JBL®
Harman Kardon®
Mark Levinson®
AKG®
Lexicon®
Infinity®
Revel®
Bowers & Wilkins®
Bang & Olufsen®
Are now Chinese brands.
Harman Kardon®
Mark Levinson®
AKG®
Lexicon®
Infinity®
Revel®
Bowers & Wilkins®
Bang & Olufsen®
Are now Chinese brands.
only the Lion battery operated ones?
the washing machines just explode 😀
While not electronic, we recently had to replace a 5yr old Samsung dishwasher that I'd already taken apart a couple of times to repair an LE fault, and to manually clean the sludge from bottom of wash chamber. The single worst appliance we've owned in over 40yrs - both in design and ease of in-field service by owner. Replaced with a Kenmore built by Bosch - I haven't seen that look of joy on my wife's face in decades
Go ahead, the jokes write themselves.
isn't Samsung South Korean 🙄
Yes 😀... South Korean, the Samsung empire is in trouble and will be splitted into two entities.
Yes 😀... South Korean, the Samsung empire is in trouble and will be splitted into two entities.
Not all brands mentioned are totally owned by Harman.
For Harman Kardon brand, made in South Korea should be considered a step up from current made in China imho.
For Harman Kardon brand, made in South Korea should be considered a step up from current made in China imho.
I think we're past the point where the factory location is as important as the engineering, production management and quality control measures in place? The first example of audio gear that comes to mind would be SB Acoustics :: Official SB Acoustics Website
From first hand experience, I will take issue with that.
Take gypsum wallboard for instance.
Yes we are talking audio here 🙂 Harman already killed Harman Kardon home audio, nothing to lose. Home audio from former competitors like Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer seems a little more alive. Funny enough Samsung even offers more home audio products than Harman Kardon does...
People in certain parts of the world have acquired a lot of our currency by selling us stuff we choose to buy. They can only use a little of that currency in buying our goods and services; the rest they use up by buying our companies. Or they can lend it back to us but then the end result can be much the same.
Samsung caved into Chinese manufacturing years ago. My first Samsung phone was made in Korea. My second one, a Galaxy Note 2 is Chinese. The old Note 2 is still working fine, but the lifetime of the new Note 7 seems to be measured in "days till flameout."
that economic strategy (mercantilism) seems to have come "a-cropper" as the water goes out of the bath-tub.
I think you missed the second part of that sentence - the point I was trying to make is not where it's made, but how well..
I've worked in the commercial woodworking trade for over 20yrs and have substantial experience with the vagaries of quality control in Asian sourced sheet goods; specifically plywoods. Raw Meranti that varies in thickness by over 1.5mm along the length or width of a 4x8ft panel, is composed of an even number of plies, delaminates when cut, and contains foreign objects up to and including small rocks and even a zipper! The local distributor of that product was as surprised as us - the first time- but did not reimburse us for the damage to a $500 set of beam saw blades.
Yet the prefinished birch plywood for cabinet cases and drawer boxes is close to the quality of domestic product at 30% lower cost. We go through several thousand sheets of such material in a given year, and have probably a less than 5% rejection rate on the pre-finished - call it a pragmatic calculation, but that still saves us money and is built into our operating overhead. Our solid waste disposal costs of approx $36,000 /yr are greater than the reject rate on defective material. The only guilt we really feel about it is - well the disposal - the volume of our solid waste stream that could feasibly be recycled or even incinerated is not sufficient to justify the additional transportation costs and associated carbon footprint.
That contaminated Chinese drywall was definitely a major fork-up, but to go as far as to generalize is a bit unfair?
Re the Samsung appliances - we bought a full 4 piece suite for our kitchen reno, and so far it's only been the dishwasher that was a disappointment.
Yes, a bit of an outlier.
In wood products, nobody comes up with the quality of N. American MDF.
The quality of finished cell phones that we (Motorola) got from Foxconn was variable, and went down consistently as more and more manufacturing control was handed over to them.
I can recall one issue that I had to solve involved field failures for low temperature operation....traced to a component swap that was never authorized. Since this didn't occur until winter several hundred thousand phones had been sold that Mot had to eat under warrantee.
A fellow worker found a batch of 10,000 that had a PNP transistor placed where an NPN should go.
Run rate and manufacturing costs are a much higher priority to Foxconn than quality. If the product passed the end - of - line test station, it was considered good, and shipped. The test station only tests basic board function.
The ones that didn't pass........does anybody remember all of the $49 Razr phones on Ebay right after Mot ended Razr production. Yes, Foxconn had sold, or otherwise disposed of the "bone pile" and it wound up on Ebay. Mot purchased several of the Ebay phones to verify this, but it never made it to court. I got my hands on one of the "bone pile" units, and my wife used it for about a year.....other than a bad LED in the display backlight (uneven brightness) it worked good.
Note, Motorola has been busted up into several smaller companies each with rights to use the Motorola name in their respective market. Only the public safety two way radio business remains as part of the original Chicago based Motorola. The Motorola cell phone business is now owned and operated by the Chinese firm, Lenovo. Most of the US based staff has been laid off.
I can recall one issue that I had to solve involved field failures for low temperature operation....traced to a component swap that was never authorized. Since this didn't occur until winter several hundred thousand phones had been sold that Mot had to eat under warrantee.
A fellow worker found a batch of 10,000 that had a PNP transistor placed where an NPN should go.
Run rate and manufacturing costs are a much higher priority to Foxconn than quality. If the product passed the end - of - line test station, it was considered good, and shipped. The test station only tests basic board function.
The ones that didn't pass........does anybody remember all of the $49 Razr phones on Ebay right after Mot ended Razr production. Yes, Foxconn had sold, or otherwise disposed of the "bone pile" and it wound up on Ebay. Mot purchased several of the Ebay phones to verify this, but it never made it to court. I got my hands on one of the "bone pile" units, and my wife used it for about a year.....other than a bad LED in the display backlight (uneven brightness) it worked good.
Note, Motorola has been busted up into several smaller companies each with rights to use the Motorola name in their respective market. Only the public safety two way radio business remains as part of the original Chicago based Motorola. The Motorola cell phone business is now owned and operated by the Chinese firm, Lenovo. Most of the US based staff has been laid off.
Exactly the opposite; I guess the whole point of that sentence - which was that excellent engineering and manufacturing needn't be in the same country, or even hemisphere - was lost.
My only direct experience to date with SB has been a pair of these
http://www.sbacoustics.com/index.php/products/tweeters/dome/sb26adc-c000-4 that a buddy of mine installed in a "beater" pair of Energy 22s to replace the rare stock tweeter. They sounded just fine to the final owner.
My only direct experience to date with SB has been a pair of these
http://www.sbacoustics.com/index.php/products/tweeters/dome/sb26adc-c000-4 that a buddy of mine installed in a "beater" pair of Energy 22s to replace the rare stock tweeter. They sounded just fine to the final owner.
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