Underlined facts
Bremen, I agree with you. And I will explain my POV a bit later, with the risk of being of-topic. I'm a European living in Cxina so I see the things from inside out.
Currently I have just two such boards: Connexelectronic on stock and there are little chances to make a new batch anytime soon while my cost is as least as the selling price of any iR7 amp clones found on fleabey or tobao and the sales of this board is not that hot as it was before. Why I call the others clones ? because their PCB's are 100% prints of the IRF gerbers. At the time when I made this board, I completely remade the layout, I just kept the position for the components and remade the layout from zero as can be seen in the attached image. Several components were changed, others upgraded, so I could get 500W on 4R on each channel and if the board was supplied at +-86V even 700W+/4R. I use only 100% genuine and best quality components, pcb and accessories (heatsinks, heatslugs) and this combined with a low production quantity (50-200 pcs each lot) cannot be competitive with those which are made in bulk quantities with the main target being lowest cost no matter what parts are used. Is not a secret anymore that some boards sold mostly on ebay and taobao use the cheapest components available often from unverified vendors or doubtly quality. They certainly not do-it without profit. Even if the prices are so low, often below good-sense threshold.
Trying to keep myself on the wave, I made the following two boards which are an example with a very tight profit margin, below 10 usd for first and around 5 usd for the second. If the price for one essential component will rise, such as the IRS2092 IC, or the output transistors, or even the assembly cost (the wages had doubled here in the past 4-5 years) I found myself in loss.
Connexelectronic
Connexelectronic
Why I'm doing them so cheap ? Recently most of the customers if they have to chose among let's say, 3 vendors which offer class D amplifier modules (I not give names) first of them has very good sound quality, second has a very high efficiency and low EMI and the third has a very compact size and shape, most of the customers would chose the fouth one, the cheapest, and often with no regard to quality. and after several attempt to mod this module, often solded with failures, will eventually buy one or more modules from the above mentioned vendors.
It might sound foolish, but with these modules, I tried to make a compromise between all the 3 mentioned vendors products at the price of bulky sellers. If the idea might prove successful, I will add few more other boards too, otherwise I will stop selling them when the stock will be finished.
While for the vast majority of DIY'ers being cheap cheap is always a good thing, the quality which usually come at this price is not up to expectations.
We all know that Competition is good for consumers and can flush the monopoly of a company in a field. We all know lots of examples especially in computer software business. But when the competition game is played without obeying rules (with no regards to IP or decency, using fake parts and poor quality assembly, untested designs, overrated specs and lack of after-sale support) is not a surprise that some of the competitors would give up or will change their business towards other fields. Then again the customer will be the one to suffer, found itself in a market flooded with junk products, without anything innovative made in the recent years, just printouts of the existing gerbers made available by the semiconductors companies, and the only alternative being the very few yet good quality but highly priced products still available on the market, which could not be ripped off and sold for 10% of their value (not enough brain power to clone them, if the Gerber are not available for download). Dumping crap on DIY market for lowest price will wipe away innovation, since the competitors are unable to cope with the lowest selling price and have no interest to develop and release new designs.
Personally I care less, I still have a job as main source of income and the main business is moving slowly but surely for OEM and ODM markets, where the parasites mentioned above cannot enter easily, mainly because they aren't capable to do a custom design or anything which involves more than changing the value of an existing component from the existing PCB. I have done several designs, more than a dozen this year only, which I had to decide whether I sell them online, for the general public, or OEM's. And yes, most of them were sold as production batches or complete design for them. Lot less headache than if I would sell the same quantity for DIY.
The choice is in customers hands. Buying cheap today, could help freezing the progress or paying more tomorrow on good quality boards which actually had be bought from the beginning.
Bremen, I agree with you. And I will explain my POV a bit later, with the risk of being of-topic. I'm a European living in Cxina so I see the things from inside out.
Currently I have just two such boards: Connexelectronic on stock and there are little chances to make a new batch anytime soon while my cost is as least as the selling price of any iR7 amp clones found on fleabey or tobao and the sales of this board is not that hot as it was before. Why I call the others clones ? because their PCB's are 100% prints of the IRF gerbers. At the time when I made this board, I completely remade the layout, I just kept the position for the components and remade the layout from zero as can be seen in the attached image. Several components were changed, others upgraded, so I could get 500W on 4R on each channel and if the board was supplied at +-86V even 700W+/4R. I use only 100% genuine and best quality components, pcb and accessories (heatsinks, heatslugs) and this combined with a low production quantity (50-200 pcs each lot) cannot be competitive with those which are made in bulk quantities with the main target being lowest cost no matter what parts are used. Is not a secret anymore that some boards sold mostly on ebay and taobao use the cheapest components available often from unverified vendors or doubtly quality. They certainly not do-it without profit. Even if the prices are so low, often below good-sense threshold.
Trying to keep myself on the wave, I made the following two boards which are an example with a very tight profit margin, below 10 usd for first and around 5 usd for the second. If the price for one essential component will rise, such as the IRS2092 IC, or the output transistors, or even the assembly cost (the wages had doubled here in the past 4-5 years) I found myself in loss.
Connexelectronic
Connexelectronic
Why I'm doing them so cheap ? Recently most of the customers if they have to chose among let's say, 3 vendors which offer class D amplifier modules (I not give names) first of them has very good sound quality, second has a very high efficiency and low EMI and the third has a very compact size and shape, most of the customers would chose the fouth one, the cheapest, and often with no regard to quality. and after several attempt to mod this module, often solded with failures, will eventually buy one or more modules from the above mentioned vendors.
It might sound foolish, but with these modules, I tried to make a compromise between all the 3 mentioned vendors products at the price of bulky sellers. If the idea might prove successful, I will add few more other boards too, otherwise I will stop selling them when the stock will be finished.
While for the vast majority of DIY'ers being cheap cheap is always a good thing, the quality which usually come at this price is not up to expectations.
We all know that Competition is good for consumers and can flush the monopoly of a company in a field. We all know lots of examples especially in computer software business. But when the competition game is played without obeying rules (with no regards to IP or decency, using fake parts and poor quality assembly, untested designs, overrated specs and lack of after-sale support) is not a surprise that some of the competitors would give up or will change their business towards other fields. Then again the customer will be the one to suffer, found itself in a market flooded with junk products, without anything innovative made in the recent years, just printouts of the existing gerbers made available by the semiconductors companies, and the only alternative being the very few yet good quality but highly priced products still available on the market, which could not be ripped off and sold for 10% of their value (not enough brain power to clone them, if the Gerber are not available for download). Dumping crap on DIY market for lowest price will wipe away innovation, since the competitors are unable to cope with the lowest selling price and have no interest to develop and release new designs.
Personally I care less, I still have a job as main source of income and the main business is moving slowly but surely for OEM and ODM markets, where the parasites mentioned above cannot enter easily, mainly because they aren't capable to do a custom design or anything which involves more than changing the value of an existing component from the existing PCB. I have done several designs, more than a dozen this year only, which I had to decide whether I sell them online, for the general public, or OEM's. And yes, most of them were sold as production batches or complete design for them. Lot less headache than if I would sell the same quantity for DIY.
The choice is in customers hands. Buying cheap today, could help freezing the progress or paying more tomorrow on good quality boards which actually had be bought from the beginning.
Attachments
Last edited:
Regarding the quality of the 40GBP board, quite apart from the risk that the parts are substandard I note that the thermistor is missing, many of the smt parts are at rakish angles on the board, and I don't trust the copper to be 2 ounce as specified.
My application is for an amp that I'll be sharing a stage with. I don't think I could risk it.
My application is for an amp that I'll be sharing a stage with. I don't think I could risk it.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.