Rick, if you just spent say 10 years of hard work and a lot of money developing a product you just sent to the market, wouldn't you feel ripped off if tomorrow some Chinese opened your product, revrese engineered the circuits you struggled with, and laughed in your face? Even after you copyrighted your key circuits?
Especially so when you realize that this move of his just blew your work and investment away, leaving you at a serious financial loss, because if he couldn't sell it at 1/3 your price and make a profit, he wouldn't bother?
Please, no philosophy, a straight yes or no.
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To ask "what is sound quality" is like asking "what is music, and why have it?" It's about enjoyment. If you're smart, you'll know how to use measurement techniques to maximize enjoyment. That's my goal anyway. Maybe yours is different.
ddv, sorry to hear about your misfortunes.
From 1979 - 1983 I worked in a video engineering group at Tektronix. Every product we put out was the new worlds best, according to ABC New York, who ordered 79 of our digital video frame syncronizers. It was a very good company in about every way.
In 1982, my boss took me aside and told me that our President Reagan had allowed the opening of the U.S. borders for free trade without leveling the playfield. He explained that what that would mean is that our highly successful group, may not exist in a year. He said that once your competitors move their production facilities to a place like China, where the labor rates are more than 100 times cheaper than here (at the time) (last I heard it's only about 10 times cheaper anymore), your company either has to move there also, or die. Your competition will have an economic advantage you won't be able to compete with. Before long Tektronix and other similar companies started laying off people by the 100's and even thousands, and I've watched that go on like that for the last 30 years in about any kind of production industry. Tek had 26,000 employees in '82, now they have around 1000 last I heard. I figure there are 10's of millions of people in the U.S. with college degrees who lost their career because of this, over the last 30 years.
Now that the market is pretty fully global, there needs to be a global legal system that really works. There isn't. If China steals your invention, the costs of litigation are astronomical, and on it's best day the international legal system appears to be a gray area, where who knows what will happen. Unless it involves billions of $$ (Apple vs Samsung for example), you'll probably get nowhere trying to litigate. A spokesman from Hewlett-Packard once told me (in about 2000) that when they consider bringing a product to market, they ask themselves if they will make enough money in the first 6 months, to justify the costs. He explained that after that they expect to have their patents stolen by some other country, and them not being able to do anything real about it.
I've been doing audio engineering as a hobby since I was in grade school (1965), and still do (fairly hard core), but I don't pretend that I could start a business with it, that there is any way to compete with the Chinese or S. Korea or many other places where labor is way cheaper. If we had import taxes that were somehow based on cost of living differentials between the various countries (perhaps based on the minimum wage and/or the cost of basic human needs (electricity, water, housing, food ?), there might be a chance that it would be economically feasible to run an audio products company here in the U.S.. But the billionaires who started this whole thing in 1982 are having too much fun getting stinky rich at our expense. There are of coarse many audio companies still functioning in the U.S., many owned by Harmon International for example. I wonder what legal tricks they are using to keep that going (?) Stashing their money offshore? Engineering here but then producing in China? Companies that try to produce here don't usually last for very long.
Bottom line: You're not alone in your grief. The legal system is highly dysfunctional, and is created by Congress in our case, which is apparently controlled by lobbyists, which are controlled by the richest and greediest people on the planet. I wish I was wrong about any of this. Feel free to correct me on any of it. Time has shown me that I got the story pretty right.
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Those testers are a laptop with a $5 dongle, what you pay for is the top secret command codes for the ECUs... ie, the usual strategy for selling overpriced proprietary junk. So if the Chinese copy it... well done guys !
Very different from stealing the result of actual R&D, which is just wrong...
@Bob Richards
Thank you for your very kind comment Bob. You call it "misfortunes", I prefer to think of it all as simply life, something one must deal with when and if one can.
I agree the international legal system is disfunctional, and with no wish to turn this into a political argument, I'll just say it's all back to might makes right.
As an economic phenomenon, China is most intersting. They very obviously sat down and studied capitalism very seriously, and especially the US variation. They drew their conclusions and beat its system with its own tools, paying on the one thing that will eventually bring down capitalism as we know it - greed.
They hit the market and made well neigh impossible to compete with them. Nobody can convince me that this was not a grand master plan - look at how their goverment pretended to be deaf and blind to what they were doing, until they figured it was time to step in as their economy had gained momentum, and only then did the crack down on SOME of their activities, those deemed to be relatively unimportant for the whole. For example, unlike just 4 or 5 years ago, I don't see any Chinese pirated DVDs any more.
They effectively forced the West to commit economic suicide - FORCED it, not asked it. Because of the low prices, and the will to survive, what the West did was to abandon its own revenues from taxes and employment by moving factories to China. This of course was good for Chinese employment rates and revenues, while most of the West just shrugged at those poor souls who had not only lost their jobs, but lost opportunities for new jobs as well. And they wonder why are we still in recession ... Who wants to start up a new manufacturing business in the West when it's widely recognized that you can't compete with the Chinese on prices? But if everyone oes to China, who will be left to tend to the domestic economy? We can't blow up new services from nothing forever. Even growth has its limits.
And the simple truth is that nobody has a clue what to do with China. Except perhaps Joss Whedon, the movie/TV director (author of "Buffy the vampire killer" and "Firefly"), who saw this coming, so in his 2002 TV series "Firefly", which was regrettably terminated after just one season, the galactic laguage of the future will be Chinese. An accident? I don't think so.
Regarding Tektronix, in July 1992, when I was in Taipei, capital of Taiwan, I was proudly shown an assembly line putting together multimeters. Depending on the buyer, the same type of unit was stuck on a sticker declareing it to be Tektronixs, Fluke, Monacor, etc. Its street price at the time was around USD 700 for this particular model, their best, tolerance limits 0.1%, and I bought mine (badged Monacor, a big German electronics merchant) for USD 120 right there and then, as a small favor. In 1992.
So China didn't even have to bother learning much, they already had a system installed in the neighborhood.
Which also means that our great leaders had many years to prepare for the Chinese onslaught, which, like all good politicians, they wasted into nothing. Taiwan's takeover of the US manufacturing of PC components obviously meant nothing to them.
Thank you for your very kind comment Bob. You call it "misfortunes", I prefer to think of it all as simply life, something one must deal with when and if one can.
I agree the international legal system is disfunctional, and with no wish to turn this into a political argument, I'll just say it's all back to might makes right.
As an economic phenomenon, China is most intersting. They very obviously sat down and studied capitalism very seriously, and especially the US variation. They drew their conclusions and beat its system with its own tools, paying on the one thing that will eventually bring down capitalism as we know it - greed.
They hit the market and made well neigh impossible to compete with them. Nobody can convince me that this was not a grand master plan - look at how their goverment pretended to be deaf and blind to what they were doing, until they figured it was time to step in as their economy had gained momentum, and only then did the crack down on SOME of their activities, those deemed to be relatively unimportant for the whole. For example, unlike just 4 or 5 years ago, I don't see any Chinese pirated DVDs any more.
They effectively forced the West to commit economic suicide - FORCED it, not asked it. Because of the low prices, and the will to survive, what the West did was to abandon its own revenues from taxes and employment by moving factories to China. This of course was good for Chinese employment rates and revenues, while most of the West just shrugged at those poor souls who had not only lost their jobs, but lost opportunities for new jobs as well. And they wonder why are we still in recession ... Who wants to start up a new manufacturing business in the West when it's widely recognized that you can't compete with the Chinese on prices? But if everyone oes to China, who will be left to tend to the domestic economy? We can't blow up new services from nothing forever. Even growth has its limits.
And the simple truth is that nobody has a clue what to do with China. Except perhaps Joss Whedon, the movie/TV director (author of "Buffy the vampire killer" and "Firefly"), who saw this coming, so in his 2002 TV series "Firefly", which was regrettably terminated after just one season, the galactic laguage of the future will be Chinese. An accident? I don't think so.
Regarding Tektronix, in July 1992, when I was in Taipei, capital of Taiwan, I was proudly shown an assembly line putting together multimeters. Depending on the buyer, the same type of unit was stuck on a sticker declareing it to be Tektronixs, Fluke, Monacor, etc. Its street price at the time was around USD 700 for this particular model, their best, tolerance limits 0.1%, and I bought mine (badged Monacor, a big German electronics merchant) for USD 120 right there and then, as a small favor. In 1992.
So China didn't even have to bother learning much, they already had a system installed in the neighborhood.
Which also means that our great leaders had many years to prepare for the Chinese onslaught, which, like all good politicians, they wasted into nothing. Taiwan's takeover of the US manufacturing of PC components obviously meant nothing to them.
Pierre, who will be the Gods in Heaven who will rule on what steaing is good, and what must be sanctioned?
Or should we introduce relative legal norms?
To quote Martin Luther King - an injustice in one place is a danger to justice everywhere.
There are ways to bypass the gluttons of this world, at least sometimes. For example, I found out the real manufacturer who OEMs his cabling for quite a few famous names, so I buy my cabling directly from an authorized Neotech dealer, at a cost usually 7-9 TIMES lower than the Famous Brand Names. Or the very famous speaker binding post manufacturer, nominally from Germany, in reality Made in Taiwan - again, at a fraction of the cost. Trust me, I used and measured them with everything I could in any respect I could think of, and the Taiwanese product is +/- 2% from the "original", which is a normal tolerance in that industry, I am told. However, as you can imagine, my binding posts and cabels do not carry famous brands, just "Neotech". Not that I give a damn.
Don't waste your time on those who cant hear you D, no explanation on the obvious would suffice..
Bob, my only purpose on Earth is to get along with everyone and survive.
Music is just a a simple pleasurable distraction that can help towards that or separate us from it.
Sound quality is what some audiophiles starve for, in the pursuit of getting rich, or a place to spend a big part of their life savings.
...Equating with good looks (aesthetics), build and expensive.
You can measure all there is to measure with all the tools available now about this or that, even a woman, but nothing would be farther from all these measurements than living with it, her, in real life listening and sharing.
Because YOU, are also part (HUGE part) of the entire equation, measurements and all.
Truly, measurements are only a small part, a guide, a base line, a conformist standard, no more no less. The quality is in the original source, the music recordings themselves. ...Be it analog or digital, and money is totally irrelevant; art and magic together with talent is. ...I think.
Cheers,
Bob
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My take is certainly totally different - enjoyment is a typical result of better sound quality, nothing to do with an assessment of the sound. I can be at a local pub, with friends, listening to a local band through an overloud PA setup which is producing excrutiatingly "bad" sound ... and I'm enjoying what I'm listening to ...
I find it easy to assess sound quality - I put on severely 'testing' musical tracks, and steadily wind up the volume. If the only thing I'm aware while doing this is the musical content, and the mechanical process through which this is being made to happen never subjectively registers then I have quality. Most systems fail this test very early on, some staggeringly badly, thrashing and bellowing fit to wake the dead, 😀 - the measuring is so easy this way ... 🙂
Why slowly, just crank that B**** up ...................... 
PS: Eagles, hotel California,(live) pop the damn 10a speaker fuse on the ending crescendo ..
damn......
PS: Eagles, hotel California,(live) pop the damn 10a speaker fuse on the ending crescendo ..
damn......
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Only a 10A fuse ...? What's the sensitivity, how much amperage should the speaker be able to take?
No.
But then I'd have enough foresight not to do development work just for the product, I do development for the learning experience. Which as I said before can't be stolen. I'd probably look for a way to contact the guy who so painstakingly reverse engineered my work, thanking him for giving my work so much attention and pointing out his errors. If he can do it so much cheaper than me it would make a lot of sense for him to make them rather than me.
I know we've been here before in our discussions but to my way of thinking its a poor (read not robust) business model which relies on legal means to protect one's designs. The copier is always going to be playing catch-up and my marketing plan would be one of continuous innovation.
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I agree. The other mob will catch up, one way or the other - the best technique is to have 'secret sauce' in the mix which is not obvious, which you never talk about - but which is critical for getting the performance. The 'dumb' copiers will always miss the real target, your own version will always have the edge, and hence command a premium price.
Talking about pinching ideas, the USA has never had scruples in ripping off other people's IP, it then just resorts to pulling out the big, legal/bury you using money, stick and waves it menacingly when its greed is slightly threatened. Whinging about China doing it, in a different way, is quite hilarious ...
comparative advantage
Comparative advantage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The comparative advantage China has, but is losing rapidly is cheap labour.
They are raising their game in other areas now so it's definitely time the West raised its game.
Comparative advantage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The comparative advantage China has, but is losing rapidly is cheap labour.
They are raising their game in other areas now so it's definitely time the West raised its game.
how are you going to convince? -sounds like you need that marketing budget again
in audio equipment for home music playback it appears actually establishing objective "superiority" and the lack of any agreed direction/axis of "quality improvement" are nearly irrelevant to market success, profits
as contrasted with say delivering more horsepower within class rules or enlarging the acceleration envelope with better tires in racing – if your products give better numbers they will with high probability translate to winning races
audio electronics “innovation” - not so clear
Whatever you got .....
🙂Economics and world politics are not you guys strong suit , comments are hilarious and Brax lives in asia, easy to understand his disposition .......
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