SoC chipset? Are these going to be wireless? Or contain DSP?
If not wireless, then consider cable connections also. And in your target price range style and color.
Who is your target end-user? Have you done a business case analysis on this market, because I don’t believe in the Field of Dreams model, “Build it and They Will Come.”
What your missing it that there is more to this than just the driver.
The position of the driver in the housing, damping material, and venting make an enormous difference to the drivers behavior.
Everything in the price bracket is a compromise, gold standard is probably the HD600/650/6XX, but it’s not a very mass consumer friendly tuning (bass light), the Beyers are very different and if you can live with the treble, probably competitive.
You probably want to target a Harmon tuning, many audiophiles don’t like the boosted bass in the later versions, but you have to decide who your targeting.
If the DAC/Amp is built in as seems to be the suggestion, your pretty much going to be using a dynamic driver at this price point.
Hey @pennstac,
Thanks for the reply. The intention is to have them as wired and wireless.
The target end user is for users that wear glasses. I have researched the market and there is very much a need for this product. More than that though, I have developed a brand, style, and experience that I believe will be a hit with headphone lovers. Thank you in advance for any further guidance, advice you can provide.
Hey @Polygonhell,
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate these insights. At this point, I am just trying to create a checklist of the best possible components I can fit into these headphones. In terms of the market, the simple answer is that we would be targeting mass consumers, and as you mention, at the price point I am going for, it’s likely that we wouldn’t be able to satisfy all audiophiles.
However, I would really love to build a pair of headphones that audiophiles can appreciate at that price point, and mass market consumers, will feel like they are listening to a very high quality pair of headphones.
So with that in mind, if you have any more thoughts in terms of housing, damping material, venting, based off the details I provided, I would be very grateful.
From my own research prior to posting, I figured it would be a dynamic driver. Do you have any thoughts on a dynamic driver that can achieve what I am looking for?
Thanks again…
This is way outside my specific area of expertise, I’m not even sure what a good headphone driver would measure like outside the housing, which is the measurements your likely to get from a manufacturer. I suspect they measure nothing like the target curves, and almost all of that is in the housing/damping design.
While the driver will certainly limit any design, the design of the housing venting and damping is the “hard” bit. I’m sure we have a number of people on this forum who actively mod headphones, and possibly a couple of designers who might help.
There are a ton of Chinese vendors that offer drivers, I’d be tempted to get a bunch of samples from a couple of AliExpress sources and measure them as a staring point.
Thanks for your help. 
Outside of the drivers, do you have any thoughts on the rest?
The $300 to $350 mainstream consumer slot is brutally competitive – see the offerings from Sony, Bose, and Apple/Beats. They all design proprietary dynamic drivers and then digitally process them umpteen ways for noise cancelling, 3D spatialization, and equalization. They tend to thicken the bass for mainstream appeal too. I think all your specs must resemble SonyBoseAppleBeats specs.
None of the mainstream products are meant for audiophiles, nor can they begin to have the “best” parts for <$350. Nor can they have performance beyond Sennheiser HD600 or HD650 parts, as those are the dynamic driver kings of the price bracket. I concur with @Polygonhell about the total package – Sennheisers are known for changing tone and performance as the tight, clampy pads compress over time.
I assume it’s Bluetooth, based purely on the SOC recommendations.
The Sensitivity will be very much based on what you can comfortably output from your “amp”, given any restrictions on battery life, you could design that either way around, but the Sennheiser 598’s are 112dB/V or 100 dB/mW, and they work fine driven off a phone or similar directly, but I’d consider that a minimum.
I have my favorite SOC’s, but you’ll need to find something with a decent Bluetooth stack, and that’s not been a priority in anything I’ve done.
I again wouldn’t reinvent the wheel here there are lots of bluetooth dongles, that have everything you would need from a circuit and software standpoint, I’d figure out who’s making them in China and ask them for a quote on whatever formfactor you want the bits in.
My very limited experience in having something mass produced has been you get surprisingly low quotes for even small production runs, lead times are long and delays are inevitable. The most critical part is to understand quality control is none existent, so you need to verify it on your end. I have people I know who basically moved to China to QA the parts they were sourcing.
You are putting the cart before the horse here. In simple terms (think speakers), the box is built around the driver, not a driver to fit the box.
I am not saying that the dimensions won’t work but you can’t just put a driver in it and hope it works. There is a lot of thought that goes into the design of the inside of the cups in order to get the drive to perform as it should.
To get a general grasp on all of this, I would suggest reading some literature on speaker design. Yes there are differences in the headphone realm but the basics are the same and there is a lot more “easy to understand” literature out there.
Thanks for your input @generic. So from some initial research I had done before posting - these Sony headphones often came out on top. To clarify, you think I should just mirror this type of spec and make it work for my headphones?
I appreciate that but on this occassion, we need to stick to those dimensions because ultimately those dimensions combined with other parts of the overall design (patented) is what allows these to achieve the goal of style + ultimate comfort for users with glasses.
I know that’s not ideal given your feedback but I believe that there is always a way to figure these things out. 
Be careful as to why, I own a pair of 1000XM5’s and the reason Sony comes out on top is a combination of comfort, features and the quality of the noise cancelling (which is by far the best I’ve heard).
The 1000MX5 sound just about passable out of the box, with the caveat that a lot of average people like them because they are VERY Bass forwards. With EQ, you can get them to a point where I consider them usable for music, but they are far from good sounding even then.
I’m not an average consumer of Noise cancelling headphones though, I use them pretty much exclusively on planes, and often with nothing playing through them.
Most average consumers aren’t evaluating on sound quality.
Sony is a multi-billion dollar company with warehouses full of audio professionals.
Bose is a multi-billion dollar company with warehouses full of audio professionals.
Apple is a trillion dollar company with entire cities full many types of professionals.
I think you are talking about something that resembles a “boutique” or “micro brand” watch. Small companies buy parts from Seiko or another huge watch company, and then put those parts in their own cases with their own faces. I’m not seeing how you could do much more than that without your own warehouse full of audio professionals.
Thank you! Some really insightful tips here. Much appreciated. The intention is to have them wired and wireless.
I spoke with a manufacturer today and they were looking for $60,000 for producing a functioning prototype that would be a replica of what would roll of the production line. Seems pretty insane given the fact that the mould they produce for that 60k might not be acceptable. Surely there are manufacturers in China with the capability to create a functioning prototype which replicates the exact product that would roll off the line?
Thanks. Honestly, comfort and style are the main USP of my headphones as well but totally take on board what you’re saying. So ultimately, your recommendation for best sound quality are the HD600/650/6XX right?
Safe to assume that they provide a sound quality that will please the mass market above what is produced by the Sony’s then?
Prototypes are expensive, machining molds is VERY expensive, there is a reason vacuum or injection molding only make sense on large production runs.
It’s why 3D printing housing prototypes is so attractive.
I will convey a story about Chinese manufacturing, at one point, a ‘friend’ had a couple of plastic models made up by a Chinese company, when he received them they had clearly been had carved by a person (rather badly) rather than produced in any reproducible way. The vendor had just met the absolute minimum requirement and that’s typical, you have to specify exactly what you want and you get what you can QA.
It’s the reason that Chinese manufactured tools are often bad, holes don’t line up, or are very loose, a Chinese manufacturer is looking to minimize cost and they do that by using people to do tasks, because they are cheaper and easily replaced when they break. Unless you stop them they will build Jigs and have a person drill holes by hand, and use the same drill bit until it breaks.
I do know people who have gotten excellent product from Chinese manufacturers, but you would want to pay someone to manage the process, it isn’t easily managed remotely by a none native speaker.
Actually I’m saying that while the 600/650/6XX is the best headphone at that price point, I wouldn’t tune a headphone like that for mass appeal.
I would suggest buying a pair of 6XX (they can be had for $200), and comparing them to a pair of mass market headphones like Beats, I’m going to guess almost every poster here would prefer the 6XX, but there is a reason the Beats/Sony’s/Bose are tuned that way.
Do you have any insights on best sounding headphones for mass appeal from your experience? I know I can find articles online but I’d be interested to hear your opinion if you don’t mind sharing…
Thanks for your time.
3D printing has absolutely taken over the prototyping market. Some make or sell (Example 1; Example 2) 3D printed headphones, despite potential layer lines and plastic delamination issues.
With CAD skills one could produce a prototype with a $200 to $500 3D printer setup. I have no idea what just the CAD design would cost, nor how much a commercial 3D printing shop would charge to produce an item. It’s surely a lot less than $60K, and perhaps less than $1K.
If the cup design and the headphones in general are already done (and patented as per the previous message), the work left to do is to decide on a driver and design the inside of the cups in order to make it work.
More than a CAD design, what is needed is someone who knows how to tune headphones to work on making the existing headphone work with the driver of choice.
