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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

#211

Post by alex3305 »

This doesn't at all surprise me. I consider myself a enthousiast with a limited budget. For instance I have a pair of Sennheiser HD 25-1 II for maybe 15 years now and I still enjoy them. Same goes for my KRK Rokit monitors. But recently I wanted to buy some Bluetooth headphones, since you know, the 3.5mm is absent from my new phone.

For those headphones I just went to the local MediaMarkt. First looked at crazy expensive Sennheisers, than at some boomy JBL's (Samsung) until I finally settled at some House of Marley Positive Vibration II - Bluetooth. It was the least expensive set of Bluetooth headphones in store with the poorest reviews online. But for me the sound was great. At that moment I realized that I had forgotten an important lesson for audio devices: Choose with your ears. Especially when you have a limited budget, like myself.

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

#212

Post by rowanG077 »

eru wrote: post #210
rowanG077 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. The purpose of a listed business is to pay the owners, not to produce goods or services - producing goods or services is just a means through which to pay the owners. This is true only in the simplest of world views. Let's take this idea to the real world. Let's say all food producer would say today to stop and instead start producing toilet wipes(or insert anything here) or whatever because the can make more mo…

Food prices would go up, as producers leave that market.

over time yes. But that assumes not every producer leaves the market in a short time frame. The bounce back effect would be devastating. In fact food production is already a pretty non-profitable endeavor and yet the companies don't stop doing it.

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

#213

Post by nottorp »

> Most Chinese factories and engineers are perfectly capable of producing high-end equipment... but their customers don't ask for it.

For cheap ish stuff, for example: do you want a test done in the factory? That will raise the manufacturing price by 50% or more, depending on how cheap your widget is.

So you get your DOA widgets from the store and just return them instead.

Source: I worked for a company that did direct manufacturing in China.

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

#214

Post by Ma8ee »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #196
Ma8ee wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing any other expense will be detrimental to the business, that is, make it work less well. Nothing will happen to the business if the owners don't get any dividends.

> Nothing will happen to the business if the owners don't get any dividends. This was the theory of communism. Empirically, we can see that things will happen to the business if the owners don't get any dividends.

Amazon has never paid any dividends.

I don't think anything more needs to be said.

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

#215

Post by AussieWog93 »

buro9 wrote: post #179
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #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 su…

For most consumers I'm not sure COGS is something that they are aware of. The big takeaway from understanding COGS is using that to understand fast moving and disposable goods and merchandise. In the UK a recent (last decade) thing has been fast fashion, Primark and the like are leaders at this. It is possible to purchase a pair of straight leg jeans for GBP 12. Understanding COGS means you can quickly realise that t…

If you're on Windows, alt-0163 inserts the £ character on a US keyboard. 0164 is €.

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

#216

Post by gambiting »

KaiserPro wrote: post #197

The problem with audio in general is that its really difficult to find decent reviews of the product. I used to work as a tech in a recording studio (along with a theatre and TV studio) We have a set of nearfield speakers, and that was about it. However audio reviews are basically: "Its got punchy bass" and "sounds a bit woolly" or "has brilliant clarity in the upper regions" are about as descriptive as review get. N…

On the other end of this you have serious audio reviewers who on one hand are professionals and have tonnes of experience, but then you see them review an absolute nonsense product like an audio-friendly ethernet switch(!!!) or "audiophile" NVMe drive, and write an entire article about how transformative it was to their sound(for the better, of course).

Then you start to realize that even the best ear is still subjective, and people will hear things if they want to hear them.

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

#217

Post by KaiserPro »

brosinante wrote: post #202
KaiserPro wrote: post #197

The problem with audio in general is that its really difficult to find decent reviews of the product. I used to work as a tech in a recording studio (along with a theatre and TV studio) We have a set of nearfield speakers, and that was about it. However audio reviews are basically: "Its got punchy bass" and "sounds a bit woolly" or "has brilliant clarity in the upper regions" are about as descriptive as review get. N…

"personally, I have a second hand denon HDMI decoder thing, with airplay [..] dsp filtering [..] calibration stage [...] decent flat reproduction" These are certainly words, and everything else being the same I absolutely would rather have the "bit wooly" kind of review to read.

i see what you did there! also point taken.

In my defence, "decent flat reproduction" is at least measurable. However I should have actually been much more precise in my language. It should have read something like "the frequency response across the full spectrum is flat, which means that what you put in is what comes out, there is no extra base or treble, despite the shape and sound performance of the room"

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

#218

Post by KaiserPro »

gambiting wrote: post #216
KaiserPro wrote: post #197

The problem with audio in general is that its really difficult to find decent reviews of the product. I used to work as a tech in a recording studio (along with a theatre and TV studio) We have a set of nearfield speakers, and that was about it. However audio reviews are basically: "Its got punchy bass" and "sounds a bit woolly" or "has brilliant clarity in the upper regions" are about as descriptive as review get. N…

On the other end of this you have serious audio reviewers who on one hand are professionals and have tonnes of experience, but then you see them review an absolute nonsense product like an audio-friendly ethernet switch(!!!) or "audiophile" NVMe drive, and write an entire article about how transformative it was to their sound(for the better, of course). Then you start to realize that even the best ear is still subjec…

> Then you start to realize that even the best ear is still subjective, and people will hear things if they want to hear them.

urgh yes.

When I was recording something, I routed an (audio)compressor/gate combo. I was twiddling something on the effect and convinced myself that it was making a change.

Looked to my left, the person was vehemently agreeing with me, I looked behind, the other person had a face like I'd farted. A while later I realised that I had routed the output into a muted bus. (ie I couldn't hear the output of the effect, only the raw original)

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

#219

Post by golergka »

mrweasel wrote: post #190
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #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 su…

> There’s nothing wrong with this. These are standard ratios, not some dirty secret. Standard, absolutely, but I think many are surprised by how much of that is profit for the company that sells the product to the consumers. I worked for a company that had 40-45% margins on most consumer electronics. Less than 40% and the buyers didn't really want to deal with it.

Revenue, not profit. They have pretty huge costs of doing business, too.

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

#220

Post by Ma8ee »

foldingmoney wrote: post #150
Ma8ee wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing any other expense will be detrimental to the business, that is, make it work less well. Nothing will happen to the business if the owners don't get any dividends.

>Removing any other expense will be detrimental to the business, that is, make it work less well. Nothing will happen to the business if the owners don't get any dividends. I'd say two things. 1. A listed business wouldn't exist in the first place (or in its present form) if owners hadn't been enticed to put up capital in the hope of getting dividends. 2. The purpose of a listed business is to pay the owners, not to…

Amazon has never paid any dividends.

Further, you are just plain wrong about both of your points. At least as general statements.

1. Of course there are some businesses that are created to be able to pay the owners of the capital dividends (or more common, to be able to sell the business later to someone who hopes to be able to collect dividends). But a lot of businesses are created to for people to just being able to do their job. Say a gardener who wants to work with tending gardens. Their main purpose of the business is not to collect dividends, and they may never do.

2. That a business sole purpose only is to pay the owners is a quite recent (popularised in the eighties) neoliberal idea and far from any universal truth. The purposes of any single business can be whatever the business owner wants, which range from the obvious, become rich, to serving the community with some particular goods or service, providing employment and security to the local workforce or creating opportunity for people work with some craft they love.

The stakeholders in a business are far from only the people that invested capital in it. They also include the local community, the employees and the family, and of course the customers.

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