I strongly disagree. I have been dealing with Chi-fi for years now and while there are some brands which are genuinely good, the others just don't hold up well in the long run. Your argument regarding ChiFi using small amounts of resources in comparison to the western brands is simply not true. ChiFi brands are much more cunning and they advertise in more shrewd ways. Reviewers are bought off, they are constantly sent free review units in return of positive ratings. The moment you put out even a lukewarm review they will threaten to cut off supply of future review units. And this is a big no no as it will jeopardize a reviewer's livelihood as they earn money by selling review units. The iem and headphone market has been flooded by chifi and almost all of them are wrought with driver failures, channel imbalances, absolutely horrid tuning and terrible customer service. Which brings me to the next point: they pay truckloads to dealers to promote their subpar stuff, and should you need any service in the future you have to go through them which in turn is another pain. The biggest headphone brand from China- Hifiman has utter garbage build quality and choice of materials are terrible that don't even last 3 years. Even if they do they look like something that survived a nuclear fallout. They "collaborate" with reviewers to come out with custom tunings so as to appease said reviewers' audience target. They only care about one thing- MOVE UNITS. And not to mention they post false specs (mostly about power ratings) and mislead the audience. Topping headphone amps are infamous for frying headphones (which they have now fixed), quoting obscene (and misleading) power output figures. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I review myself (by no means a full timer) and I have friends who also review chifi stuff (mainly iems, hp amps, dacs etc) and even they have shared the same experience. There is more to a product than a fancy heavy metal chassis filled with (gimmicky) "features".
Their headphone amps are all about putting a million op-amps in parallel and then applying a crap ton of negative feedback for it to measure good- cause that's what they care. They need ASR's approval. I have used such said amps from Topping and SMSL and while they do work, they sound either very thin and sterile or extremely boring. Their designs are primitive usually.
That being said, they have nailed DACs for sure. Which is saying something! So, credit where credit is due!
And regarding indian brands not holding a candle to anything that came out of China is just a hilarious statement. Out of all the indian brands I have encountered, most of them are very positive and much more soundly designed with proper support. The chinese historically haven't done anything innovative in audio and neither did India, it all came from the west. As you said, they are best at "reverse engineering" (read: copy, or cheaply mimic). You cannot buy innovation, that is why they buy off the companies and the rest is history (case in point: tannoy).
That being said, there are a few brands like Fiio for example who are totally transparent and honest in what they market. I am not saying they are the only company from China to do that, there are some good serious brands out there as well (like the ones you have mentioned). But they are uncommon, and in the grand scheme of things ChiFi is not to be trusted.
www.vincent-tac.de
