As Drop announces the launch of the new and more affordable Drop + Grell OAE1 non-signature edition all in black, it is also clear how Drop “dropped” the original Drop + Grell OAE1 Signature Headphones following very negative and very critical reviews precisely from the very same Head-fi community that the project for these open-back headphones was supposed to appeal. Important lessons for many headphone manufacturers that are still betting strongly on selling more products to the same community that, by this time, owns more headphones than the days of the week - and in some cases days in the month. After selling the remainder of the original Drop + Grell OAE1 Signature, Drop is now releasing a “new, more affordable edition of the OAE1 headphones.”
Why? Well, most likely because there was already a production contract in place with payments committed. Secondly, to save face and show the Drop community that they listen to their members, even if it requires tough calls. In this case, the revised OAE1 headphones take the design of the original “signature edition” and makes some fundamental changes, starting with the single-sided 6.3mm cable with an insert indicator for ease of use (cheaper, and also helps to quickly identify right from left earcups), lighter clamping force for a more comfortable fit (many users with large heads reported painful experiences with the original), and an all-black color with dark gray accents, to allow distinction from the original.
These basic design changes are clearly based on community feedback, but the more important adjustments to the new OAE1 headphones were made to actually improve the listening experience. The original headphones were rooted in Axel Grell’s three decades of audio engineering and audio product development, featuring a driver-forward, open-around-ear structure to achieve “a more natural and realistic sound field.”
The concept was sound, and represents a school of thought that inspired manufacturers such as beyerdynamic or Ultrasone in the past - the idea being that moving the drivers in front of and away from the ears, the headphones will sound more like listening to a pair of speakers ideally placed in front of the listener and less in-your-head. Axel Grell worked on the development of very popular, and highly praised headphones such as the Sennheiser HD 580, HD 600, HD 650, and the HD 800 series.
Apparently, what Axel Grell forgot is that in the last 8 years, the same community that praises these models has now gotten into the rabbit-hole of discussing frequency response targets and now judges headphones by the peaks and valleys they pretend to understand from reading measurement figures of multiple and sometimes dubious provenance.
Faced with something “different” from what they expected - and which apparently didn’t measure anything close to the frequency target profiles they have in mind (including the Harman curve(s) and other important reference studies that very few understand what they are and what their purpose is) - the Drop community strongly criticized the “sound field from the transducers” and the completely different experience generated by the open-around-ear design - described as “unnatural” and “unbalanced”. In the end, the “unpleasant” experience was criticized because the frequency response curves didn’t looked like they were supposed to look - or something.
For Corsair, the Taiwan company that is now highly invested in Drop, there was no other way but to try to reset the effort and make changes - with or without Axel Grell. In the announcement they try to save face and state: “Building on the success of the signature headphones that sold out earlier this year, the new OAE1s bring the same level of audio innovation and sound precision to a broader audience. With the Drop + Grell OAE1 headphones, we’ve maintained our commitment to precision engineering and high-fidelity sound while offering a more accessible price point. It’s all about making premium audio experiences accessible to more listeners without compromising on quality.” Dubiously, this statement is attributed to Axel Grell.
Now available, the new Drop + Grell OAE1 circumaural open headphones with the revised “front oriented loudness diffuse field equalization” are now tuned to sound more like every other headphones - and Drop went as far as ordering updated measurement graphs made by Head-fi, which are distributed with the press announcement. More importantly, they are available for $249 (MSRP $299), $100 less than the previous signature headphones, and they look much more elegant in the new black finish. Also, Axel Grell can now move on to do his next project.
www.drop.com
