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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

#311

Post by Ericson2314 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #306
Lio wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that is a good feature. Federated stuff is supposed to be the best of both worlds.

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

#312

Post by Bakary »

badpun wrote: post #279
Bakary wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I doubt any kind of ignorance is beneficial. Ignorance and stupidity are one of humanity's biggest blights, so the less we have them, the better.

Many of the systemic problems we have today are the direct result of greedy and intelligent people.

A hypothetical world where all people are one deviation smarter would probably be way more dangerous and stressful. The number of highly intelligent sociopaths would explode, leading to exponential damage.

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

#313

Post by eru »

Bakary wrote: post #258
eru wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

A company that makes zero profit for a while would likely see a change of ownership, too.

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

#314

Post by eru »

Ma8ee wrote: post #285
eru wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that supposed to prove? Btw, Amazon has done stock buybacks. Which are economically equivalent to dividends, but get different tax treatment.

That the two things that the comment I answered too claimed are wrong: 1. Not paying dividends is communistic. Few people would accuse Jeff Bezos of being a communist. 2. Bad things will happen if no dividends are paid. No, nothing bad has happened to Amazon because they didn't pay dividends. Another example is Apple that didn't pay any dividends between 1995 and 2012.

I'm afraid you are arguing against a strawman.

Obviously, the commenter meant any returns to shareholders, whether that be dividends or stock buybacks or anything else.

Second, the commenter was obviously also talking about the economy in general. Individual companies being run in peculiar ways won't bring down the economy.

As an analogy: some companies give away some products for free. But it wouldn't be a good idea for companies in general to give everything away for free.

Of course, you can still disagree with the points that the commenter made about no returns to shareholders leading to communism (and whether that's bad or not). But please show some charity in interpretation, if you want to have a productive discussion.

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

#315

Post by eru »

Ma8ee wrote: post #220
foldingmoney wrote: post #150

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. 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 t…

Amazon has bought back stocks, which is economically equivalent to paying dividends.

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

#316

Post by midoridensha »

projektfu wrote: post #246
anonymous344 wrote: post #228

is this because 90% of consumers are stupid or even idiots and getting more stupid every year?

I think it's because nothing has any meaning anymore. Brands used to pride themselves on quality, but then they realized that the listener perceives quality based mostly on price and aesthetics. Even people who know better. I remember about 30 years ago, my father was shopping for a stereo receiver. The salesman happily let him listen to them all, and he said, "You know, there's two people in this industry. There's t…

>My dad, a CS professor, didn't really like that description of reality and still wanted to hear each one, of course. Past a certain level of amplifier fidelity, the speakers, their placement, and their wires are responsible for all of the sound quality.

That should really be obvious to anyone knows how amplifiers work. The total distortion of any decent stereo amplifier is minuscule, and the difference between any two decent (or better) amplifiers is really tiny. But speakers, and the environment around them, make an enormous difference in sound.

Even 30 years ago, the real differences between amplifiers ("receivers" really) was the features included, not the distortion level of the amplifier. Also aesthetics: people wanted their stereo systems to look good and for the components to match. The power level was important too: if you were driving 6-feet-tall speakers, you needed a higher-power amp than one for driving bookshelf speakers.

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

#317

Post by eru »

jstanley wrote: post #222
eru wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean for under $200 of materials; and you did not charge yourself for the labour?

Why would you charge yourself labour for doing something you enjoy? If anything you should be paying yourself!

Oh, it's more for comparison of the price with commercial offerings.

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

#318

Post by rasz »

NoPicklez wrote: post #35
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.

Like $400 "Logitech Z-5500 THX-Certified 5.1 Digital Surround Sound Speaker System" released 20 years ago?

"The Z-5500 will consistently give you great sound on a daily basis and was tested by THX experts as well as our audio team."

"The Logitech Z-5500 is the best all-around PC speaker system we have used to date."

"Incredible sound and tons of amplifier power (505-watt (RMS), total peak power output of 1010 watts)"

All from a box fused at 120V 3A :-) and with 10% THD when even a low end home stereo systems were usually 0.1-0.9% THD. You open it up and find four dual channel TDA7294 powered with 2x26V giving maximum of ~30W per "62-69W" channel and ~60W for "188 watts" subwoofer. Logitech was always good at scamming unwashed masses and unsophisticated computer reviewers unable to read labels and small print.

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

#319

Post by NonNefarious »

potmat wrote: post #275
NonNefarious wrote: post #199

A few years ago I decided to move up from what I'd call "good consumer" receivers to something high(er)-end. So I shelled out $1400 for an NAD A/V receiver. This thing is unmitigated trash. It's riddled with design defects and bugs that render it unfit for purpose, some of which are acknowledged by NAD but with no solution. For example: You can't watch 1080p content through it because it reports incorrect EDID info t…

Possibly the problem is the "V" in "A/V". AFAIK NAD was always an audio components company. Introducing video adds a huge amount of complication they were probably not prepared for. But that's just a guess. As a counterpoint I have an NAD integrated amplifier I bought because it has a Chromecast built in. Even though it was a floor demo model it has never once put a foot wrong for me.

Then they shouldn't advertise what they can't deliver.

As time goes by you realize that what you thought were solved problems are not, and precious few people actually demand that they be solved. Precious few people (and almost no "reviewers") actually exercise the features advertised by vendors, and that they checked off on comparison shopping lists.

When you sell an A/V receiver that can't handle HD HDMI signals in 2022, you suck. You suck at the level of fraud.

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

#320

Post by tomnipotent »

refulgentis wrote: post #299
tomnipotent wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COGS is completely company-dependent, there is no universal exact definition so long as it can be verified to be GAAP/IFRS compliant (which is more art than science).

This is broadly correct but specifically incorrect: cost of sales includes ex. salaries and capital investments and cost of goods sold includes the literal cost of the raw materials for a good It's quite jarring to see someone jump in with another misunderstanding, derailing the correction, especially given this is a "hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras" situation. Any argument they're kinda sorta the same thing or i…

Somebody is confidently wrong.

There is no standard definition for "cost of sales", or "cost of goods sold". No where in any GAAP or IFRS literate does it say that the term "cost of sales" have specific definitions other than a paragraph or two of ambiguous wording. Indeed, IAS is even careful to say "allocating costs to functions may require arbitrary allocations and involve considerable judgement".

The Xiaomi filing doesn't breakdown what it includes in cost of sales, so we're left guessing without a supplemental to fill in the details. You're welcome to make whatever wilder guesses you like, but they're still just guesses.

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