Sennheiser Factory Tour - Hanover, Germany
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
3,654 words · ~18 min read
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w so for our factory tour of Sennheiser
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they actually decided on what I thought was a really cool way of of showing us
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how it works uh we got to follow the
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entire production line for the
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hd800 headphones so they're top topof
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thee line topof thee line ere headphones
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we essentially got our own like guided tour How It's Made episode so now of
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course we're going to start making HD 8001 line is tips Edition headphones oh
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that would be so CU we have all that expertise oh definitely yeah we saw how
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they they W so it starts with the coil being wound by an automated coil Winder
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machine that's got this heat gun that
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lets the uh that lets the wound coil kind of stick to itself so it all stays
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exactly precisely exactly the way it's supposed to be and then it comes out on
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like a a spool of of coiled spools and
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they just if if it's not exactly perfectly round they just ditch it yeah
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there's an entire bin of just nope these wer round enough they were ever so
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slightly off the curve so no so the Finish coils get delivered to the next
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station where I was actually really surprised to see someone hand gluing
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coils onto diaphragms at this stage in
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the I assumed something like this would be automated I assumed the entire
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process would be automated but no at almost every stage there's some amount
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of uh hand-based intervention and they were saying the reason for this is that
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for certain tasks it's apparently still
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more precise to to have someone do it by hand because there's lots of products
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they even showed us some microphones or or a microphone assembly area that was
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100% automated start to finish being delivered in a mastercart and a
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microphones but the hd800s had a lot of hand assembly and
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then something I didn't notice until they pointed it out was how many of the
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workers in this area of the factory were female really large percentage and not
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necessarily because females tend to love
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playing around with soldering irons more than other people or whatever else the
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case may be but but they were looking for a particular background very high
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skilled in fine motor skills so they would specifically hire people that were
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previously things like hairdressers or florist things that required small fine
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precise motor skills and attention to detail and attention to detail
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specifically yeah so at this next step the chassis for the headphones which was
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actually produced elsewhere in the factory we never got to see Raw
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materials being turned into hd800
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unfortunately pieces which would have been super cool so these get the uh the
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coil and the diaphragm actually installed in them along with the magnet
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and then the whole thing's glued in place and at this point you've basically
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got a fully assembled transducer that's ready for the first QC step in the
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assembly process so they have to make sure first of all that it fits within
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the appropriate frequency response range and that it can pair properly with
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another transducer so they need to test all of these things and then find good
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pairs so they can both go within the same set of hd800s and you you have the
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same sound signature for each one yeah because you might have the sort of the
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the acceptable frequency response curve
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but there might be a range of that so they actually will have like an A and A
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B and that doesn't necessarily mean better or worse it just means they're trying to look for ones that go together
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as best as they can now what was interesting to me was how many assem
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pieces failed which is not that it the
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fail isn't necessarily a bad thing though because they're they're being
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very tight about their regulations and they're making sure that if it's not
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perfect it's not getting through which is actually awesome and anything even a
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high Precision product like a like a CPU processor is going to have a a yield
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rate and a lot of failures the important thing is seeing that they're testing
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them and junking them at this stage in the procing here not when they're at
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your door yeah was cool pretty cool now it actually wasn't necessarily the
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coolest thing about this step in the process the final step in the assembly
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process um but it was definitely the first thing that caught my eye in the
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back of the tiny little like four or
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five square meter area where by the way every single hd800 in the world gets
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built in this exact place by one of five people they had 19 we counted them 19 HD
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800s on a rack ready to go out the door
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absolutely freaking beautiful but the
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coolest thing about this workstation was probably how optimized it is yeah you
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could tell as the as the work was moving through all the stages of creating the
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headphones that she definitely had this place optimized just to even where the
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bins were placed and the whole thing was made out of Extrusion to the point where
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you knew that Sennheiser just made these custom for the employees yeah they
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looked kind of modular even yeah extremely modular and that's because
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they cardboard Prototype all of their stations for the employees that will be
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working there so they get all the employees that will use that station in
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with these cardboard crafted prototypes to make sure that everything's in
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exactly the right spot so that if some box is a little bit too far to the way
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and in a kind of crappy position you can move that so it won't make their ARM
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sore if they're working so all these all these workstations are specifically
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built for them now it should be noted
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that not every product gets the same treatment with like every piece being
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hand assembled the way the hd800 does um
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particularly the very high-end products especially the ones made in Germany this
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is going to be more common but sometimes you're going to have certain parts of
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the product made let's say for example I believe it's momentum where uh certain
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components are made in the Ireland facility and then shipped to China for
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assembly so depending on the product it might be actually manufactured in
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Germany Ireland uh the US for some of the professional grade stuff or in China
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it seemed very common that they would make the uh acoustically important parts
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in something like Germany or maybe even possibly Ireland and then they would do
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a lot of the assembly in somewhere like China what's cool though is they were
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saying that regardless of where the manufacturing facility is they're still
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trying to keep things very senheiser in terms of the of the quality of life of
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the workers regulations and the regulations and you know same thing like
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uh prototyping the workstations to make sure that they actually are as efficient
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as possible and comfortable as possible so I thought I thought that was really
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really incredible and cool next up was another QA station so this time you you
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put the headphones on kind of an artificial head that will have a
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microphone on each side so it can hear each one of the individual uh
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transducers from the headphones and then they'll roll it into a soundproof box so
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that no sound is going to leak in from the factory floor automatically like an
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automatic like track we actually didn't get to see it
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working Unfortunately they do the QA in batches so uh but but we had it explain
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to us and it looks pretty baller even if we don't get to see it in action yeah
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they were they were so careful about this box not having any outside noise that it was even on dampeners so that if
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someone was to walk by really heavily there would be none of that transferred
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into the inside of the box so just making sure that all the frequency
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responses here and everything is perfect yeah so then you Unfortunately they
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don't include a print out in the box or anything like that but what's cool is
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with the hd800 you can actually contact Sennheiser and they will mail you the
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exact testing report from your exact serial number because they manually
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record them at this stage in the process which I thought was pretty darn cool uh
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they also have an artificial mouth on this artificial head with artificial
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ears that is used for Aviation headsets
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and then they have speakers inside the Sound Chamber for testing the noise
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cancellation of aforementioned headset so very interesting stuff so we were on
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our way to product development and they asked us if we wanted to see the
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companion product had the hd800 the hdvd
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800 so this is an amplifier and I think the coolest thing about it was had it's
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got to be the testing apparatus we didn't actually see a ton of the actual
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assembly but we saw a little bit of it but again the really interesting part
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was the testing so he hooked up everything you possibly could all the
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things tested multiple volume levels for
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all every single possible mode that there was and tested everything on this
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thing so you know it's going to work the whole thing took about 10 minutes and
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then it wasn't until after it passed testing that it even got a serial number
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and then it was polished polished twice
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P twice and then finally put away and
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then ready to rock then we made our way upstairs and this was probably one of
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the coolest things about the entire tour we got to visit the anaco chamber so
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this is a twostory chamber full of noise dampening
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foam that's got this that's got this triangular shape that is designed to
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pretty much eliminate wall Reflections
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it was super weird standing in the room just because they only allow four people
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at a time because you're actually standing on mesh this wire mesh yeah cuz
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because you're standing above an entire story of more noise dampening foam below
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you um so the room is mostly mostly used
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for microphone testing but what's really
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cool is not necessarily the anaco chamber but actually a new testing
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facility that they're in the process of building which is going to be an entire
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Auditorium and stage where they'll not only apparently actually have concerts
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yeah but they'll use as a testing ground for their professional grade equipment
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which is pretty awesome and then I think they're going to have another chamber in there so that they can rebuild that one
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so they can use that in the future as well and then eventually they'll have two and yeah crazy all I know is I want
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one yeah that would be pretty cool so with the factory out of the way this was
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this was really cool we got to actually see a little bit of the Sennheiser
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company history I mean it's still actually a family-owned business which
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for a company that size is um is pretty unusual but we got to go and chill in
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The Farmhouse which is at the very heart of uh the Sennheiser campus they just
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tack on new things every time they they make some money and they they need a new
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facility or equipment so it's in various states of of uh sophistication depending
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on you can see how far along the company was based on how big the building is and
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how modern The Bu is yeah it's very cool um so we actually got to go into into
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the old farmhouse where they the original Seven Engineers started
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building audio equipment for other companies right at the end of the second
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world war just to make ends meet because they they were actually audio engineers
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and professors that had worked in a university and that University had been
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unfortunately basically flattened yeah so they needed somewhere to work and
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that was a farmhouse and the Americans came along and put a sign on the door
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that said basically we don't know what you're doing here but stop
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and the sign mysteriously disappeared in the
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night and they and they kept working and I guess I guess any audio files today
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are probably glad that they did definitely so inside there they had some
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really cool stuff they had uh sennheiser's first they their patented
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uh open headphones think they're the 414
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yeah something along those lines by today's standards they look like a joke
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but at the time that was that was really amazing um they've got a lot of their
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earlier microphon products um they even
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had stuff for testing telecommunication cables which was one of the first things
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they did uh for kind of rebuilding different parts of Germany just out of
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necessity because the Sennheiser had to make some some money at the time the
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centerpiece here though and this was unfortunately it was under glass we
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didn't even get a chance to listen to it but they had an orus oh man super nice
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super nice the the most amazing thing about the manufacturing of the orus I
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think is the glass pieces with thousand holes right a thousand drilled holes
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them I me if you ever tried to drill one hole inass that probably gives you some
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idea how hard it is to drill a thousand yeah um and then they also had another
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little Wall of Fame inside that they let us have a look at so they've got Grammys
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Academy Awards uh all kinds of other Awards and then some really cool
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products in the case across from there yeah some stuff that they've never even
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actually released because they just couldn't actually find a market for it
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but was super cool I mean seeing all this history stuff was really cool but
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then we actually an opportunity to sit down with some of the Sennheiser folks
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and talk about what they're doing today
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with the consumer products like the momentum and the urbanites so uh we'll
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let them kind of take it from here and talk about the the philosophy and and
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especially the way that that product
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development the product design is being translated into a message that the more
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mainstream public can can relate to a little bit better yeah we don't see it
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as a campaign we see it as we see it more as a kind of project and the
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project is that we would like to keep in contact with people who drive sound one
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step forward as we do and uh we would we
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would stay in contact yeah we would uh work on some projects together Ingress
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was a good example we are supporting D mainstone with some some uh uh stuff uh
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she could use for performing Bridges and
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uh um I don't want to say the project ends short terms for us a campaign is a
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is a kind of short-term or midterm activity yeah you you you you produce
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some banners you do some advertising stuff and you have a short-term
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effect but what we see is that uh a long-term relationship a long-term
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impact driven message is more successful
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for us and that's the reason why this uh this uh project is more kind of
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long-term project yeah where of course we have to bring new stories in from
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time to time but it's not a kind of short-term effect of course we need we
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we we need to sell products yeah and uh
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uh after after running this campaign for the first 6 months we see big lift in in
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selling products but uh again this is more kind of two years activity instead
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of uh doing this for two months or or a bit longer because we started uh in a
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position especially in the US market which is the biggest Market in the world
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um with not the strong position as we
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are in mid of Europe so it's from from
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the brand itself not and everybody knows
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it so it's more kind of a who is Sennheiser so we need something uh I
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would call a bridge to a Target group maybe not interested uh in the sound
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device itself but terms of the image um
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headphones especially the big ones like we produce now with the urbanite uh
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became more a fashion item device something you want to express your
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personality and U there people looking more
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what it means to them in terms of of stylish component um so the idea was to
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to turn the perspective not talk about the device itself about the sound the
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style who made but talking about the end user so from people looking to Simply
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sound devices um Express uh a different
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kind of style of music um and this was always the Sennheiser approach to be uh
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some kind of neutral was a Sennheiser sound I would say be very clear C uh
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crisp um could display nearly every kind
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of music from bbop Jazz to uh hard rock
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or whatever we we found in story studies that really the audience prefer this
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kind of devices not um display the whole
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area the whole range of the music portfolio but have an expression is in a
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very specific kind of music style and this is um our gift I would say our uh
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present to them um and to really recognize that the that
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the listen experience changed in in the
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last 5 years I would say so when we were done the interviews one of the most
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disappointing things of the day or moments was when we arrived we were told
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that Axel gr the original designer of the hd800 headphones was not able to be
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there because he was sick after the interviews we found out he was able to
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make it still sick made it he still sick we couldn't shake his hand or anything
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which I really wanted to do but uh even cooler than that probably he gave us a
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little mini lesson yeah the probably one of the coolest lessons I've ever sat in
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on uh there was there was essentially two students lonus and myself and he
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went up there on on this on this grid paper essentially with a marker and just
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showed us how audio drivers work yep why bigger is good for some things but
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actually smaller is better for other things and the and the delicate
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balancing act that you have to go through to make a headphone product and
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then how they overcame the traditional design with the hd800 and and made it
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perform the way that it does it was it was incredibly cool and uh I think he
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might have felt a little bit awkward at the end when I asked him to sign the
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lesson sheet because I planned to roll it up and take it away with me but cuz
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we're quite literally going to frame it and put it up in the office yeah so uh
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so that was incredibly cool just to to get to get to meet someone with who's
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had that kind of an impact on on headphones it's it's it's just it's
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interesting being in the presence of someone that obviously knows that much
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about their specialty and it's just whenever you meet someone like that it's
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like okay I need to pay attention he's probably lost more brain cells sneezing
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from being sick that know more about audio equipment than I will ever learn
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in my life just just incredible so um
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speaking of incredible our our trip to Sennheiser was an incredible ride I hope
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you guys enjoyed coming along for it uh give this video a like if you liked it
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give it a dislike if you thought it sucked and we'll try and do better next
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scenes factory tours and and more insight into these companies that make
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