I have a new neighbor. He's 50 years old, going on 16. He just got out of prison and has the loudest sound system in his truck. I can't listen to my system in the house when he drives down the alley. It drowns it out! (To make it worse, he listens to puke music - that's what I call it - sounds like the vocalists are vomiting very very loud.)
I don't get the 130 dB mobile sound systems. They're idiotic, and a menace. This "man" is not doing a good job of making friends with his new neighbors.
I don't get the 130 dB mobile sound systems. They're idiotic, and a menace. This "man" is not doing a good job of making friends with his new neighbors.
I can think of a couple of niches for some nice stuff though.
Cafes and boutiques. If you find some nice place with 'atmosphere', maybe they'll be open to upgrading their probably-sh1tty stereo to something unique and made locally?
There could be situations where you just lease to them, even for free, and people who go to the cafe love the sound, see the logo or QR code and bam! In fact, I might do exactly that in my area...
Cafes and boutiques. If you find some nice place with 'atmosphere', maybe they'll be open to upgrading their probably-sh1tty stereo to something unique and made locally?
There could be situations where you just lease to them, even for free, and people who go to the cafe love the sound, see the logo or QR code and bam! In fact, I might do exactly that in my area...
just out of prison and already “found” money to buy a truck and a loud sound system? Sounds like he’s trying to find a way back there as quick as he can.
That's what I thought. He has a brand new Escalade, pimped to the max.
He moved back in with his elderly parents. I feel sorry for them. I would say he doesn't fit into a community like this; it's professional and family oriented.
He's ******* everybody off with his music and sophomoric antics. I think either someone is going to mess with him (he's a genuine menace to society) or else he's going back to prison.
He moved back in with his elderly parents. I feel sorry for them. I would say he doesn't fit into a community like this; it's professional and family oriented.
He's ******* everybody off with his music and sophomoric antics. I think either someone is going to mess with him (he's a genuine menace to society) or else he's going back to prison.
I'll add one more point. You really have to look at the market and what the response may be. If you start to take away profit from the big guys, expect a response. They'll find a way to destroy your sales. Stay a gnat and they won't care.
Step out of line and the mafia will send round a couple of their boys to push in some dust caps 😆
Popular and affordable consumer brands (like Polk, Klipsch, etc) have to employ serious compromises to hit a sub- $1000 price for speakers. This doesn't make them bad; not at all. It makes them very hard to compete with. They are very clever, they have the resources to design, test, and tweak their designs until they squeeze the most performance out of the parts they can use while hitting their price point, etc. They're good at it. They have engineers that have the talent and knowledge to sort through multiple solutions etc. You could never match their collective experience.
Or you could go after high end like Sonus Faber. To reach your demographic you need to market to people that can afford to pay sometimes $20K for a speaker. Can you compete with them? Certainly not on all fronts.
If you can produce a speaker that has an edge in the market, maybe brings unique value to a segment, and can line up a vendor willing to market it, then maybe go for it. Don't quit your day job though.
Or you could go after high end like Sonus Faber. To reach your demographic you need to market to people that can afford to pay sometimes $20K for a speaker. Can you compete with them? Certainly not on all fronts.
If you can produce a speaker that has an edge in the market, maybe brings unique value to a segment, and can line up a vendor willing to market it, then maybe go for it. Don't quit your day job though.
LOL, I've been an early guy in a startup and also my own company. I've seen pretty predatory actions that might make even some mob members envious, mainly with the startup. My company was more of a gnat, although the big boys carved me out pretty well after a few years. The startup ended with some very nasty stuff with years of litigation and an eventual jail sentence in state prison for some people. Helps when the big boys are friends with the county DA and diddy is well connected in DC. So if whatever the OP wants to do is going to threaten say Harmon, I'd be wary.
If you use any patented ideas, they'll eat you alive in court.
Good luck with that. Better budget for lawyers too.
Good luck with that. Better budget for lawyers too.
Here, where I live, my neighbor turns on the sound more or less twice a month at 135 decibels right next to my house, it's to make up for it the music is shi*, without any quality.
But I'm not a big fan of low sound either, I turn on my sound at 120 decibels every day.
Get free training, go work at an audio retail store. HiFi and Audiophile are two entirely different markets. HiFi is about achieving high fidelity without concern for mixing and replacing components, looks and these products often appeal to professional market as well as consumer. Audiophiles are more about high priced art that makes sound and focuses on traditional passive speakers, passive crossovers, exotic cables, tube amplifiers and lots and lots of components that can be collected and swapped in and out of systems without any fear that the system will not work.
Again, analyze the market. But it would not surprise me if you could be successful if you gain a reputation for doing things right. So not just loud. But also in a way that integrates well with the car. At least I know guys here who paid for the professional installation of CarFi to avoid the hassles of having to deal with running wires inside the vehicles, selecting a unit that'll integrate with the car's controls and navigation, etc. But that reputation takes years to build, so don't expect an overnight success.
Tom
Sounds like they like it loud in Brazil. Samba baterias and all. I'd bet few are building things like Altec A7s or A5s (A9 / A10) - the Big Stuff. While I'm sure there's plenty of other PA speakers someone would be glad to sell, that might be a niche. Engineer your way around the unobtanium drivers and horns; make it producable.
So just to be very clear your title for this thread "How to enter the audiophile market" is totally misleading since your real goal is to enter the market where the main objective of the sound is SPL not quality (fidelity). That is not a characteristic of an audiophile market. In fact, it is quite the opposite of what would be consider an audiophile experience.
Uh, recently posted about the following car audio stuff in another thread:
I looked up some info on what they are doing. Basically its synthetic, not accurate reproduction. They can synthesize a specific soundstage experience from a mono track and make it sound like you are in whatever room or sound environment you want to be in. IOW, DSP tricks, many of which have been around for a long time, are now being used in cars. In comparison, extremely accurate reproduction of a stereo recording is a rather different problem with its own challenges. Its not something they are claiming to be able to do in cars.
"...proprietary HARMAN DSP-based technologies such as Individual Sound Zones (ISZ), QuantumLogic Immersion 3D Surround Sound, Clari-Fi music reconstruction technology, HALOsonicnoise management solutions and the customized, acoustically modeled environments of Virtual Venues."
"QuantumLogic Surround uses proprietary algorithms to extract signal streams and impulse responses from the original recording. Individual voices and instruments, as well as reverberant spatial information, are identified and then re-authored into a precise multichannel soundfield. A key component of QLS is its Aesthetic Engine, which combines the individual signal streams using patented filter bank technology and psychoacoustic modeling to create an immersive multichannel listening experience with exceptional clarity, detail and image specificity. It is compatible with mono and stereo sources, as well as all popular surround sound formats."
"A brief technical description of how QuantumLogic Surround operates is as follows: a mono, stereo or multichannel audio input is processed with stream extraction, reverb extraction and signal decomposition, along with signal analysis, speech detection and mono signal detection. The resulting 13 streams – seven spatial filters and six decorrelated reverb streams – are then processed through the Aesthetic Engine and psychoacoustic modeling. The signal then goes through a mixer, which can be adjusted by the user to tailor the audio output to personal preferences. Finally, the signal is fed into a post-processor that adjusts volume and delay levels, and delivers a 7.1-channel audio output."
"Virtual Venues essentially allows us to transform the car into another space. It makes you feel as if you are anywhere you want to be listening to that music. So if you’re listening to Miles Davis, you could have your car sound like the inside of some little underground jazz club in New York City, for example. Or a KISS track can have the same big, enveloping sound quality as an open air stadium arena. And it’s not just the reverb of the music that is affected; the whole environment inside the car has been transformed to sound like the venue. So if you snapped your fingers or said something aloud, it would reflect the acoustics of that particular venue. People crave this experience – "
Whether you like it or don't like it, doesn't look like its just about SPL any more.
I looked up some info on what they are doing. Basically its synthetic, not accurate reproduction. They can synthesize a specific soundstage experience from a mono track and make it sound like you are in whatever room or sound environment you want to be in. IOW, DSP tricks, many of which have been around for a long time, are now being used in cars. In comparison, extremely accurate reproduction of a stereo recording is a rather different problem with its own challenges. Its not something they are claiming to be able to do in cars.
"...proprietary HARMAN DSP-based technologies such as Individual Sound Zones (ISZ), QuantumLogic Immersion 3D Surround Sound, Clari-Fi music reconstruction technology, HALOsonicnoise management solutions and the customized, acoustically modeled environments of Virtual Venues."
"QuantumLogic Surround uses proprietary algorithms to extract signal streams and impulse responses from the original recording. Individual voices and instruments, as well as reverberant spatial information, are identified and then re-authored into a precise multichannel soundfield. A key component of QLS is its Aesthetic Engine, which combines the individual signal streams using patented filter bank technology and psychoacoustic modeling to create an immersive multichannel listening experience with exceptional clarity, detail and image specificity. It is compatible with mono and stereo sources, as well as all popular surround sound formats."
"A brief technical description of how QuantumLogic Surround operates is as follows: a mono, stereo or multichannel audio input is processed with stream extraction, reverb extraction and signal decomposition, along with signal analysis, speech detection and mono signal detection. The resulting 13 streams – seven spatial filters and six decorrelated reverb streams – are then processed through the Aesthetic Engine and psychoacoustic modeling. The signal then goes through a mixer, which can be adjusted by the user to tailor the audio output to personal preferences. Finally, the signal is fed into a post-processor that adjusts volume and delay levels, and delivers a 7.1-channel audio output."
"Virtual Venues essentially allows us to transform the car into another space. It makes you feel as if you are anywhere you want to be listening to that music. So if you’re listening to Miles Davis, you could have your car sound like the inside of some little underground jazz club in New York City, for example. Or a KISS track can have the same big, enveloping sound quality as an open air stadium arena. And it’s not just the reverb of the music that is affected; the whole environment inside the car has been transformed to sound like the venue. So if you snapped your fingers or said something aloud, it would reflect the acoustics of that particular venue. People crave this experience – "
Whether you like it or don't like it, doesn't look like its just about SPL any more.
They have a microphone within the car cab too? That'd put a new spin on driving to the airport to "watch the planes land".
In Brazil you have an incredibly good and effective Small Business helping institution: SEBRAE
https://sebrae.com.br/sites/PortalSebrae/
They have special branch helpíng Pará, your state.
https://sebrae.com.br/sites/PortalSebrae/ufs/pa?codUf=15
Get in contact with them, they´re very helpful.
I like content by Hardware Academy on YouTube. They have good tips on how to start your new tech company
... and see it go, not so slowly, down the drain... yes - this is the most probable outcome...
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