I asked them this directly a while back and was told gluing pads actualy has a fair impact on the consistency of their cans. Their drivers rely on air loading significantly more than basicaly anyone else making cans right now, so the gluing makes sure they get consistent loading across production.

Maybe I'm more understanding because I work in manufacturing, but failure is nearly unavoidable, so extremely low rates (fractions of a percent in this case) on the first batch and quick responce means it's not realy worth worrying about imo. It's becomes far different when its something constant on a very mature process such as susvara and nothing seems to have been done imo

Hifiman has 0 QC but great CS. Abyss and focal have generaly top tier QC but the worst CS I've ever felt with. Ime, only having owned their higher end stuff and being from the US, audeze has the best QC and the best CS I've ever dealt with in audio.

Exactly. China means it can be cheaper but China is capable of producing truly top tier quality just like anywhere else. It just costs more to do so just like anywhere else

That was only 2 or 3 units of the first batch out of thousands and they immediately replaced. Tbh I don't give them as much of a hard time for that as I do for what happened in this post