2. They charge $9.00 return shipping, and I bet make a healthy profit?

3. They might break even, minus the goodwill, on Ibud replacements? (I don't know Apple products anymore. Excuse the nomenclature. Ibud sounds off.)

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#23

Post by BrS96bVxXBLzf5B » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #19

Tangential: is it just me or speakers made a huge leap forward over the last 20 years? I mean for given price range. Laptop speakers, headphone speakers, car speakers, any minisystem/potrable stereo speakers. Was there some prominent techonolgical improvement or just a miriad of small improvements? Also RIP to mister Koss.

Hadn't noticed before but speakers haven't suffered the same fate as other tech where additions and improvements of tangential aspects haven't affected the core performance. A modern low/mid-end laptop has increased battery life and lower weight, at the expense of CPU power. Your new printer might have Wi-Fi and bluetooth, but jams and leaks too often and probably has increasingly restrictive cartridge DRM.

A typical $30 bluetooth speaker has great battery life, is portable, usually rugged and often visually well designed too, and still sound as nice or nicer than I (non-audiophile) would expect from such a versatile budget device.

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#24

Post by adventured » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

Last year I was traveling and needed a cheap pair of headphones (that I didn't care what happened to), so I grabbed a ~$18 pair of Koss UR20s. I was quite surprised at their decent quality & sound given the price, as my expectations couldn't have been lower. I'll probably get many years of use out of them given how they're holding up.

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#25

Post by ianbooker » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #19

Tangential: is it just me or speakers made a huge leap forward over the last 20 years? I mean for given price range. Laptop speakers, headphone speakers, car speakers, any minisystem/potrable stereo speakers. Was there some prominent techonolgical improvement or just a miriad of small improvements? Also RIP to mister Koss.

It depends: I think the advent of MP3 pushed the concept of psychoacoustics* into the spotlight and the smartphone "revolution" made it mainstream.

Therefore speakers just sound like they would sound good without being physically "better". But for example your average smartphone is just one update away from sounding like crap.

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#26

Post by rdtwo » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

What are the best headphones in the under 1000 range? Has there been a lot of improvement since I got my akg 701s

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#27

Post by squarefoot » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #19

Tangential: is it just me or speakers made a huge leap forward over the last 20 years? I mean for given price range. Laptop speakers, headphone speakers, car speakers, any minisystem/potrable stereo speakers. Was there some prominent techonolgical improvement or just a miriad of small improvements? Also RIP to mister Koss.

Neodymium magnets helped to make them more powerful wrt size, and I suspect newer materials also made easier building small full range speakers where one would have needed at least separate woofer and tweeter, which wasn't convenient in cheap devices. The membranes of many small speakers from portable devices look like they're made of two concentric sections having different consistency and optimized for higher and lower frequencies, so that the same speaker can reproduce a much larger spectrum. That's probably far from being anything audiophile, still much much better than the quality of any similarly priced speaker from say the 80s.

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#28

Post by anon_cow1111 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

1MachineElf wrote: post #2

I've had three pairs of Koss PortaPro headphones and really enjoy them. Interesting to read this but of history about the company. Thanks Mr. Koss!

I've also had multiple pairs and they've all broken within a year from sitting-at-desk usage. The frame is surprisingly sturdy but the internal/external wires are absolute garbage, not suitable for frequent travel at all. They sounded good while they were alive, though.

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#29

Post by jeffbee » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #19

Tangential: is it just me or speakers made a huge leap forward over the last 20 years? I mean for given price range. Laptop speakers, headphone speakers, car speakers, any minisystem/potrable stereo speakers. Was there some prominent techonolgical improvement or just a miriad of small improvements? Also RIP to mister Koss.

Yes, they did. What used to be considered very expensive state-of-the-art architecture is now pretty much universal: each driver with their own amplifier and electronic crossovers. The perfection of h-bridge amplification has been a major leap forward.

Re: John Koss, headphones pioneer, has died (2021)

#30

Post by sgtnoodle » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #19

Tangential: is it just me or speakers made a huge leap forward over the last 20 years? I mean for given price range. Laptop speakers, headphone speakers, car speakers, any minisystem/potrable stereo speakers. Was there some prominent techonolgical improvement or just a miriad of small improvements? Also RIP to mister Koss.

I suspect a lot of the improvements have come from advancements in simulation fidelity and optimization techniques. The raw amount of computing power for computational fluid dynamics has gone up orders of magnitude, and there's been a lot of improvements in machine learning over the last 10 years. 20 years ago, it was still very much an art of designing a shape, fabricating it, trying it, then refining it. Nowadays a lot of that refinement can be done virtually. Not that someone at Boss or whatever is an ML expert, but the person that wrote their CAD tools might have been.

Also, there has been recent emphasis on rather aggressive software based automatic/factory equalization and optimization for human perception rather than flatness. That's an incremental improvement, but like smartphone camera photos, it can really elevate the experience.