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“Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

audiosciencereview.com

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Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#31

Post by jccalhoun »

Nition wrote: post #20
yalogin wrote: post #14

This post answered the one question that I couldn’t find answer for many years, that is why he did Dr.Dre get into the beats business or the other way why would the founders include Dr.Dre Now I understand that the equipment manufacturing is already commoditized and so the onus is fully on marketing and so he provides a great value.

Reminds me of Intel hiring will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas as Director Of Creative Innovation.

Lady Gaga creative director of specialty products at Polaroid in 2010 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lady-gaga-named-creative_b_41...

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#32

Post by abcc8 »

sidpatil wrote: post #26
m463 wrote: post #18

What I'd like as a consumer is the antidote to this. I saw something like this trying to get a replacement plumbing fitting at my parent's house a few years back. The local hardware store with the high-quality stuff had been closed down by the big-box stores. Perusing the possibilities at lowes and home depot showed plastic and fake chrome when I would have paid extra for high quality brass or even metal. It was just…

> Perusing the possibilities at lowes and home depot showed plastic and fake chrome when I would have paid extra for high quality brass or even metal. It was just gone. Both Lowe's and Home Depot sell metal faucets, taps, knobs, etc., in a variety of styles.

They could be referring to a toilet paper roller. Just had to replace one of mine and realized while shopping that I haven't seen a proper metal one of those in in years.

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#33

Post by edrxty »

nomel wrote: post #21
mschuster91 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> random FCC compliance stuff Nothing better than designing a product and actually producing a batch of it... and then finding out you have some EMI problem requiring a redesign. If you're lucky, you can remedy it by manually adding some shielding tape, if not... you might as well file for bankruptcy in the worst case.

I worked in a semi anechoic test chamber for measuring radiated emissions. We had a few cases like this that one of the engineers was especially good at solving. In one, we had a cheaper network switch that was failing one of the limits. One of our engineers walked in with a can of metalized spray paint, applied a single squirt to the inside of the plastic case, and fixed the issue. If you bought one and opened it, y…

I know the ham folks will sometimes coat the insides of radios with that stuff to fix cheap radio emi issues

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#34

Post by daviddever23box »

Are any of these observations "secrets", or simply naive observations that have come home to roost?

(Disclaimer: I spent two decades in the hi-fi industry, from tech to sales mgr to product consultant, and I currently work in consumer electronics technology on the software side.)

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#35

Post by NoPicklez »

twobitshifter wrote: post #30

I recently purchased a bluetooth speaker from “ultimate ears” which is a logitech brand. It’s great and seems to sound better than what you can get from marshall or beats.

Logitech make good products, their speakers have always been quite good IMO.

I'll never forget in high school a buddy and I had two of the same Logitech X-540 speakers. We plugged the speakers together and pumped it through effectively a 10.2 setup.

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#36

Post by calvinmorrison »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #5
soared wrote: post #2

Articles like these make me appreciate my business degree, because this list is the basics of any business. 30% COGS, high shipping costs, outsourced manufacturing, big box focusing on low end market, etc is all very normal for almost any industry.

I don't mean to be rude, but you don't need a business degree to understand the very basic things that you mentioned. I am fairly sure that most people using Hacker News understand those simple concepts in business.

If you are in IT, and you're not a fantastic engineer. Level up your business skills.

ERP administrators are an untapped source of business knowledge, because they map all the crap business is up to and are forced to learn about all the weird metrics, acronyms, reports, and so forth a business uses to survive.

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#37

Post by edrxty »

tarakat wrote: post #29
edrxty wrote: post #3

This seems to apply across the entire Small Plastic-covered Electronics sector. I worked for an instrumentation/sporting goods manufacturer among others and this reads like I wrote it myself. The CEO, even of a small operation, likely has no idea what the performance characteristics of their devices are. They exist to raise capital and deal with paperwork. We operated at about a 25% bom cost which was muuuuch higher…

> whatever voodoo the S&M team is up to Those teams rarely justify their cost, especially if you factor in all the sexual harassment lawsuits that they're a breeding ground for.

They always held a lot of parties I wasn't invited to, but after being asked to change random text strings enough times to "make it easier for the customer to understand" I don't think I wanted to go anyway.

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#38

Post by confounded »

tarakat wrote: post #29
edrxty wrote: post #3

This seems to apply across the entire Small Plastic-covered Electronics sector. I worked for an instrumentation/sporting goods manufacturer among others and this reads like I wrote it myself. The CEO, even of a small operation, likely has no idea what the performance characteristics of their devices are. They exist to raise capital and deal with paperwork. We operated at about a 25% bom cost which was muuuuch higher…

> whatever voodoo the S&M team is up to Those teams rarely justify their cost, especially if you factor in all the sexual harassment lawsuits that they're a breeding ground for.

That might be a different type of S&M team

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#39

Post by xani_ »

m463 wrote: post #18

What I'd like as a consumer is the antidote to this. I saw something like this trying to get a replacement plumbing fitting at my parent's house a few years back. The local hardware store with the high-quality stuff had been closed down by the big-box stores. Perusing the possibilities at lowes and home depot showed plastic and fake chrome when I would have paid extra for high quality brass or even metal. It was just…

That's an unfortunate name for a company...

Re: “Secrets” about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

#40

Post by asveikau »

abcc8 wrote: post #32
sidpatil wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perusing the possibilities at lowes and home depot showed plastic and fake chrome when I would have paid extra for high quality brass or even metal. It was just gone. Both Lowe's and Home Depot sell metal faucets, taps, knobs, etc., in a variety of styles.

They could be referring to a toilet paper roller. Just had to replace one of mine and realized while shopping that I haven't seen a proper metal one of those in in years.

I got one on Amazon.
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