Audio (gear) is nowhere near to being a solved problem. One open problem is to match your own personal HRTF to your gear. Audio (production) is also not a solve

Audio (gear) is nowhere near to being a solved problem. One open problem is to match your own personal HRTF to your gear. Audio (production) is also not a solved problem. Your experience is decided by the recording/mixing engineer, and there may be multiple renderings possible of the same content. In much the same way, different conductors of the same orchestra can produce different flavors of the same composition. Then there is the spatial localization for games and movies, which is still not quite solved. >And there's nothing wrong with that, it just annoys me when audiophiles try to justify their fashion statements with pseudo-science. Yes, those people can get nutty, ignore them! Audio is much bigger than Audiophile :) Having said that, with no pressure from consumers, why would anyone invest money in new headphone designs? I recently purchased a pair of planar magnetic headphones which used to be crummy when I tried them a few years back. The newer design is very efficient, the manufacturing process is also pretty solid, and the sound is fantastic.