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"Secrets" about the consumer audio business you may find interesting

Mnyb

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I like pineapple on pizza and even had some really good Hawaiian pizza in Hawaii. It was great!

I don't get the hate. People love pineapple + pork in any other context but as soon as you put it on a pizza, everyone loses their minds. And I'm generally a pizza snob, too. It was a normal pizza topping in my household growing up, maybe that's the reason I can handle it...
It’s an Internet thing gone silly. I’ve seen pinable pizza in the local pizza places for as long as I can remember and it has never been a topic of discussions ? I had it as a kid 40 years ago

Your either very young or impressionable or bit stupid if you care to form strong opinions about this , if you like you order them if not you chose another topping.
 

Blumlein 88

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It’s an Internet thing gone silly. I’ve seen pinable pizza in the local pizza places for as long as I can remember and it has never been a topic of discussions ? I had it as a kid 40 years ago

Your either very young or impressionable or bit stupid if you care to form strong opinions about this , if you like you order them if not you chose another topping.
Actually it has been a topic of discussion. You just didn't run into pizza purists. Now with the internet there's a place for the topic to come up more widely.
 

Waxx

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It’s an Internet thing gone silly. I’ve seen pinable pizza in the local pizza places for as long as I can remember and it has never been a topic of discussions ? I had it as a kid 40 years ago

Your either very young or impressionable or bit stupid if you care to form strong opinions about this , if you like you order them if not you chose another topping.
Try to tell that in Italy, you will be lucky if you're not lynched on the spot in some places... They think their traditional food is raped in the fastfood world, going from "pizza hawai" with pineapple on it, over spagetti Bolognaise (like we know it in europe) to the cheap ravioli you find down here. And food is of national importance to a lot of Italians, you do it right or ...
 

OWC

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You must be joking, investors caring about the value of a bottom of the food chain lab rat?

For the rest, you just confirmed what I said. Barring pathological cases, an individual contribution is usually measured with metrics that defy any economic or professional criteria. It’s the perception that matter, everything else is fluff. To your example, obviously the poor engineer that fixed the company *ss was not necessary popular across his management and peers ranks, so his *ss being fired was a logical step. The guy was likely perceived as a threat to the statu quo, rather than his efforts being appreciated.

BTW, it is much more difficult to make the ranks accept changes, than to design and implement them.
No i was being sarcastic obviously.

In the examples I know it's not about if people are "popular".
With these companies, you're just a number.
When you meet certain (artificial) criteria, you're out.
They simply don't care if you're valuable or not, that's how disconnected these companies are with their workers.
I personally know multiple engineers who were very well accepted and respected by their direct management.
The problem is that they don't make these kind of decisions.

I have seen companies going bankrupt because of this.
Not realizing they just fired some key members of the team.
Or even worse, not realizing that the expertise they had was extremely difficult to find.
Which will take many many years to develop this expertise again, IF that is even possible.

Anyway, long story short, the issue here is a short-term vision on only maximum capital and profits.
Which I personally think is not the right goal to go for, but it also only works for companies who really have more money than most whole countries have.
 

OWC

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And - the cosmetics are often necessary to sell high end stuff. If it doesn't look expensive the buyers in that market don't want it.
I would even say THE most important thing in the end.

Even down to parts themselves.
You can give a tweeter a nice fancy aluminum faceplate.
That feels great and all (maybe looks?).
Acoustically speaker it doesn't do a whole lot.

Same goes for very expensive finishes and all.
Personally I find B&W approach to this quite funny.
Their woofers are totally bare bones, no finish on the frames and baskets at all. (or they used to be)
They just put a nice looking rubber rim over it.
Speakers still perform the same, yet production costs are much much lower.

It's also a bit of a chicken-egg story.
When you buy from a small company, this indirectly means that you basically pay more for exactly the same product.
Since quantities are lower, or MUCH lower in some cases.
Often this is just being sold as "being more exclusive", which sounds a lot better than just saying that you can't sell products for the same price as your competition.

This trick is quite easy to implement in selling super "high-end" products (of any market, not just speakers).
Since the leverage you have is so much higher.
 

OWC

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Your either very young or impressionable or bit stupid if you care to form strong opinions about this , if you like you order them if not you chose another topping.
You clearly have never been around French, Spanish or Italian people/culture? ;):D
They can get pretty passionate about these kind of things.

Those that sounds silly?
I don't know, any culture/country has its weird and funny quirks were people can get totally passionate about.
I know countries were they like to discuss about insurances in great length for example.
Or how people should poor/drink their beer/wine/other beverage, how to eat your bagel, home decor, football/soccer or so etc etc
It's just the same-same, just different.

edit; or what about audio hey! ;)
 

Scrappy

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Do you need a pizza therapist? Tell us your opinion of pineapple pizza....then we will know if you need a referral to a Neapolitan Pizza school.
Hot take: pineapple is a fine pizza topping IF coupled with (ideally raw) sliced jalapeños and bacon. The sweet-soft spicey-crisp works if it’s a good pizza shop and they can manage to keep it from getting too gooey. Used to get pies like this from a local “cheap/ mediocre” pizza joint and it was perfect every time.
 

mglobe

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Hot take: pineapple is a fine pizza topping IF coupled with (ideally raw) sliced jalapeños and bacon. The sweet-soft spicey-crisp works if it’s a good pizza shop and they can manage to keep it from getting too gooey. Used to get pies like this from a local “cheap/ mediocre” pizza joint and it was perfect every time.
Good for breakfast too!
 

Crosstalk

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There really isn't any revealing or insightful here to be perfectly honest. Aside from the figures which are sort of industry specific this describes how all product design and manufacturing works in the 21st century.
its insightful for a person like me, who never had given thought about how general designing and manufacturing industry normally works
 

Scrappy

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Good for breakfast too!
Hmmm Hawaiian pizza omlet perhaps?.. Ham, bacon, cheese, jalapeños, topped with pineapple salsa?

Pardon the non-audio posts, I love overthought food as much as I love over-engineered audio ha!

Overall I’ve found this thread excellent; very interesting insights. Glad I never tried to start a company to design and manufacture audio goods of any variety.... thought about making small, economical 12” coax stage wedges years ago. I didn’t know sh!t about sh!t, still mostly don’t ha. Those fellas at Bosch made a very very good (powered) one ~6 years later. My idea was to go bi-amp, with recommended Crown processing amp with downloadable presets.
 

Mnyb

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It’s get even funnier when scale comes in to it . It’s expensive to build small quantities and cheaper to produce in scale.
So why not build the same product but sell different cosmetic variants ? In different price tier for different customers ?

Casio for example was said to actually have the same chip in every digital watch , basically the same watch not every feature was accessible in all of them and they looked different but it was the same .

Similar with older CD players , the more expensive ones could have features like programmability random play access to index feature and much more features on the remote .
I did the experiment of using the remote from a more exclusive player on the cheaper player off the same brand .
This remote also worked on the cheap model , but it also accessed features the cheap model did not officially have .
Ie inside the logic chip and many parts where the same , they saved money on a simpler remote. But it did not make economic sense to have two different logic chips . But for marketing reasons they wanted more differences then there really was.
 

Vacceo

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I remember the former owner/manager/designer for Musical Fidelity talking about how in hi-end audio the cosmetics of the components can account for as much as 70% of the retail price. That's after COG, manufacturer's price, middleman and retail markups.

Those small production runs of classy cases and knobs cost LOTS of money.

And - the cosmetics are often necessary to sell high end stuff. If it doesn't look expensive the buyers in that market don't want it.
Are you telling me that a cheap Pro-Ject transport is as good or better than a McIntosh??? Outrageous!!!
 

Timcognito

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1663537412282.jpeg
 

firedog

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Are you telling me that a cheap Pro-Ject transport is as good or better than a McIntosh??? Outrageous!!!
Not saying that at all. The point is that if looks weren't important to some people, the 10K item would sell for a third or half of what it does. Doesn't mean it would be cheap. But once you get above a certain price point, many people aren't satisfied with just good sound in a utilitarian looking object. They have a nice living room with expensive interior design.. They also want good looks their audio system, so that it fits it's environment. Good looks are expensive.

If you give them two boxes with identical performance and parts, but one looks really nice and costs more, they will pick the more expensive one. The less expensive plain looking one won't sell at all.
People on this site don't seem to understand that this is a big factor in the hi-end audio market.
 

Waxx

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Not saying that at all. The point is that if looks weren't important to some people, the 10K item would sell for a third or half of what it does. Doesn't mean it would be cheap. But once you get above a certain price point, many people aren't satisfied with just good sound in a utilitarian looking object. They have a nice living room with expensive interior design.. They also want good looks their audio system, so that it fits it's environment. Good looks are expensive.

If you give them two boxes with identical performance and parts, but one looks really nice and costs more, they will pick the more expensive one. The less expensive plain looking one won't sell at all.
People on this site don't seem to understand that this is a big factor in the hi-end audio market.
It's true for a lot of people, even not so rich. It's only technical nerds like me and many on this site who care not so much about looks. And for the part that I care, i like the more industrial look way more than the shiny "look how rich I am" look that most of those prefer. I prefer this (Siemens Klangfilm amp) way more.

201993_122149_PLCTLD.jpg


But most want a shiny expensive looking object like this McIntosh MC2000 and pay a high price for it:

images
 

firedog

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It's true for a lot of people, even not so rich. It's only technical nerds like me and many on this site who care not so much about looks. And for the part that I care, i like the more industrial look way more than the shiny "look how rich I am" look that most of those prefer. I prefer this (Siemens Klangfilm amp) way more.

201993_122149_PLCTLD.jpg


But most want a shiny expensive looking object like this McIntosh MC2000 and pay a high price for it:

images
But McIntosh typically measures well and gives good performance, so you are also getting a good audio result for your money.
I can totally understand why people are willing to pay for the McIntosh "look".
 

Waxx

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But McIntosh typically measures well and gives good performance, so you are also getting a good audio result for your money.
I can totally understand why people are willing to pay for the McIntosh "look".
Some solidstate McIntosh do measure ok in measurements i've seen (stereophoile) but i don't know how objective those are. The tube amps are never measured by relative objective standards as far as i know, and i think they sound very bland (subjectivly).

But i'm talking about design, not technical layout. Better amps are made for about 1/10th of the price, so why pay so much. The reason why people pay so much is mainly styling (i find it ugly, but some seems to like it) and status, not technical superiority....
 

fpitas

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It’s an Internet thing gone silly. I’ve seen pinable pizza in the local pizza places for as long as I can remember and it has never been a topic of discussions ? I had it as a kid 40 years ago

Your either very young or impressionable or bit stupid if you care to form strong opinions about this , if you like you order them if not you chose another topping.
As long as I can remember (that's a long time: don't ask) somebody has objected to pineapple on pizza. Honestly though, I've seen more hate directed at anchovies.
 
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