[joecool1029]

Beats/Bose were always like this. Selling the branding I mean, at least Beats had lineage of Monster producing a few decent units before they nudged them out of the picture.

Better example in the headphone world were high-end IEM's (Shure/Westone/Etymotics). Most of them were in the many hundreds of dollar range for good multi-driver units. In the past few years though Chinese manufacturers (KZ is one I can think of off the top of my head) sell their own lines on aliexpress/taobab using the same drivers for 10% of the cost.

I can't justify recommending the old names now to people, the value just isn't there (and most of the old big names stopped producing in US/EU since China turned out to have better QC). Why pay $200 for a double-driver Westone when I can recommend a 5-driver KZ unit for $60? I just don't get it.