It’s common to add weights to headphones to make them feel premium which is bizarre since actually premium headphones tend to try very hard to reduce weight as the weight makes them more uncomfortable.
I don’t know how to fix the market especially when consumers keep rewarding these practices, and I think the effectiveness of TikTok style influencer marketing will make it worse.
I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. B&W actually reduced the weight on the Px8 S2 compared to the original, and the headphones themselves are genuinely lightweight for what they are. The cable isn’t thick to “feel premium” (it feels kinda bad); it’s thick because it’s rated for 65W+ power delivery that the headphones don’t need.
The problem is the opposite of what you’re describing, it’s not a cynical design choice, it’s a lazy one. They probably just purchased a cable for capabilities irrelevant to the product and the result is worse ergonomics and misleading physical cues about what the cable can actually do.
“I don’t think..” Ok, you’ve made a number of assumptions and we don’t share the same priors so I’m unable to follow you to your conclusion.
I think you are underestimating the importance of perceived premium combined with the pressures of cost accounting, but I do think that is pretty normal for ‘audiophiles’ which is their target market.
Which assumptions? The weight reduction on the S2 is documented and the cable’s 65W rating is what the tester confirmed.
If the argument is that B&W deliberately chose a thick cable to seem premium, it doesn’t square with them actively slimming down the headphones. B&W are primarily a speaker company, their USB-C product range is basically just a few headphones and earbuds.
More likely they just sourced a generic cable that happened to support high wattage and didn’t think about the mismatch.
Either way, we’re deep in the weeds on B&W’s cable procurement now. The root point is that USB-C is a mess. You can’t tell what a cable supports by looking at it, and even premium manufacturers are shipping cables that don’t do what you’d reasonably expect.
That’s exactly the problem the Treedix from the article solves.
My point on weight was that the market for that it is common, which is probably a stronger statement than needed. I should have made the weaker argument and said the market exists which only needs one example. The company Beats can serve as that example, this company sells the majority of premium headphones but I don’t actually know what percentage have weights placed in them. I am assuming a non trivial percentage.
You are using circular reasoning in your logic, you assume the premise is true and from there you derive your evidence.
I would contend that someone thought about it and decided to go with the cheaper option because they could get away with it. I would consider my assumption to have more grounding given my experience with manufacturing and cost accounting.
You’ve gone from “companies add weight to feel premium” to “they went with the cheaper option because they could get away with it.” Those are opposite explanations. But either way, the cable doesn’t do what its physical presence suggests, nothing on it tells you otherwise, and that’s the entire point of the device in the article.
My position is entirely consistent, it is cheaper to signal premium quality than actually deliver it. The point I am making is that there is immense comercial pressure to do this is a highly competitive market when selling to consumers who don’t know better.
My example of weights is that the steel weighs are cheaper than the alternative of using heavier drivers, by adding weight they are signaling premium without delivering it. Similarly with the USB cable, consumers assume such cables are thick because of thicker wires and better shielding, it’s cheaper to make a thick cable without those those features, once again signaling premium without actually providing it.
That's a more coherent version of your argument, but it's still speculative. You're attributing a deliberate strategy to what is more easily explained by indifference. B&W make about four products with USB-C cables. This isn't a company with a cable strategy, cynical or otherwise.
4th times the charm. You’ve provided no evidence for indifference. My point remains, given industry standards indifference would be highly unusual and not at all a safe assumption.
The vast majority of high volume consumer manufacturers use cost accounting practices which would absolutely be tracking and attributing the usb cable costs and the whole point of that accounting practice is to constantly be thinking about minimizing costs of even the smallest inputs, all the way down to the individual screws used. Yes, they’re thinking about how to save 1/100ths of a cent from each screw.