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Moog sells its business to InMusic

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Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#151

Post by duped »

notmypenguin wrote: post #48
elihu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using as an example of bad behavior one of the best examples of something good that Behringer has done. Those chips should be cloned, and now there are, I believe, at least three manufacturers of 3340 oscillator chips: CEM, Coolaudio, and Alfa. It's a very popular VCO chip in a number of eurorack modules, and has better tracking of volt-per-octave than any other analog VCO type I've used by far. Also, not very…

Tell that to Curtis widow. The goal of this is not magnanimity but to drive other synth makers to bankruptcy with cheap zero R&D synths. I am not speaking out of my behind here. If Behringer succeeds, the world of music gear LOSES. If you want a 3340 clone buy Alfa for half the price and don’t feed CoolAudio

Cheaper and more available parts is better for the industry no matter which way you cut it.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#152

Post by an-unknown »

glimshe wrote: post #54
elihu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be funny if there was a community effort to make a schematic of the Neutron or Proton, design a board, and have it manufactured at JLCPCB or wherever. Sell it as a kit with all the SMD components already populated, all you have to do is solder in the through-hole jacks and pots and whatever. Use a Eurorack module form factor so it doesn't need an enclosure. Sell it at cost, which would probably be way less t…

I think you are underestimating the difficulty of producing something. Just check what happens with 90% of kickstarters that need to produce stuff. And I know what I'm talking about because I thought about doing something like what you propose for a while, and I concluded that I'd never be able to beat Behringer. I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just not easy and Behringer has a lot of merit in being efficient at…

I think you are overestimating the difficulty of producing something. Start building stuff as a hobby, and decide that you want to build it as efficiently as possible because you are lazy. You'll quickly realize that building synthesizers and in particular Eurorack modules is easy and cheap if this is what you're focusing on.

What this means: with a Eurorack module, you don't need a case or power supply, since that's provided by the Eurorack "infrastructure". All you need is a "front panel" on your module as well as certain connectors, and probably one of the cheapest ways to build such a front panel is by manufacturing another PCB with the right size and the right holes. You can do that e.g. at JLCPCB, for can even beat Behringer yourself. After all, you don't have to live from selling such modules, and your development time is "free". And the best part: once you have a working design, you can get as many more modules manufactured as you want, for significantly decreasing prices if you manufacture them in slightly larger batches.

To give you an idea, I recently built a small PCB with "transistor ladder filters", but since they are small and cheap, I extended them and made the feedback path voltage controlled and also added a VCA directly after every filter. A PCB with 8 of them, manufactured and assembled at JLCPCB, cost around 30€. For completeness, this was for a 8 voice polyphonic Eurorack synthesizer module, which means this PCB didn't need any knobs/buttons/jacks/displays. Meanwhile Behringer sells a single "Moog VCF" in Eurorack format for >100€.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#154

Post by x3874 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #131
x3874 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a psychopathic edge - like cloning MI's Plaits, which many suspect helped push Émilie out of the business, to everyone's loss. Thats quite some... BS. Gillet intented to exit the audio hardware industry in search of different, greener pastures already way before Brains was released. Also MI code is public, so 'cloning' is a stretch. MI designs were and are being produced by multiple shops.

Maybe. Brains was announced in 2021. Gillet quit in 2022. I know the designs are open source and produced elsewhere, but it's not unreasonable to wonder if Brains was what finally pushed her over the edge.

Here we go again. I saw this coming:

https://www.gearnews.com/mutable-instruments-no-new-modules-...

Yes, Gillet has a history announcing ceasing development and production. Just read 'Have we been here before?', and also the last comment.

I bet people already asked Gillet directly if B's announcement contributed. I don't know, a) i don't care about vendor / personality cults, and b) their forums are gone.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#155

Post by TylerE »

glimshe wrote: post #50
notmypenguin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absolutely unethical when your obvious goal is to loss-lead everyone else into either bankruptcy or selling out. I am a consumer of music gear. Behringer actively harms my future ability to obtain new technologies because they kill those who produce them and produce nothing original or innovative. They poison the well! Uli Behringer is also the quintessential slimy shady businessman, look it up. Behringer is bad…

Is Behringer loss-leading? They have invested almost nothing in research and development for their little synths as they use long expired designs that require technology developed decades ago (dirt cheap). As a part time musician, my take is the opposite of yours. Behringer made instruments that were once owned by a small, non-inclusive wealthy elite (relatively speaking) available to everyone in rich and poor countr…

Some of that old tech is starting to be very NOT cheap, as the chips haven't been manufactured in 30 years and stockpiles are growing ever slimmer. Germanium stuff for fuzz boxes for instance are now sometimes going for $50+ for a single transistor that would have been 25 cents a few decades ago.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#158

Post by maxwell »

sowbug wrote: post #88
irjustin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews. This seems extremely straight forward to sue against? Basically the claim is either never paid for specific sales (very easy to win) or stated number of sales is lower than expected (requires lots of disclosure). OR, maybe he did win in court and they simply ignored the cour…

The situation might seem "extremely straightforward" to you, but it is an expensive and time-consuming kind of legal dispute, because it requires discovery of years of business records, expert witnesses in forensic accounting, and likely a trial to establish whose interpretation of key contract terms is the controlling one. That means years and at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work, at the end of wh…

Any ideas on potential ways to avoid this kind of outcome when going into a royalty deal in the first place?

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#159

Post by tnecniv »

sireat wrote: post #49
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it's necessary, it's common in the music production business. There are several egregious examples, Gibson Guitar being perhaps the best known.

Gibson took over an audio startup a relative of mine had co-founded. Gibson offered extremely promising terms - funding, keep creative freedom, just deliver cool products. The startup delivered the products and met the goals -just in time for Gibson to go bankrupt. Inside Gibson there was endless corporate infighting. - an executive that was championing the acquisition of the startup was fired - the support was basic…

It’s been a pretty open secret that Gibson has been a hot mess internally for quite a while. At one point the CEO said he saw them more as a lifestyle brand than a guitar brand, like how Harley Davidson tries to position itself in motorcycles (I don’t know anything about motorcycles so maybe I’m wrong but that was the comparison going around).

The best thing that Gibson has done recently has been to unify the Epiphone (their budget brand) line up with their lineup, and Epiphone’s quality has been a lot better since then in my experience. Now you can buy a relatively cheap Epiphone, slap some good aftermarket pickups in it, and have a really great Gibson-style guitar for a lot less than a Gibson.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#160

Post by tnecniv »

masukomi wrote: post #76

For anyone who cares about electronic instruments, i really recommend taking the tour of their factory in Asheville NC if you're in the area. It's short, but cool and shows you how the instruments are put together.

On a related note, tours of the Steinway factory in Queens are super cool. My music class in high school went on a trip there, I thought it would be kinda boring but an excuse to miss class, yet it ended up being one of my favorite field trips growing up.
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