Hey everyone, I recently released my first collaboration IEM, the DUNU Mirai, so I thought it’d be a fun opportunity to answer some questions about what shaped its development. I’ll also be happy to take questions about anything else pertaining to audio!
You guys are sponsored be Headphones.com and get your equipment for anything you test from there, can you explain further how that works? How long do you have a product before you have to send it back? Then what happens with it, is it cleaned and sold as a new product or cleaned and sold as an open box product?
Sure, so the units are often sourced from our own stock (Headphones.com pays for it) or they come directly from manufacturers. Reviewers often have them for a couple weeks (sometimes longer, if it’s not high-priority) before they’re sent back to HQ or passed onto the next reviewer. We do keep a couple on-hand long-term for reference sometimes (for example, I’ve had a U6t from them for a couple years haha).
I’m not 100% sure what happens to the units after, I think some do end up as open box if they’re super clean (and sourced from our own stock) but most of them are just kept around as references.