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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

#251

Post by diroussel »

IgorPartola wrote: post #245

Any time this comes up I wonder: isn’t the ideal setup aimed at giving you a flat frequency response curve? Why reviews? Why experts and subjective opinions of online reviewers? Sure other factors can be a part of it like longevity of the product, price for performance, power, but at the end of the day sound quality can be objectively measured, no?

If you look at measured frequency response of any audio equipment then you never see a truly flat response. At least I haven’t. And the phase shift of often far from flat.

So if you have two systems that have near flat responses it’s possible that one sounds better for certain inputs.

Also Bose plot (frequency and phase plot) is a type of analysis that assumes the system is linear. If the system is not linear, what is the plot showing you? I imagine many systems are very close to linear, but at the edges of dynamic range they can’t be.

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

#252

Post by criddell »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #75
jonhohle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're in the US, this is a great first kit ($160 shipped for a pair): https://www.parts-express.com/Overnight-Sensations-MT-Speake... These are a good step up for a living room, although $240/ea: https://www.parts-express.com/Amiga-MT-Tower-Speaker-Kit-Wit... There are a few other sites that sell kits, either just the electronics or including pre-cut cabinets, i.e. https://meniscusaudio.com/product-category/speak…

I have a semi-crappy Onkyo CR-N575 bookshelf receiver[1] on my desk because I wanted a small system that could play CDs, radio, Bluetooth, Spotify, etc... (there's not much out there for this anymore).

I've always wondered if buying (or now I'm thinking about making) better speakers would make a noticeable difference in the mediocre sound? I only ever play at pretty low volumes and the receiver itself is no gem.

The manual says RMS output power is 20W + 20W, 1kHz, 10% THD 6 ohms, but then a couple of lines later says THD is 0.05% line in, digital in 1kHz 1W. That's pretty bad, right? If so, then speakers may not be worth upgrading. If they are, how could I tell if these[2] are compatible?

[1]: https://www.intl.onkyo.com/downloads/manuals/pdf/cs-n575d_ma...

[2]: https://www.parts-express.com/HiVi-B4N-4-Aluminum-Midbass-Ro...

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

#253

Post by varispeed »

dcx wrote: post #81
lvl102 wrote: post #44

I sold a very limited run electronics once. Less than 1,000. Most of this is true. The key is to make something niche enough that you can justify that fat margin. Pre-pandemic, it was quite cheap to produce even proof of concept products in Shenzhen IF you knew where to go for quality. Not anymore. 2016-19 was a special period for hobbyists.

This sounds interesting, why is this no longer true?

Components shortage. It's a hit and miss - you created a design, all components are available. You come to order e.g. 100 unit run, turns out the manufacturer already ran out of stock on one crucial component. Ok you can source that component elsewhere (and someone asks 5x mark up), but that manufacturer won't take your stock of components. So you order 100 units anyway, just without that part assembled and you will finish the assembly locally. That complication might have already wiped off any profit you could get on that unit.

Alternative example - one crucial component is out of stock, but manufacturer has a different model of a microcontroller, that is pin compatible but has half of the RAM. You run an analysis and your firmware should run fine, but you may need to do some tweaks here and there. You place an order with an alternative part.

Suddenly you have to support multiple versions of the same product. Then imagine your product team comes up with a new feature that also users ask for. Problem is that it may not work with the revision with half the RAM. Would you offer an update only to a section of customers? Would you replace the boards for free once they become available? Or do you make a completely new version of a product (which is going to piss customers who just bought the "old" version).

Etc. Etc. These supply chain problems make any planning not possible. The common "solution" is to only start making a product once you have all parts physically available. But this can be an enormous upfront cost, as you can't order parts as pre-orders for the product come in. Then let's say you created 1000 units, sold all. In the meantime 5% of crucial components go out of stock and lead time is 52 weeks and growing. You can probably sustain the company for a year and re-design the product to use different parts, but experience shows that they may get out of stock too. You are going to have to focus 90% of your time chasing components than developing the product. This is not viable. Many businesses are closing now because of this.

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

#254

Post by criddell »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #170
matthew-wegner wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in the US, this is a great first kit ($160 shipped for a pair): https://www.parts-express.com/Overnight-Sensations-MT-Speake... These are a good step up for a living room, although $240/ea: https://www.parts-express.com/Amiga-MT-Tower-Speaker-Kit-Wit... There are a few other sites that sell kits, either just the electronics or including pre-cut cabinets, i.e. https://meniscusaudio.com/product-category/speak…

Some suggestions from the german DIY scene: A step up from the overnight sensations, the Twiggy BR : http://www.hifi-forum.de/index.php?action=browseT&forum_id=2... Built them myself, hard to improve on price-performance ratio. They have no right to sound this great given their size & budget. The Bantams are supposed to be very good as well, suitable for eg desktop use, haven't heard or built them myself yet: https:/…

I'd like thank you and the GP for posting these links. My daughter has a synthesizer that she would like some monitor speakers for and making them might be a fun project. These links are great.

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

#255

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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.

Companies have long done this sort of aspirational marketing. President Cigars (made up) didn't need to be used by the president; the unnamed cowboy, on a poster, smoking your brand of cigarettes conferred some level of vicarious living and cool; etc.

But, which company/companies were first with celeb staff members/owners (ie not just endorsement)?

Planet Hollywood seems like it was an early version of this. Victor Kyam's (sp?) "I like it so much I bought the company" is on similar lines but not quite there. Thoughts?

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

#256

Post by VLM »

ehnto wrote: post #181
orangetuba wrote: post #177

There is a lot of talk about DIY here, which sounds cool, but I'm also pretty lazy and I have started way too many projects. What are some really underestimated systems that you can buy?

I think part of the discussion is that there are no 'hidden gems' at fair prices. You have cheap products sold for cheap, and cheap products sold for a lot, and then you have expensive products sold for much much more. There is no good products sold for a fair amount, just bargains on commodity gear. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the 'middle market' is only such in price, not product quality. I would say…

Most marketplaces are like that including food, lumber, fasteners (screws and nails and stuff) and clothing.

Cheap junk at cheap prices, cheap junk at medium prices for the aspirational shopper, good stuff at luxury brand prices, nothing else.

If you do woodworking you can buy inconsistently zinc plated insta-rust steel for $1 online, $5 (of which $4 is pure profit) for the same junk at big box stores, or about $50 at a specialty store for stainless steel and solid (not plated) brass that looks nice and will last a lifetime.

Another example: Cell phone chargers. The one apple ships with their phones actually follows all FCC/UL specs and is legal. Dollar store charger, not so much...

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

#257

Post by II2II »

mc32 wrote: post #87
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…

Definitely agree. People who rail against this don't understand economics much further than my mom sold yard bird eggs for less than the corner store --corner stores are opportunist capitalists with no heart who take advantage of people. If they had to sustain a business I'm afraid they could not. Every wannabe post-capital economist should try to run a restaurant (profitably).

Corner stores also have their own expenses to deal with. They rarely have the same access to suppliers as grocery stores, nor do they have the access to the same prices for their goods. They may be paying the same for labour, but they are typically dealing with much lower volumes. I don't have a clue on how the cost of their leases compares, but it is going to affect the price consumers pay. If it really was as simple as them being opportunist capitalists yaking advantage of people, we would see far more corner stores in this world.

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

#258

Post by Bakary »

eru wrote: post #243
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, [...] If you put it like that: just don't pay any interest on your debt. The only thing that will happen is that the old owners will be wiped out in bankruptcy, and the older creditors will be the new owners. Since you don't care about the owners, and only about the 'business', this is means 'nothing will happen'.

This is a strawman in the sense that such a change of ownership can be highly disruptive to the business

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

#259

Post by gambiting »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #248
gambiting wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's a great example, https://youtu.be/f-QxLAxwxkM -- a CD trimmer that (paraphrasing) "improves your audio quality" and was lauded by audiophiles.

If you want a good laugh, have a look at this forum thread - it's like these people are from a different planet. So many posters saying that the NVMe drive has improved the clarity and "richness" of their sound. Fortunately it's a harmless kind of ignorance.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/62753-nvme-ssd-desi...

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

#260

Post by Bakary »

jiggawatts wrote: post #86
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. There's a lot wrong with this, but not in a moral sense. For all his faults, Elon Musk made a good point about the space industry near the beginning of SpaceX. He asked a team of "rocket scientists" how much a rocket cost. They said something like $100M. Then he asked them to sum up the material costs. Sheetmetal, tubing, rivets, etc…

The real insight I'm gettimg here is just to curb our consumption to a great extent. The fact that shipping new products is cheaper than reinventoring used ones is an indication that we are on a death spiral. Having the move fast and break things crowd come up with a solution to consumer electronic prices is just going to accelerate pollution that much more. And I am aware of the sweet irony of typing all this on a phone whose low price depends on complex supply chains.
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