Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Moog sells its business to InMusic

ra.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 206 posts

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#11

Post by iamben »

scns wrote: post #2

> inMusic isn't free from controversy. Formed in 2012 by Jack O'Donnell, a former vice-president at DJ equipment brand Stanton > Roger Linn, who made many ground-breaking drum machines in the '80s before creating the MPC 60 for Akai, has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews. Is it absolutely necessary to fuck people o…

Couple of relevant PG essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/mean.html http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#12

Post by navane »

elihu wrote: post #10
JodieBenitez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the market tend to find "inefficient" areas and someone comes in and "maximize efficiency"? I think Behringer is trying to vacuum all revenue in that space... Yes. Behringer, from the start, was always about copying other brands and offer products to a larger audience through low prices. They used to do so with results of questionable quality... but not anymore. Their output in the synthesizers department has…

At least with Edge and Crave they changed the UI so someone wouldn't necessarily know it's a clone unless they were familiar with both synths. I kind of wonder if this was an intentional decision for Behringer or if Moog trademarked their interface and thus forced Behringer to do something different?

the advantage of keeping the UI the same is that you don't have to relearn a new interface.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#13

Post by JodieBenitez »

elihu wrote: post #10
JodieBenitez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the market tend to find "inefficient" areas and someone comes in and "maximize efficiency"? I think Behringer is trying to vacuum all revenue in that space... Yes. Behringer, from the start, was always about copying other brands and offer products to a larger audience through low prices. They used to do so with results of questionable quality... but not anymore. Their output in the synthesizers department has…

At least with Edge and Crave they changed the UI so someone wouldn't necessarily know it's a clone unless they were familiar with both synths. I kind of wonder if this was an intentional decision for Behringer or if Moog trademarked their interface and thus forced Behringer to do something different?

I don't know... but they didn't change much the UI for many older synths. Maybe some kind of patent expiration at play here ? I'm not into legal matters.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#14

Post by notmypenguin »

It’s sad how the entire music industry of actual innovators gets scooped up by conglomerates like InMusic. What is worse, however, is the blatant rip-off business plan of Behringer. They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths. Wanna know why Behringers product line exclusively features other peoples designs that have gone out of patent (or not, see Mackie ripoffs they built their base with). You may say, well, that’s capitalism, but no, dear reader, it’s shady and involves no new R&D work, no innovation, and since their business model is loss-leading everyone else out of business, it’s parasitic and will result in stifled innovation in music hardware.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#15

Post by Sosh101 »

elihu wrote: post #9
busterarm wrote: post #6

Hardware synths, in particular the varieties that Moog makes, are at peak relevance again and who knows if that will remain the case. The brand was certainly sucking wind for a good 30 years of its history previously. Cashing out that equity now is a shrewd move...especially as consumer spending has gone to who knows where.

I don't think hardware analogy synthesizers are going anywhere anytime soon. Moog is probably facing a lot of competition though, and they aren't very active in the Eurorack modular space where a lot of the interesting new stuff is happening. (In particular, a lot of their popular synths, including recently released ones, are being cloned by Behringer.) It would be interesting to know if they were doing great but sol…

I think the recent clones of the moog studio3 devices must have been part of it. The clones are less than half the price of the originals, and are arguably better.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#16

Post by Sosh101 »

notmypenguin wrote: post #14

It’s sad how the entire music industry of actual innovators gets scooped up by conglomerates like InMusic. What is worse, however, is the blatant rip-off business plan of Behringer. They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths. Wanna know why Behringers product line exclusively features other peoples designs that have…

Behringer did release their own "Neutron" (and soon "Proton"), but I generally agree with your points. Also they've cloned Moog gear that's <10 years old.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#17

Post by [deleted] »

scns wrote: post #2

> inMusic isn't free from controversy. Formed in 2012 by Jack O'Donnell, a former vice-president at DJ equipment brand Stanton > Roger Linn, who made many ground-breaking drum machines in the '80s before creating the MPC 60 for Akai, has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews. Is it absolutely necessary to fuck people o…

[deleted]

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#18

Post by Sosh101 »

elihu wrote: post #10
JodieBenitez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the market tend to find "inefficient" areas and someone comes in and "maximize efficiency"? I think Behringer is trying to vacuum all revenue in that space... Yes. Behringer, from the start, was always about copying other brands and offer products to a larger audience through low prices. They used to do so with results of questionable quality... but not anymore. Their output in the synthesizers department has…

At least with Edge and Crave they changed the UI so someone wouldn't necessarily know it's a clone unless they were familiar with both synths. I kind of wonder if this was an intentional decision for Behringer or if Moog trademarked their interface and thus forced Behringer to do something different?

Since Behringer usually keep clones as close to the original as possible, I think this was a strategy to avoid legal issues when cloning something recent. These ones are functionally equivalent, but presented quite differently.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#20

Post by chuchana »

notmypenguin wrote: post #14

It’s sad how the entire music industry of actual innovators gets scooped up by conglomerates like InMusic. What is worse, however, is the blatant rip-off business plan of Behringer. They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths. Wanna know why Behringers product line exclusively features other peoples designs that have…

I completely agree with you, but how is that not capitalism?
Post reply on HN