 basically, So for our factory tour of Sennheiser, they actually decided on what I thought was a really cool way of showing us how it works. We got to follow the entire production line for the HD 800 headphones, so they're top of the line, top of the line over your headphones. We essentially got our own like guided tour how it's made episode. So now of course we're going to start making HD 801 Linus Tech Tips edition headphones. Oh, that would be so awesome. Because we have all that expertise. Oh definitely. We saw how they they, so it starts with the coil being wound by an automated coil winder machine that's got this heat gun that lets the that lets the wound coil kind of stick to itself so it all stays exactly precisely exactly the way it's supposed to be and then it comes out on like a spool of coiled spools. And they just if it's not exactly perfectly round they just ditch it. Yeah, there's an entire bin of just nope, these weren't round enough. They were ever so slightly off the curve, so no. So the finished coils get delivered to the next station where I was actually really surprised to see someone hand gluing coils on to diaphragms at this stage in the process. I assumed something like this would be automated. I assumed the entire process would be automated, but no at almost every stage. There's some amount of hand based intervention. And they were saying the reason for this is that for certain tasks, it's apparently still more precise to have someone do it by hand because there's lots of products. They even showed us some microphones or a microphone assembly area that was 100% automated. Start to finish being delivered in a MasterCard and microphones, but the HD 800s had a lot of hand assembly. And then something I didn't notice until they pointed it out was how many of the workers in this area of the factory were female. And not necessarily because females tend to love playing around with soldering irons more than other people or whatever else the case may be, but they were looking for a particular background. Very high skilled in fine motor skills. So they would specifically hire people that were previously things like hairdressers or florists, things that required small, fine, precise motor skills. And attention to detail. And attention to detail specifically, yeah. So at this next step, the chassis for the headphones, which was actually produced elsewhere in the factory. We never got to see raw materials being turned into HD 800, unfortunately, pieces, which would have been super cool. So these get the the coil and the diaphragm actually installed in them along with the magnet and then the whole thing's glued in place. And at this point, you've basically got a fully assembled transducer that's ready for the first QC step in the assembly process. So they have to make sure first of all that it fits within the appropriate frequency response range and that it can pair properly with another transducer. So they need to test all of these things and then find good pairs so they can both go within the same set of HD 800s. You have the same sound signature for each one. Yeah, because you might have the sort of the acceptable frequency response curve, but there might be a range of that. So they actually will have like an A and a B and that doesn't necessarily mean better or worse. It just means they're trying to look for ones that go together as best as they can. Now, what was interesting to me was how many assembled pieces failed. Which is not that the fail isn't necessarily a bad thing though, because they're they're being very tight about their regulations and they're making sure that if it's not perfect, it's not getting through, which is actually awesome. And anything, even a high precision product like a like a CPU processor is gonna have a yield rate and a lot of failures. The important thing is seeing that they're testing them and junking them at this stage of the process. They're failing here, not when they're at your door. Yeah, which is pretty cool. Now, it actually wasn't necessarily the coolest thing about this step in the process, the final step in the assembly process. But it was definitely the first thing that caught my eye in the back of the tiny little like four or five square meter area, where by the way every single HD 800 in the world gets built in this exact place by one of five people. They had 19, we counted them, 19 HD 800s on a rack ready to go out the door. Absolutely freaking beautiful. But the coolest thing about this workstation was probably how optimized it is. Yeah, you could tell as the as the work was moving through all the stages of creating the headphones that she definitely had this place optimized just to even where the bins were placed. And the whole thing was made out of extrusion to the point where you knew that Sennheiser just made these custom for the employees. Yeah, they looked kind of modular even. Yeah, extremely modular. And that's because they cardboard prototype all of their stations for the employees that will be working there. So they get all the employees that will use that station in with these cardboard crafted prototypes to make sure that everything's in exactly the right spot so that if some box is a little bit too far out of the way and in a kind of crappy position, you can move that so it won't make their arms sore if they're working. So all these all these workstations are specifically built for them. Now it should be noted that not every product gets the same treatment with like every piece being hand assembled the way the HD 800 does. Particularly the very high-end products, especially the ones made in Germany, this is going to be more common. But sometimes you're gonna have certain parts of the product made. Let's say for example, I believe it's Momentum where certain components are made in the Ireland facility and then shipped to China for assembly. So depending on the product, it might be actually manufactured in Germany, Ireland, the US for some of the professional grade stuff or in China. It seemed very common that they would make the acoustically important parts in something like Germany or maybe even possibly Ireland. And then they would do a lot of the assembly in somewhere like China. What's cool though is they were saying that regardless of where the manufacturing facility is, they're still trying to keep things very Sennheiser in terms of the quality of life of the workers. And the regulations. And you know same thing like prototyping the workstations to make sure that they actually are as efficient as possible and comfortable as possible. So I thought that was really really incredible and cool. Next up was another QA station. So this time you put the headphones on kind of an artificial head that will have a microphone on each side so that it can hear each one of the individual transducers from the headphones. And then they'll roll it into a soundproof box so that no sound is going to leak in from the factory floor. Automatically. It's on like an automatic like track. We actually didn't get to see it working unfortunately. They do the QA in batches. So but we had it explained to us and it looks pretty baller even if we don't get to see it in action. Yeah, they were so careful about this box not having any outside noise that it was even on dampeners. So if someone was to walk by really heavily, there would be none of that transferred into the inside of the box. So just making sure that all the frequency responses here and everything is perfect. Yeah, so then you unfortunately they don't include a printout in the box or anything like that. But what's cool is with the HD 800 you can actually contact Sennheiser and they will mail you the exact testing report from your exact serial number because they manually record them at this stage in the process, which I thought was pretty darn cool. They also have an artificial mouth on this artificial head with artificial ears that is used for aviation headsets. And then they have speakers inside the sound chamber for testing the noise cancellation of aforementioned headsets. So very interesting stuff. So we were on our way to product development and they asked us if we wanted to see the companion product of the HD 800, the HD VD 800. So this is an amplifier and I think the coolest thing about it was had got to be the testing apparatus. We didn't actually see a ton of the actual assembly, but we saw a little bit of it. But again, the really interesting part was the testing. So he hooked up everything you possibly could. All the things. Tested multiple volume levels for every single possible mode that there was and tested everything on this thing. So you know it's going to work. The whole thing took about 10 minutes and then it wasn't until after it passed testing that it even got a serial number and then it was polished. Polished twice. Polished twice. And then finally put away. And then ready to rock. Then we made our way upstairs and this was probably one of the coolest things about the entire tour. We got to visit the anechoic chamber. So this is a two story chamber full of noise dampening foam that's got this triangular shape that is designed to pretty much eliminate wall reflections. It was super weird standing in the room just because and they only allow four people at a time because you're actually standing on mesh. This wire mesh. Yeah, because you're standing above an entire story of more noise dampening foam below you. So the room is mostly mostly used for microphone testing. But what's really cool is not necessarily the anechoic chamber but actually a new testing facility that they're in the process of building which is going to be an entire auditorium and stage where they'll not only apparently actually have concerts but they'll use as a testing ground for their professional grade equipment. Which is pretty awesome. And then I think they're going to have another chamber in there so that they can rebuild that one 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 one. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. So with the factory out of the way this was this was really cool. We got to actually see a little bit of the Sennheiser company history. I mean it's still actually a family owned business which for a company that size is is pretty unusual. But we got to go and chill in the farmhouse which is at the very heart of the Sennheiser campus. They just tack on new things every time they make some money and they they need a new facility or equipment. So it's in various states of of sophistication depending on. You can see how far along the company was based on how big the building is and how modern the building is. Yeah, it's very cool. So we actually got to go into into the old farmhouse where they the original seven engineers started building audio equipment for other companies right at the end of the Second World War just to make ends meet. Because they were actually audio engineers and professors that had worked in a university and that university had been unfortunately basically flattened. Yeah. So they needed somewhere to work and that was a farmhouse. And the Americans came along and put a sign on the door that said basically we don't know what you're doing here but stop. And the sign mysteriously disappeared in the night and they and they kept working. And I guess I guess any audiophiles today are probably glad that they did. Definitely. So inside there they had some really cool stuff. They had Sennheiser's first there. They're patented open headphones. They're the 414. Yeah. Something along those lines by today's standards. They look like a joke. But at the time that was that was really amazing. They've got a lot of their earlier microphone products. They even had stuff for testing telecommunication cables which was one of the first things they did for kind of rebuilding different parts of Germany. Just out of necessity because the Sennheiser had to make some some money at the time. The centerpiece here though and this was unfortunately it was under glass. We didn't even get a chance to listen to it but they had an Orpheus. Oh man. Super nice. Super nice. The most amazing thing about the manufacturing of the Orpheus I think is the glass pieces with a thousand holes. Right. A thousand drilled holes in them. I mean if you ever tried to drill one hole in glass. It's crazy. That probably gives you some idea how hard it is to drill a thousand. Yeah. And then they also had another little wall of fame inside that they let us have a look at. So they've got Grammys, Academy Awards, all kinds of other awards and then some really cool products in the case across from there. Yeah some stuff that they've never even actually released because they just couldn't actually find a market for it but was super cool. I mean seeing all this history stuff was really cool but then we actually got an opportunity to sit down with some of the Sennheiser folks and talk about what they're doing today with the consumer products like the Momentum and the Urbanite. So we'll let them kind of take it from here and talk about the philosophy and especially the way that product development, the product design is being translated into a message that the more mainstream public can relate to a little bit better. Yeah. We don't see it as a campaign. We see it more as a kind of project and the project is that we would like to keep in contact with people who drive sound one step forward as we do. And we would stay in contact. Yeah we would work on some projects together. Ingrid was a good example. We are supporting Diane Mainstone with some stuff she could use for performing bridges and I don't want to say the project ends short term. For us a campaign is a kind of short term or mid term activity. Yeah you produce some banners, you do some advertising stuff and you have a short term effect. But what we think is that a long term relationship, a long term impact driven message is more successful for us. And that's the reason why this project is more kind of long term project. Yeah. Well of course we have to bring new stories in from time to time but it's not a kind of short term effect. Of course we need to sell products. And after running this campaign for the first six months we see a big lift in selling products. But again this is more kind of two years activity instead of doing this for two months or a bit longer. Because we started in a position, especially in the US market which is the biggest market in the world, with not the strong position as we are in the middle of Europe. So it's from the brand itself, not everybody knows it. So it's more a kind of who is Sennheiser. So we need something I would call a bridge to a target group maybe not interested in the sound device itself but in terms of the image. Headphones, especially the big ones like we produce now with the Urbanite became more a fashion item, a device. Something you want to express your personality and there are people looking more what it means to them in terms of stylish component. So the idea was to turn the perspective, not talk about the device itself, about the sound, the style made but talking about the end user. So from people looking to simply sound devices express a different kind of style of music and this was always the Sennheiser approach to be some kind of neutral. Was a Sennheiser sound I would say, very clear, crisp, could display nearly every kind of music from bebop, jazz to hard rock or whatever. We found in studies that really the audience preferred this kind of devices, not display the whole area, the whole range of the music portfolio but have an expression in a very specific kind of music style. And this is our gift I would say, our present to them and to really recognize that the listening experience changed in the last five years I would say. So when we were done the interviews, one of the most disappointing things of the day or moments was when we arrived we were told that Axel Grell, the original designer of the HD 800 headphones was not able to be there because he was sick. After the interviews we found out he was able to make it. He made it, he's still sick. We couldn't shake his hand or anything, which I really wanted to do. But even cooler than that, probably he gave us a little mini lesson. Yeah, probably one of the coolest lessons I've ever sat in on. There was essentially two students, Linus and myself, and he went up there on this grid paper essentially with a marker and just showed us how audio drivers work. Why bigger is good for some things but actually smaller is better for other things and the delicate balancing act that you have to go through to make a headphone product and then how they overcame the traditional design with the HD 800 and made it perform the way that it does. It was incredibly cool and I think he might have felt a little bit awkward at the end when I asked him to sign the lesson sheet because I planned to roll it up and take it away with me. Because we're quite literally going to frame it and put it up in the office. Yeah, so that was incredibly cool just to get to meet someone who's had that kind of an impact on headphones. It's interesting being in the presence of someone that obviously knows that much about their specialty. And it's just whenever you meet someone like that it's like, okay, I need to pay attention. He's probably lost more brain cells sneezing from being sick that know more about audio equipment than I will ever learn in my life. Just incredible. So speaking of incredible, our trip to Sennheiser was an incredible ride. I hope you guys enjoyed coming along for it. Give this video a like if you liked it, give it a dislike if you thought it sucked, and we'll try and do better next time. And let us know in the comments if you want to see more of these behind the scenes factory tours and more insight into these companies that make the products that you like or maybe don't like. Who knows? Who knows? Let us know. Guys, check out the video description. We've got a link to contribute to us monthly and help us make videos like this. You can buy a cool Linus Tech Tips t-shirt and then you can also change your Amazon affiliate bookmark. You can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code. It's been a long couple days. It's one with our affiliate code, so every time you buy headphones or microphones or whatever else, we get a small kickback. That helps us out a lot. Thank you again for watching and see you guys next time. As always, don't forget to subscribe. See, I do the ending of my video differently.