My chineese Hidizs dac low cost is insanely good... For his price...There is better for sure, but i cannot fault it really... And there is a diminishing return zone which is subjectivily and objectivily characterized zone...My only upgrade , a real upgrade from it will cost me 40 times his price... Not a marginal improvement with few thousand bucks but a REAL upgrade...The real upgrade will be American made by the way...
On the other hand my old german engineering school the hybrid AKG K 340 beat most chinese Hifiman headphones probably at any price save one perhaps or two of the costlier one i dont know ...And i am not interested to buy one even if i could...
My hifiman HE 400 sound by far as complete junk, less good than my Akg k701 which i dislike too and anyway was made as junk compared to the K340 as were my 9 others headphone anyway ... ( the chinese He 400 break on my head from his own bad design i did not weep so bad it was in spite of positive reviewers) Yes i must say i dont like headphones in general .. Save my actual one...
There is no general truth without many exceptions ... Each product has his own engineeering history and context...
But claiming that there is not much audiophiles with money in China NOW with no good high end products in China NOW is not realistic... Just think about how many good engineers there is and how many good pianists for the population size ?
Way more than in America now... Canada included...
"By some estimates, the country has as many as 40 million piano students, compared with six million in the United States. " It is the same for engineers numbers..
Who knows all audiophile top products from China from the last 10 years ?
Just my big rock of salt...