With the new tax laws this has toned down considerably. There are also very sad stories from "the good old days".
Incredible, either your semiconductor industry lies safely in the suburb of Eden and immune to penetration of agents from hostile powers or you need a new pair of glasses.
Clearly you’ve never worked in the semi industry.
The tolerance for bs is zero, take it from me.
Developing, producing and selling high end semiconductors easily is one of the most intricate and intellectually challenging criminal ventures.
One should definitely use hostile state controlled communications companies, so long as they're cheap
If we are talking about "ripoffs" then there are examples in the semiconductor industry; as said before, if a company is able to generate margins as high as 30 -50% from revenue, then it qualifies IMO for the "rippoff" qualifier. Of course not restricted to the semiconductor industry.
Intel for example did that for years afair.
Intel for example did that for years afair.
Enter the business yourself and enjoy the enormous ripoff margins. Then give them away if you think that's the ethical thing to do.
Products are priced at what the market can bare. Get over it. More so in industries outside semis IMV. A SOTA fab costs hundreds of million of $ (billions in some cases) and most companies in the industry depreciate that investment over a 7 year period (20 years for the buildings) and that does not include platform investment costs which in the product segment I was involved in was $2-3 million. Figure on 10-20 times that for bleeding edge stuff.
Part of the reason some of these devices cost what they do is that semi company’s absolutely don’t want to deal with ‘rats and mice’ small orders. You fill a fab up with 1 batch orders and you soon end up with less throughput, more chances for errors and quality problems and so on. If you want good prices, order the volumes.
Part of the reason some of these devices cost what they do is that semi company’s absolutely don’t want to deal with ‘rats and mice’ small orders. You fill a fab up with 1 batch orders and you soon end up with less throughput, more chances for errors and quality problems and so on. If you want good prices, order the volumes.
Run 1 batch of 2SK170 and 1 batch of 2SJ72 on 8" wafers and the market will be full for the at least next 10 years, you'll get over 2M of each. Problem is, at the prices that JC and his posse are considering "fair", you will lose big bucks in the process.
Which indeed was the correct answer to the rhetorical question. 😉
But it is still suprising (at least to me) that the "ripoff" is so often mentioned in the case of quite small companies selling "high-end-audio" while (for example) a 30% margin by multibillion dollar companies seems to be very acceptable.
The highest margin business by far is still tobacco, go figure.
Jakob you need to differentiate between gross and net margin, they are not the same. Dan is right this line of discussion should end it serves no purpose.
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I know,but it is my understanding that the annual net margin generated from Intel's revenue in the years 2018 and 2019 (for example) was indeed ~30% .
If such a discussion make sense depends mainly on the people participating in it and their willingness to accept arguments (which of course is questionable given the history of our discussions around "hi-end-audio-topics"), but it could be interesting as the term "ripoff" seems to have a ethical dimension.
In the case of tobacco, history (iirc) has shown that there existed some quite severe problems with ethics........ 😉
There was a time when complementary jfet pairs were relatively cheap and consistent, such as $1 per part pair of matched 2sk170's (2sk240) or for matched 2sj74's (2sj75) and we bought them by the 1000's for production of audio equipment. Two decades later, the basically same parts sold at an even cheaper price, but then Toshiba 'pulled the plug' so to speak and stopped making them completely. Then we searched the world for enough Toshiba parts to keep in production quantities. The price as the parts became rarer and rarer increased drastically to an almost absurd level today. This is not our doing, and we prefer to buy similar parts at a reasonable, but not necessarily cheap price.
Linear Integrated Systems has worked to supply us equivalent parts for the last 10 years or so, and can make a limited amount of them, mostly for specific OEM manufacturers. Most of my client companies have purchased significant amounts of complementary jets from them, but they tend to be much more expensive and generally more noisy than the original Toshiba parts, so we try to use original stock, that most of the companies that I consult for have, when they purchased parts years in advance. Still I hope that availability to everybody for the best complementary jfet pairs improves, so that amateurs can use complementary jets once again cost effectively. There is no equivalent, in my experience.
Linear Integrated Systems has worked to supply us equivalent parts for the last 10 years or so, and can make a limited amount of them, mostly for specific OEM manufacturers. Most of my client companies have purchased significant amounts of complementary jets from them, but they tend to be much more expensive and generally more noisy than the original Toshiba parts, so we try to use original stock, that most of the companies that I consult for have, when they purchased parts years in advance. Still I hope that availability to everybody for the best complementary jfet pairs improves, so that amateurs can use complementary jets once again cost effectively. There is no equivalent, in my experience.
It seems the audio industry at large is being dragged (kicking & screaming in many cases) toward Class D, to the exclusion of all the traditional classes we've come to know & love down through the decades. Might it be interesting to discuss the various reasons for this evolution? Is it strictly market-based (cost, energy savings), or are there other forces at work?
Also, I wonder if some of the more knowledgeable here could explain the difference between the words "class" and "topology" when discussing the various amplifier types? At first glance they seem somewhat interchangeable, but I'm not sure that's accurate.
Also, I wonder if some of the more knowledgeable here could explain the difference between the words "class" and "topology" when discussing the various amplifier types? At first glance they seem somewhat interchangeable, but I'm not sure that's accurate.
I recall reading about Class D in the 1970s, the problem with the idea back then was transistors just couldn't switch fast enough. Now we got plenty of speed with MOSFETS, and even small one-watt-and-less earbud driver chips for smartphones are Class D for higher efficiency to save battery power.
I think it's exactly what you said. The sound of Class D, like MP3, is "good enough" for the majority of money-spending audio customers. It goes up to the same volume, costs less, WEIGHS less (most everything uses SMPS thesedays instead of 50/60Hz power transformers), puts out less heat, what's not to like ...
A digital amplifier would be the logical step these days, then we could stop talking about DACs.....
Digital, or Class D power amps were first introduced about 55 years ago. They were disappointing then, and they still have some problems now. Perfection is the goal, not just getting by, for advanced audio listeners.
Enough gushing reviews of the Kii3 and D&D 8C to suggest that digital amplifiers are not a limiting factor in state of the art performance.
Interesting aside. Purifi use speakon connectors on their demo speakers as all the binding posts they tried added measurable distortion.