John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

[kgrlee]

Originally Posted by john curl

I can design 'Hondas' too, and do so, all the time, but they are not 'World Class'

F1 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991
Senna 3x Picquet & Prost 1 each

Motorcycle World Championships from 1961 far too many to list ... including some years when they were World Champions in ALL 5 FIM classes.

Not that they subscribed to Colin Chapman's ideas or that their amps would crash & burn after 1 play of Stravinsky's Firebird. But I do know some Golden Pinnae amps that do the later.

[PMA]

Please take into account that this is mostly marketing thread. This is not a serious design thread.

[john curl]

No, I will NOT give you access to my latest designs!

[gpapag]

Originally Posted by john curl

These efforts to make 'World Class' reproduction cost time and money to make.
It always surprises me that amateurs cannot assess where the money goes.

It always surprises me how you don’t allow for different priorities and different Gods to worship.
It should have occurred to you by now in this site.
Amateurs do know where the money goes. Professional designers too.

George

>Edit. I wish you were humorous in your last (above) post

[john curl]

OK, gpapag, let's discuss where the money goes in making a quality audio product, let's say, as few as 100 targeted, to several thousand in some cases.
I would like to first follow the Parasound 'rule of thumb'. That is, the finished product has to be priced about 4 times its LANDED cost. That is: The cost of initial manufacture, parts, and initial testing, as well as packaging and shipment to San Francisco from Taiwan.
Runs may be 100 or more, but not too many, BECAUSE of the capital requirements in advance, necessary to do business.
If you gpapag, or anyone else actually did an inventory costing of one of the designs, I should think that YOU could not even source the parts, for what we pay for the finished product. This is our commercial advantage over typical amateurish start-up operations.
Now why, about 4 times the landed price for a product.
Well, Parasound has to DESIGN the product, at least the general topology, and make sure the prototype actually works as well as expected.
Parasound has to ADVERTISE the product, so that people know it is available.
Parasound has to WARRANTEE the product, for a number of years.
There are shipping charges, some fairly high.
The dealer usually needs about 40% to make their overhead. This has been true for many decades, at least 50 years and probably more.
Now, what is mark up for a $1000 item?
Landed cost $250.
Factory price $500, with 100% incoming inspection and bias adjustment. (warranty repair is a later cost)
Shipping, etc, maybe $100, if the product has any serious weight and size.
This leaves about $400 for the audio dealer to both stock and sell the product to its regular customers, as well as the advertisements paid for by Parasound bringing them into their dealership looking for the model.
Now is this 'out of line' with other companies and their mark-ups?

[bcarso]

Originally Posted by john curl

Now is this 'out of line' with other companies and their mark-ups?

Not at all. Indeed some of the Harman products had a far larger markup, and Engineering was frequently getting slammed by Sales and Marketing for somehow not coming up with products that were "competitive". Actually the designs were wonderfully efficient and streamlined, but the edict that the traditional margins be maintained made it impossible to compete in the lower end categories. And perhaps that was as well.

Opportunities that were missed however in the OEM computer business included working with the audio source providers toward synergistic systems. It turns out that, with very rare exceptions, people resent and combat any such cooperation.

[john curl]

My experience with HK when I worked with them about 35 years ago, was there was a significant amount of 'fat' around middle management. They seemed to suck up all the added money.
This is why Silver could offer essentially the same product for about 1/2 price under their own brand name.

[morinix]

Originally Posted by bcarso

Opportunities that were missed however in the OEM computer business included working with the audio source providers toward synergistic systems. It turns out that, with very rare exceptions, people resent and combat any such cooperation.

I watched the box speaker guys at HCG do exactly this to the multimedia group. It was truly confounding.

[Bonsai]

Originally Posted by PMA

Please take into account that this is mostly marketing thread. This is not a serious design thread.

Please do not insult marketing.

[bcarso]

Originally Posted by morinix

I watched the box speaker guys at HCG do exactly this to the multimedia group. It was truly confounding.

Oh yeah there was plenty of intracompany fighting. At one point consumer bitched that Multimedia was taking business away from them, but their idea of the business was sourcing transducers that already existed elsewhere, marking them up and branding them, and trying to persuade someone like Samsung to pay a premium! Whereas Multimedia was designing custom transducers optimized to the customer's needs.

But I was thinking about when Harman was supplying Dell, and there were opportunities for doing things like look-ahead on the audio data and using that for more intelligent behavior of the amplifier/speaker. After a short time I realized that, despite their size, Dell basically just picked suppliers and didn't do much development themselves. And as well the suppliers weren't the least bit interested in cooperation.