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Moog sells its business to InMusic

ra.co

161–170 of 206 posts

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#161
post #142
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…

Why on earth would someone go thru the effort to sell it at cost thought ? Also you underestimate economies of scale behringer can employ, I'd be surprised if you could get close to their price. You can look at various DIY stuff and you will probably notice that getting stuff DIY isn't all that much cheaper I'll throw you an example: Maths, which Behringer cloned, costs ~$300 fully assembled Befaco Rampage, which is…

I could see a well-motivated hobbyist or group of hobbyists doing the design for fun, or to make a point. People do similarly ambitious things all the time.

Behringer has impressive scale, but honestly I think for PCB manufacture and assembly, JLCPCB probably has them beat -- and any random hobbyist has access to JLCPCB.

The cost of Maths and Rampage has more to do with having to earn enough to pay all their employees and make a decent profit that the actual marginal cost of manufacturing one more module. Maths is very popular, but it's still a fairly low-volume market.

I think one thing it would be hard to compete with Behringer on is enclosures. But maybe that doesn't matter; a Neutron/Proton clone wouldn't necessarily need one if it's a Eurorack module.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#162
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I will guess that you've never sold electronics at scale, with box, manual, per-country regulatory rules, customs, warranty, inventory etc. It's great that you have produced this small little module, but this is very far from what Behringer is doing. It's like comparing a personal Github repo with commercial software.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#163
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…

> 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…

If Roger Linn, one of the most genuine and generous guys around in the business, calls somebody a bastard, they're absolutely a bastard.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because they seem to have the most egregious examples based on works that seem to everyone else to be pretty successful? "the Tolkien estate sued New Line, claiming that their contract entitled them to 7.5% of the gross receipts of the $6 billion hit.[23] According to New Line's accounts, the trilogy made "horrendous losses" and no profit at all." I think most people would find it surprising that both Return…

Points on the gross receipts are not points on the profits. The fact that the trilogy was supposedly unprofitable shouldn't be relevant.

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Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#165

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.

Yes! I did this tour, and it was surprising how much of their boards are hand assembled right there in the factory. Lots of discrete components. You also get to play some very expensive gear that you may never see elsewhere.

But everything is just so ungodly expensive. It's hard to justify getting two octaves that can play a single note for the same price as a used top-of-the-line baby grand piano.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#169
post #135
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behringer attracts more attention. Arturia used MI code in the MicroFreak and falsely claimed they had Gillet's blessing, nobody cared. Arturia make VST clones of every popular synth out and charge $500, nobody cares. Behringer makes an affortable version of the Model D because Moog never bothered to and people complain.

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* Bob Moog, obviously.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#170
post #156

"Nothing is changing" -- when the company buying you says this you should be concerned because it only means their strategy is to keep you 100% in the dark about what will change rather than partially.

Another interpretation (maybe even more negative) is that the leadership team is not experienced enough to understand what changes happen post-acquisition.

This means many employees won't be prepared for the changes, and many quit as the ground shifts beneath them over the next 5 years.

It also means leadership hasn't made a list of things that are worth fighting over vs which changes to accept, so they're not going to have a clear vision on how to defend the important parts of their culture.

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