[marshray]

Why do these types of market partitioning practices anger people so much?

Because it makes them feel ripped off.

Enthusiasts were likely having positive feelings about their purchase of Sennheiser products and now they feel like an idiot. Psychology is a big part of the audio business.

Isn't it a good thing that these companies are offering different price points for people to choose from?

That Sennheiser is taking headphones and expending extra cost to muffle them in order to sell them at a lower price indicates that they do not consider themselves to be in an efficient economic market. Likely they are selling the muffled headphones in order to artificially inflate the price of the normal ones.

It also raises the question of in what other ways Sennheiser might be intentionally degrading the quality of its products.

[cabalamat]

> Psychology is a big part of the audio business.

It's a big part of most businesses; you want the customer to have positive emotions regarding your company/product.

[mryall]

A similar thing happens with TVs in electrical appliance stores. Brighter pictures are more appealing to the average viewer, so the stores bump up the brightness setting on the more expensive TVs.

They can pull tricks like this because most people don't care that much about whether their chosen product is better according to some objective measurement. Rather, they care about getting a good deal and being made to feel happy about their purchase.

Unfortunately for Sennheiser, high-end audio customers are probably one group who do care about buying something objectively better. News like this risks hurting their target market substantially, I'd say.