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

audiosciencereview.com

61–70 of 338 posts

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

#61
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Obligatory Kanye interview clip (NSFW, explicit language):

https://youtu.be/uYUCUrzrF5E

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

#62
Any thoughts on how you would price a HaaS product. Would you aim for 30% of LTV?

I've been looking at Whoop, and I think they have a great business model. Based on my estimates, the COG of their product is probably $8-12. The monthly cost is $35 - but you have to subscribe for a minimum of 12 months so $420.

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

#63
post #39
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...

Oh no, they very very very much lean in to it.

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

#64
post #24
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% COGS surprised me… I always estimated it would have been around 50%. Learned something new.

Just look at the prices on AliExpress. They are a fraction of the prices at retail stores, and it includes the sellers margins. And AliExpress products are not always counterfeits and can be acceptable in quality. A COGS of 30% is, as they say, on the upper end. For brands that have to offer a certain amount of quality in order to sell instead of going purely for ads and brand recognition. 50% is the retail store mar…

I was surprised to see that retail stores get 50%. I was looking at fake leather bags the other day and they really look very high quality and sells for 10USD. I can't imagine making that bag for 5USD and making a profit off of it.

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

#65
> The cost of building a consumer audio product is generally no more than 30% of retail. 30% COGS (cost of goods sold) is virtually a maximum for items sold at mainstream retailers.

There’s nothing wrong with this. These are standard ratios, not some dirty secret.

The cost of goods sold is only a fraction of the costs that go into getting products all the way into the customers’ hands and supporting them (customer support, warranty replacements, lost shipments, fraudulent orders, etc.). That’s not even counting the R&D investment costs that go into making the product, as the post says.

Salaries, warehousing, shipping, insurance, and all of the others costs of doing business add up.

It’s not actually realistic to expect an entire company to be selling you a $300 product that costs them something like $250 to build. Every business in existence must build in enough margin to pay the people who do all of the work to make it happen and support it.

If this seems shocking, consider that the COGS of software as a service products are much lower by comparison. Doesn’t matter, though, because you have to pay all of those expensive salaries to make it happen.

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

#66

I built my own speakers for under $200 and I honestly think they are some of the best I've ever heard for a personal setup. They were inspired by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKIye4RZ-5k (Tech Ingredients) . I built the speakers from foam board, the subwoofer from car audio parts and the amp is a standard class D amp. The best part is whenever someone comments on how good my speakers sound I can say I built them m…

Were there any guides or tutorials you followed? 20 years ago or so, I knew someone who built their own speaker cabinets and I couldn’t believe DIY speakers could match companies that spent hundreds millions on audio engineering. I’ve heard enough anecdotes that I would be interested in learning more.

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

#68
Major consumer speaker vendors don't make it easy to compare speakers. When I was looking for a portable speaker to play outside I was surprised to see that for most of the speakers you'll find at big box stores, there are no statistics for loudness or how it sounds. The best we get is size and rarely amperage, which I found through trial and error are dubious measures at best. I ended up returning two overpriced soft sounding speakers before the third one was sufficient. Price doesn't make as much of a difference as I thought it would either.

As a consumer, I don't know what to trust because the marketing on these things can be pretty useless.

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

#69

I built my own speakers for under $200 and I honestly think they are some of the best I've ever heard for a personal setup. They were inspired by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKIye4RZ-5k (Tech Ingredients) . I built the speakers from foam board, the subwoofer from car audio parts and the amp is a standard class D amp. The best part is whenever someone comments on how good my speakers sound I can say I built them m…

Were there any guides or tutorials you followed? 20 years ago or so, I knew someone who built their own speaker cabinets and I couldn’t believe DIY speakers could match companies that spent hundreds millions on audio engineering. I’ve heard enough anecdotes that I would be interested in learning more.

You might like this playlist from DIY Perks: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOJU8YJjFwGOeh6BgCWVh...

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

#70

I built my own speakers for under $200 and I honestly think they are some of the best I've ever heard for a personal setup. They were inspired by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKIye4RZ-5k (Tech Ingredients) . I built the speakers from foam board, the subwoofer from car audio parts and the amp is a standard class D amp. The best part is whenever someone comments on how good my speakers sound I can say I built them m…

Were there any guides or tutorials you followed? 20 years ago or so, I knew someone who built their own speaker cabinets and I couldn’t believe DIY speakers could match companies that spent hundreds millions on audio engineering. I’ve heard enough anecdotes that I would be interested in learning more.

I sized my subwoofer box using https://subbox.pro/en/ . I built the foam board speakers the same way built here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKIye4RZ-5k&ab_channel=TechI... . The amplifier is a class D amp from amazon somewhat like this one https://a.co/d/8XgEEsG
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