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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

#301

Post by chadcmulligan »

Bakary wrote: post #263
gambiting wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's actually beneficial ignorance. Money is transferred from those who don't know what to do with it into the broader economy.

I can see your point, but it makes it very hard for new comers. I was talking to someone the other day who had bought 3 DACs for different purposes to listen to YouTube sound on their edifier speakers and headphones. Its difficult to tell them they could probably not bother with the dacs, but there's a whole echo chamber about these things that confuses the new comers.

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

#302

Post by TylerE »

Lio wrote: post #172
TylerE wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

From the home page: > Yes, that is our name. Shih-tah. It's a proud German name, host to a long line of audio engineers who slaved away in crumbling Teutonic fortresses as lightning lashed the dark lands outside, working to perfect the best amplification devices in the world... > Or, well, no. Yep, Schiit is our name, and it's pronounced, well, like "hey man, that's some really good Schiit!" And now that we have your…

I’ve been running one of their Jotenheim headphone amps/dacs for years. Killer gear, and not just “for the money”.

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

#303

Post by rr808 »

concordDance wrote: post #154
rr808 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon and other high volume low margin retailers are a is pretty good antidote "for this". Good shipped from manufacturer to consumer with smallest markup possible. Of course it kills service, local shopping, city taxes, retail employment along the way but that was the overhead.

Amazon is flooded with products. Often duplicates with fake reviews. How can someone actually find a quality item and know that's what it is on Amazon?

Agreed, its really time to start buying reputable brands again. Or perhaps go to a shop and dont complain about retail markups. :)

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

#304

Post by chrismcb »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #204
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…

I used to be a naive DIY hobbyist who was outraged by how much more expensive commercial products were compared to the parts cost. But of course what you say is true. Electronic and software design, physical design, productisation, marketing, distribution, packaging, support, business premises, logistics, and backup business services (payroll, accounting) all cost money. Even a nominal markup of 40% may not be enough…

Ironically a box of rocks will probably "improve" (well affect) your audio more than a cable will. As sounds does bounce off objects. That being said there are cheap, worthless cables as well. I'll pay a bit more for a cable where they connection won't fall off after two uses.

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

#305

Post by Naracion »

KaiserPro wrote: post #217
brosinante wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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"

Is the microphone embedded? If not:

Should be qualified by "since the mic is on the receiver, if you were to situate your head at the receiver's mic position and accounting for the mic's ADC circuit there is a chance that your human ears would hear something like a flat response."

But of course that can't be generalized across the room, different points in the room will have different acoustic response because of the unique positioning wrt other reflective surfaces.

The closest you can actually get is to use something like miniDSP and a umik, position the umik where you would usually sit, and then let the DSP run and calibrate.

Anyhow--I'm not knocking you. I'm all about better audio through such tricks as well. It's just we can't probably say absolute things having a flat response, because at the end of the day people hear different things (both physiologically but also psychologically). One of the things I do for fun sometimes is run a flat signal that sweeps through the frequency range and edit the equalizer until I _perceive it_ to be a flat response, then compare the EQ to the FR chart on audiosciencereview if they have reviewed it or if the product has included it in their marketing :)

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

#306

Post by Eisenstein »

Lio wrote: post #174
Ericson2314 wrote: post #60

I'm just happy niche communities using old school forum software still exist!

So am I. As someone that doesn't use Facebook or Reddit it's sad as hell when you join a club or society and they don't really use the forum on their own site any more. I've often wondered if there's something not quite good enough with open source forum software that Facebook is getting right. I suspect it's push notifications, but it's just a guess.

I don't know about facebook, but reddit's killer feature is consolidation. The ability to have one account and access communities for everything is what holds me there.

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

#307

Post by Smoosh »

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).

Can I ask what a "yard bird" is in this context? Does it mean home kept chickens?

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

#308

Post by IgorPartola »

323 wrote: post #266
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?

With our current technology it's impossible to make a flat frequency response speaker. It's possible for amps, mics, DACs, but not for speakers, unless you talk about million dollar facilities. So you need to pick from different non-flat speakers, which means listening test if you really care. You can't figure out which one you'll like just from looking at the frequency response graph.

Why is it not just picking the flattest response you can afford? Will a less flat response ever sound better than a more flat response?

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

#309

Post by adolph »

RHSman2 wrote: post #166
eyelidlessness wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shit HN says. Sheesh Indeed. I read the article, then I read these three comments. The first one reiterates points that the article made but seemingly doesn’t recognize the article made them. The second does recognize that but with a combative tone. The third is just combative. Y’all can carry on as usual but none of that conflict was actually warranted.

HN is so Tone Deaf

Opprobrium update urgently needed

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

#310

Post by adolph »

Smoosh wrote: post #307
mc32 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Can I ask what a "yard bird" is in this context? Does it mean home kept chickens?

I would think so, but M-W doesn’t list a fowl:

  Definition of yardbird
  1 : a soldier assigned to a menial task or restricted to a limited area as a disciplinary measure
  2 : an untrained or inept enlisted man
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yardbird

The OED apparently agrees:

  *"Mil.* A recruit, a newly-  enlisted serviceman; also, a serviceman under
  discipline for a misdemeanour; one assigned to menial tasks. Also
  *transf."*First
  ex.: (late) 1941.
The person who made this citation claims that comic strip “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith” made reference earlier.

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2014-June/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google_and_Snuffy_Smith

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