my humble two cents, brands don't mean crap, listening is highly subjective, a pair of high end Bose might sound crap to you while it may be God's best gift to human kind to your friend, for any audio equipment take the reviews with a pinch of salt, go and listen as per your taste and decide, Till now honestly the best bang for buck for me has been A4tech's ... damn they are fine as far as i am concerned, i recently bought Minix NT-II Bluetooth headphones and have only used them once, i don't like the SQ to be honest, if someone want them do PM me, I would be looking around for another pair of decent wireless headphones in Dubai which would go along my Xbox One & Mobile
Sir, I indeed second your motion.
I have surely experienced this.
I have $5 to $20 gear that sounds better than 100s of dollars worth of gear, and yes, bang for buck is in the lowest price section.
I replaced one of my broken overear cans drivers (PKR6000 pair) with some cheap broken A4Tech on-ear drivers. The 300 rupay walay drivers are smaller, and BETTER in every way, and sound kickA$$.
Some brands are worth the money, but not all. And personally, as many other pricier cans I have, I would always skip Beats and Bose (personal reasons). But needless to say, I have much more pricey stuff, but I'd never pay those two companies a cent.
Anyhow, I completely agree with your point.
Your two cents are actually many dollars, if people actually look into things instead of brands.
Hifiman is the most pricey audiophile brand out there, and a pretty good bang too (comparatively). And many don't even know, and it's a MADE IN CHINA thing (brand, production, everything), and their quality kicks above any Japanese, American, German or Austrian brand. But they have cheap shit also. I mean, it's better to get their cans than stupid and pricey Beats and stuff. But again, there are hundreds of other, so much cheaper brands people often overlook. Just like many $5 earbuds are storming over on headfi, and people are using thousands of dollar worth of amps with $5 buds.
It's pretty complicated. But yes, PRICE, BRAND and BLING are just words. It's much more than that. And sometimes you find wonders in the cheapest packages, and shit in the most expensive. You never know. You need to dig deep.
Again, agreed to what you just said.