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

[Angsty]

I do prefer audio gear that is designed and manufactured in the US, Canada or Japan. I don’t have any German audio gear currently. I have components from VPI, Sutherland, Luxman, and Bryston that are built to last. All manufactured in their respective home countries.

My current cartridges are all from Japan. Even my BJC cables are domestically manufactured by Belden and assembled in Seattle.

While I understand the cost rationale for large companies to outsource manufacturing overseas, smaller companies can often do better controlling quality and inventories with domestic manufacture.

 

[Doodski]

I don’t have any German audio gear currently.

I've seen German gear that was dropped off for service and some of it was gorgeous inside. The layout was exemplary and everything was neat, tidy and colorful because they used very nice components.

 

[Deleted member 60987]

Slow and unequal wage growth in recent decades stems from a growing wedge between overall productivity—the improvements in the amount of goods and services produced per hour worked—and the pay (wages and benefits) received by a typical worker.

The figure shows that in the three decades following World War II, hourly compensation of the vast majority of workers rose 91 percent, roughly in line with productivity growth of 97 percent. But for most of the past generation (except for a brief period in the late 1990s), pay for the vast majority lagged further and further behind overall productivity. From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9 percent while productivity increased 74 percent. This breakdown of pay growth has been especially evident in the last decade, affecting both college- and non-college-educated workers as well as blue- and white-collar workers. This means that workers have been producing far more than they receive in their paychecks and benefit packages from their employers.

View attachment 284158
(https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/)

So the blame is with inflation, the government and the consumer? Give me a break! Workers made to produce more, paid less, management/stockholder share of profits increased…

I agree. It truly is a sad state of affairs.
Follow the link and have a look at the rest of the charts. Be saddened some more for the regular American worker.

 

[Jimster480]

A Toyota will last twice as long as an American car at ay price point. I've traded in or sold several with perfectly running engines and transmissions over 200,000 miles. American cars may be made to go 100K now compared to 60K in the 80s, but if you change the fluids Toyota engines are basically immortal.

Engines? An engine is a small part of a car today. When all the electronics break; the car becomes worthless.

Also in terms of larger vehicles; anything with a Chevy V8 basically lasts forever. Lots of trucks on the market with 350-400k miles still going on the original engine and many with original transmissions. However Transmissions can be overhauled for those vehicles for around $500 so it is easy to keep them running literally forever.

I am also not sure where the sentiment of 60k miles in the 80s comes from, shows that you have literally no basis in reality. American vehicles started to go down significantly in quality in the early 90s until the market collapsed in the mid 2000s with vehicles engineered to fail after 80 or 100k miles with things like head gaskets (like my fathers 2001 Malibu with a head gasket that would degrade sometime between 80-100k miles, causing a very expensive repair that would cause most people to sell their car rather than fix it).
However my Father drove his Malibu until 267k (when it was totaled due to a Prius with no working lights on it) on all original parts outside of the head gaskets and alternator. Nothing else ever failed. he never changed the transmission fluid and it still shifted like butter. Still got over 30mpg with a 3100 V6. Honestly he never even changed a coolant line, ignition coil, o2 sensor, cat.... literally nothing.
Then he bought a second one but with all the options and all the electronics in the car failed (his first one was a base model with manual windows and only a radio) and he ended up selling it due to him being upset about replacing the window regulators and fixing the stereo all the time.

I have a Chevy Cruze 2014 1.4 Turbo and on the Cruze forums there are several cars with 200k+ on original engine and transmissions with just basic maintenance done + a few sensors that are known to go bad routinely. Most of the turbo models though do have a turbo that has been replaced by that mileage. Mine I have only had for 1 year and I don't know about the transmission lasting that long. I think the previous owner didn't take that great of care of the engine/transmission in general. Even though the engine runs quite well the transmission makes some concerning noises sometimes (manual) and the turbo Wastegate is rusted (car came from the Rust belt I found out) so I will need to change it. However it drives quite well and overall hasn't actually broken down on us in the ~16k we have put on it since purchase.

I have a Infiniti G35 2004 and it has 208k miles. Cats failed at 160k, O2 sensor failed a second time around 180k. Transmission failed fully by 180k. Rear main seal failed around 165k... Suspension was completely shot around the 175k mark... I bought it at 158k (10 years ago in June) in need of a little work but in overall good condition. The owner thought the head gaskets were acting up but it was actually the coolant system having air in it. While it is a super fun car and I personally love the first gen G35's it shows that Japanese cars (even great ones like the G35) aren't just infalliable. My car's audio system also broke over time with the CD Changer being broken when I bought it by only playing out of some of the speakers... the XM Radio died in it as well over the last few years and the window regulators went bad and the rear interior side panels started to unglue and deform themselves.
I spent over $10000 (which is more than double I paid for it) restoring it, replacing wheels and repainting it, redoing the interior, etc.

I have a 2011 QX56 (QX80) and it has 150k Miles today. I bought it with 80k 7 years ago. Overall it has a been very reliable. However I have had the alternator fail twice, had a charging issue that killed 2 batteries, and had the ignition coils blow out at 138k and kill one of the cats (died on the highway nowhere near the destination so had to be limped to location). The engine also was filled with carbon and we did our best to de-carbonize it (at 144k when the starter died) despite me doing a carbon Cleaning (CRC-IVD treatment) on the truck every time before I changed the oil. As well as a seafoam treatment to loosen the carbon. Otherwise the engine wouldn't have lasted much longer as the ports had literally more than 1" of carbon build up per port.

My first car was a Honda Civic 1997 and when I bought it; it was just turning 11. Had 147k miles and was in good overall condition. In the first year of owning it; the O2 sensor failed, coolant sensor failed, water pump failed, transmission started to fail (automatic). I ended up building a new engine, swapping it to manual and modding it with a turbo. Drove it like that for years and today its a "race car" only. Soon when I finish it; I expect to make around 650WHP on the original engine that came in the car but built for boost.

My 2017 Chevy SS hasn't had any problems in the 6 years that I have it. I modded it with a P-1X Procharger in the first 8000 miles; it now has just rolled 40k. No issues, other than me breaking the Procharger belt one time (which isn't the car itself). Even after a horrible accident that I lost all 4 doors; the entire car still works completely fine. Although I do have a stupid error about the battery being low every time I get in the car (it isn't low) that I will eventually probably replace the entire battery fuse box to hopefully fix. I also broke the reverse lockout solenoid wiring while racing the car, but I can't blame GM (Holden) for that.... despite the car being almost totaled and rebuilt literally everything works after now 6 years of ownership. The car is built extremely well and proved that in the accident. Definitely one of the best cars that GM and its subsidiaries have ever produced.

My last Vehicle is a 2006 Nissan Titan LE Towing Package. 120k Miles, 1 Owner, well taken care of. After buying it the Caliper stuck in the front and ruined the brakes, then the brake booster died a few months later. It is a known issue with these trucks. Now one of the bed shocks died (it is 17 Y old though) and the valve covers leak a bit of oil (again 17Y old and parked near the beach for years). Otherwise it has been great to us in the past couple years of ownership.

At my old job one of the guys had a brand new Prius and it kept having issues with the TPMS sensors and also an air intake sensor that he had it in a dealer like 5 times during the time he was with the company. The company also bought 3x Corollas for us to use as company vehicles to go to meetings and other travel (and also for the CEO and other board members when they flew into town). The cars all had Air intake sensor issues (IAT) one of them had a Throttle problem and had to go through a recall.. Right before I left the company one of them broke down with a coolant issue... 3 Corollas and 3 with problems.

The moral of the story is that not every car from a specific brand is terrible and not every car from a specific brand is good. Japanese cars are definitely good but there are also problems with them. One of my close friend has a fleet of Toyotas (MR2 Gen1, 2x Land Cruisers, MK4 Supra, is300, LX570) and they have all had their issues. From failing AC Condensors that required a full dashboard removal to transmission issues to other random electrical problems with windows and radios and such.
Do research on a per-car basis and avoid buying first model years of any cars that come out.

 

[Deleted member 60987]

Engines? An engine is a small part of a car today. When all the electronics break; the car becomes worthless.

Also in terms of larger vehicles; anything with a Chevy V8 basically lasts forever. Lots of trucks on the market with 350-400k miles still going on the original engine and many with original transmissions. However Transmissions can be overhauled for those vehicles for around $500 so it is easy to keep them running literally forever.

I am also not sure where the sentiment of 60k miles in the 80s comes from, shows that you have literally no basis in reality. American vehicles started to go down significantly in quality in the early 90s until the market collapsed in the mid 2000s with vehicles engineered to fail after 80 or 100k miles with things like head gaskets (like my fathers 2001 Malibu with a head gasket that would degrade sometime between 80-100k miles, causing a very expensive repair that would cause most people to sell their car rather than fix it).
However my Father drove his Malibu until 267k (when it was totaled due to a Prius with no working lights on it) on all original parts outside of the head gaskets and alternator. Nothing else ever failed. he never changed the transmission fluid and it still shifted like butter. Still got over 30mpg with a 3100 V6. Honestly he never even changed a coolant line, ignition coil, o2 sensor, cat.... literally nothing.
Then he bought a second one but with all the options and all the electronics in the car failed (his first one was a base model with manual windows and only a radio) and he ended up selling it due to him being upset about replacing the window regulators and fixing the stereo all the time.

I have a Chevy Cruze 2014 1.4 Turbo and on the Cruze forums there are several cars with 200k+ on original engine and transmissions with just basic maintenance done + a few sensors that are known to go bad routinely. Most of the turbo models though do have a turbo that has been replaced by that mileage. Mine I have only had for 1 year and I don't know about the transmission lasting that long. I think the previous owner didn't take that great of care of the engine/transmission in general. Even though the engine runs quite well the transmission makes some concerning noises sometimes (manual) and the turbo Wastegate is rusted (car came from the Rust belt I found out) so I will need to change it. However it drives quite well and overall hasn't actually broken down on us in the ~16k we have put on it since purchase.

I have a Infiniti G35 2004 and it has 208k miles. Cats failed at 160k, O2 sensor failed a second time around 180k. Transmission failed fully by 180k. Rear main seal failed around 165k... Suspension was completely shot around the 175k mark... I bought it at 158k (10 years ago in June) in need of a little work but in overall good condition. The owner thought the head gaskets were acting up but it was actually the coolant system having air in it. While it is a super fun car and I personally love the first gen G35's it shows that Japanese cars (even great ones like the G35) aren't just infalliable. My car's audio system also broke over time with the CD Changer being broken when I bought it by only playing out of some of the speakers... the XM Radio died in it as well over the last few years and the window regulators went bad and the rear interior side panels started to unglue and deform themselves.
I spent over $10000 (which is more than double I paid for it) restoring it, replacing wheels and repainting it, redoing the interior, etc.

I have a 2011 QX56 (QX80) and it has 150k Miles today. I bought it with 80k 7 years ago. Overall it has a been very reliable. However I have had the alternator fail twice, had a charging issue that killed 2 batteries, and had the ignition coils blow out at 138k and kill one of the cats (died on the highway nowhere near the destination so had to be limped to location). The engine also was filled with carbon and we did our best to de-carbonize it (at 144k when the starter died) despite me doing a carbon Cleaning (CRC-IVD treatment) on the truck every time before I changed the oil. As well as a seafoam treatment to loosen the carbon. Otherwise the engine wouldn't have lasted much longer as the ports had literally more than 1" of carbon build up per port.

My first car was a Honda Civic 1997 and when I bought it; it was just turning 11. Had 147k miles and was in good overall condition. In the first year of owning it; the O2 sensor failed, coolant sensor failed, water pump failed, transmission started to fail (automatic). I ended up building a new engine, swapping it to manual and modding it with a turbo. Drove it like that for years and today its a "race car" only. Soon when I finish it; I expect to make around 650WHP on the original engine that came in the car but built for boost.

My 2017 Chevy SS hasn't had any problems in the 6 years that I have it. I modded it with a P-1X Procharger in the first 8000 miles; it now has just rolled 40k. No issues, other than me breaking the Procharger belt one time (which isn't the car itself). Even after a horrible accident that I lost all 4 doors; the entire car still works completely fine. Although I do have a stupid error about the battery being low every time I get in the car (it isn't low) that I will eventually probably replace the entire battery fuse box to hopefully fix. I also broke the reverse lockout solenoid wiring while racing the car, but I can't blame GM (Holden) for that.... despite the car being almost totaled and rebuilt literally everything works after now 6 years of ownership. The car is built extremely well and proved that in the accident. Definitely one of the best cars that GM and its subsidiaries have ever produced.

My last Vehicle is a 2006 Nissan Titan LE Towing Package. 120k Miles, 1 Owner, well taken care of. After buying it the Caliper stuck in the front and ruined the brakes, then the brake booster died a few months later. It is a known issue with these trucks. Now one of the bed shocks died (it is 17 Y old though) and the valve covers leak a bit of oil (again 17Y old and parked near the beach for years). Otherwise it has been great to us in the past couple years of ownership.

At my old job one of the guys had a brand new Prius and it kept having issues with the TPMS sensors and also an air intake sensor that he had it in a dealer like 5 times during the time he was with the company. The company also bought 3x Corollas for us to use as company vehicles to go to meetings and other travel (and also for the CEO and other board members when they flew into town). The cars all had Air intake sensor issues (IAT) one of them had a Throttle problem and had to go through a recall.. Right before I left the company one of them broke down with a coolant issue... 3 Corollas and 3 with problems.

The moral of the story is that not every car from a specific brand is terrible and not every car from a specific brand is good. Japanese cars are definitely good but there are also problems with them. One of my close friend has a fleet of Toyotas (MR2 Gen1, 2x Land Cruisers, MK4 Supra, is300, LX570) and they have all had their issues. From failing AC Condensors that required a full dashboard removal to transmission issues to other random electrical problems with windows and radios and such.
Do research on a per-car basis and avoid buying first model years of any cars that come out.

My point is in the 80s and 90s America car makers deliberately made cars to fall apart so they could make money on parts. It wasn't incompetence. It was a dishonest, sleazy business practice the public caught on to boosting the sales of German and Japanese cars and tainting the US auto market forever. I, for one, will never go back. Toyota has earned my trust. Ford and GM have earned my contempt. Especially with mechanics charging over $100 an hour now, working on commission and making shit up you don't need to get an extra $60 from the extra $600 you never needed to spend. Usually from big gas station chains.

 

[IPunchCholla]

So. We should make better quality cars without planned obsolescence during a manufactured “recession”? This will save Bose and Sonos? And get the you guys into hi-if audio, whose entre is snakeoild products that cost several times there annual salary?

Got it.

 

[Holdt]

The moral of the story is that not every car from a specific brand is terrible and not every car from a specific brand is good. Japanese cars are definitely good but there are also problems with them. One of my close friend has a fleet of Toyotas (MR2 Gen1, 2x Land Cruisers, MK4 Supra, is300, LX570) and they have all had their issues. From failing AC Condensors that required a full dashboard removal to transmission issues to other random electrical problems with windows and radios and such.
Do research on a per-car basis and avoid buying first model years of any cars that come out.

Of course. -But statistics don't lie.

https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2022-us-vehicle-dependability-study

 

[Jimster480]

Of course. -But statistics don't lie.

https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2022-us-vehicle-dependability-study

JD Power btw is completely inaccurate. if you know about the car industry you know that this is nothing more than a marketing agency today. None of its ratings mean literally anything.

 

[Holdt]

JD Power btw is completely inaccurate. if you know about the car industry you know that this is nothing more than a marketing agency today. None of its ratings mean literally anything.

It doesn't look wrong though. Also what do you have to prove what your claim?

Consumer reports make statistics as well.

Edit:

This is from EU

Brands most reliable cars in Europe, according to the OCU

jadefansite.com

 

[Jimster480]

It doesn't look wrong though. Also what do you have to prove what your claim?

Consumer reports make statistics as well.

Edit:

This is from EU
View attachment 285066

Brands most reliable cars in Europe, according to the OCU

jadefansite.com

The data looks wrong to me.

Kia/Hyundai is known for the most recalls. They have the most little issues wrong with their cars.

The problem with the study is that it is based on the total number of vehicles offered by the brand and the popularity of that vehicle based on sales reported data. Brands with fewer sales have less of a chance of getting to the top because one issue in one model can ruin the entire rank. The other thing is how they weight issues and how they poll/record the issues. There is too many ways the data can be manipulated/reorganized/construed to show what they want. While it is way more accurate than Consumer reports there are just not enough overall datapoints.
"The 2022 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study is based on responses from 29,487 original owners of 2019 model-year vehicles after three years of ownership."
^ This shows their study is based on under 10% of US vehicle sales basically.... It is only people they poll who choose to respond, not actual issues recorded at dealers/from shops/logged in any systems.
The other subjectivity of that is the ability for them to toss out responses that they don't like. However it is mostly inaccuratge due to consumers stupidity and forgetfulness. People can have issues and have them fixed by the dealer but not report it because "it wasn't really a big problem". This is even a bigger issue when you factor in that there aren't the same number of responses for each brand or a total number based on the share of sales figures. It is really is a "luck of the draw" scenario.

 

[IPunchCholla]

The data looks wrong to me.

Kia/Hyundai is known for the most recalls. They have the most little issues wrong with their cars.

The problem with the study is that it is based on the total number of vehicles offered by the brand and the popularity of that vehicle based on sales reported data. Brands with fewer sales have less of a chance of getting to the top because one issue in one model can ruin the entire rank. The other thing is how they weight issues and how they poll/record the issues. There is too many ways the data can be manipulated/reorganized/construed to show what they want. While it is way more accurate than Consumer reports there are just not enough overall datapoints.
"The 2022 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study is based on responses from 29,487 original owners of 2019 model-year vehicles after three years of ownership."
^ This shows their study is based on under 10% of US vehicle sales basically.... It is only people they poll who choose to respond, not actual issues recorded at dealers/from shops/logged in any systems.
The other subjectivity of that is the ability for them to toss out responses that they don't like. However it is mostly inaccuratge due to consumers stupidity and forgetfulness. People can have issues and have them fixed by the dealer but not report it because "it wasn't really a big problem". This is even a bigger issue when you factor in that there aren't the same number of responses for each brand or a total number based on the share of sales figures. It is really is a "luck of the draw" scenario.

You do understand you just accused several large entities of fraud and collusion without providing any evidence. As far as I can remember from statistics, though it has been decades, there are tools one can use to deal with/quantify the uncertainty of everything (non response, inaccuracy of response, etc.) you mentioned. If they reported that info you can pretty much gauge how much you should trust the info.

I might be one of the few, but statistics is freaking awesome. You want to know how many mice live in an area? Just catch a bunch. Tag and release them. Put out traps again. Do the math. boom you now have an estimate for how many weren't trapped. and the overall population. Worried that you changed behavior by trapping? There are ways to sample again and model that. My favorite was: You are going to run a marathon. There's no way you can win. But someone says they'll give you a million dollars if you can guess (within a certain amount) how many racers took part in the race when you cross the finish line. What number should you pick? Turns out, you can get the odds of being right very high by recording all the numbers you pass and all the numbers that pass you and doing some math.

Anyway. You seem to make conspiracy claims fairly often, without providing evidence. So I'm pretty sure you're just a plant by big audio trying to defame statisticians and math in order to get everyone to doubt the science in ASR and go back to analyzing everything in veils and distance at which even the wife can hear a difference. The last one cracks me up, given it is a weird sexist insult and also the opposite of reality. Women's hearing is more sensitive than men's.

 

[Jimster480]

You do understand you just accused several large entities of fraud and collusion without providing any evidence. As far as I can remember from statistics, though it has been decades, there are tools one can use to deal with/quantify the uncertainty of everything (non response, inaccuracy of response, etc.) you mentioned. If they reported that info you can pretty much gauge how much you should trust the info.

I might be one of the few, but statistics is freaking awesome. You want to know how many mice live in an area? Just catch a bunch. Tag and release them. Put out traps again. Do the math. boom you now have an estimate for how many weren't trapped. and the overall population. Worried that you changed behavior by trapping? There are ways to sample again and model that. My favorite was: You are going to run a marathon. There's no way you can win. But someone says they'll give you a million dollars if you can guess (within a certain amount) how many racers took part in the race when you cross the finish line. What number should you pick? Turns out, you can get the odds of being right very high by recording all the numbers you pass and all the numbers that pass you and doing some math.

Anyway. You seem to make conspiracy claims fairly often, without providing evidence. So I'm pretty sure you're just a plant by big audio trying to defame statisticians and math in order to get everyone to doubt the science in ASR and go back to analyzing everything in veils and distance at which even the wife can hear a difference. The last one cracks me up, given it is a weird sexist insult and also the opposite of reality. Women's hearing is more sensitive than men's.

Conspiracy Claims? I mean the reality is that most every one of our institutions today has been "bought" in some way.
However there is no conspiracy in 29k responses without a fair amount from each brand, and just weighting them on sales.

As a person who has worked in the auto industry and has many friends who work in the industry. I can see this data and know that it isn't likely to be very accurate. Just like how Buick is in the top of reliability but Buick is just Chevy with a different badge. So what would make Buick cars somehow so much more reliable than Chevy despite being literally the same vehicles from the same factory? Invalid data (difference in polling age, difference in vehicle use, difference in vehicle care practices, differences in miles driven on average, number of vehicles owned and how much an issue affects them, process of repair if there is an issue, etc). That is what would make them different.
The other thing would be that people who Buy Buicks (and even moreso Kia) are typically older people who drive less, and therefore are less likely to run into an issue (another thing that JD Power doesn't take into account). If I just look at my parents "family friends" who they go to church with or hang out with on weekends; they mostly all own Kia/Hyundai and one owns a Buick and just bought his wife a second Buick. The youngest of them is 60 and the oldest is 81.
My father who actually drives for a living basically as an outside sales guy has a Chevy as does my brother who does mental health. I don't know a single person around my age who owns any buick and only 1 person around my age who owns a Hyundai (and had a Kia before). Everyone else owns Chevy,Toyota ,Lexus , Nissan, Infiniti, Honda, Cadillac, Mercedes, Ford, Dodge basically in that order of the number of people...

I am not really sure how any of that is a conspiracy. You think stats are so awesome and yet they are the most manipulated BS thing on the planet. Maybe that is why you think they are awesome since you can twist the data to see it however you like it. For me I live in the real world of hard data and personal + extended experiences. 9/10 times I am right, just like how I have "heard the difference" between multiple different DAC's which when they were tested here they measured similarly & came out ranking exactly as I "heard". You just have to know how to process and catagorize data as you experience/learn about it.

Now you are accusing me of being a plant by "big audio"? Talk about a Conspiracy Theorist. I am one of the people who helped make this site popular by constantly arguing with people on MassDrop and telling them to come check this site to see where the performance of products really lays. I also sent in several controversial pieces of hardware back before Topping or SMSL was well known and they were "hated" by big Audio. I also shared this site IRL with people who asked me about audio equipment as well as via my website & Twitter.

I'm not sure what your last comment is about being "sexist" or whatever you are trying to construe here, I think you are just a bit off your rocker...

 

[IPunchCholla]

Conspiracy Claims? I mean the reality is that most every one of our institutions today has been "bought" in some way.
However there is no conspiracy in 29k responses without a fair amount from each brand, and just weighting them on sales.

As a person who has worked in the auto industry and has many friends who work in the industry. I can see this data and know that it isn't likely to be very accurate. Just like how Buick is in the top of reliability but Buick is just Chevy with a different badge. So what would make Buick cars somehow so much more reliable than Chevy despite being literally the same vehicles from the same factory? Invalid data (difference in polling age, difference in vehicle use, difference in vehicle care practices, differences in miles driven on average, number of vehicles owned and how much an issue affects them, process of repair if there is an issue, etc). That is what would make them different.
The other thing would be that people who Buy Buicks (and even moreso Kia) are typically older people who drive less, and therefore are less likely to run into an issue (another thing that JD Power doesn't take into account). If I just look at my parents "family friends" who they go to church with or hang out with on weekends; they mostly all own Kia/Hyundai and one owns a Buick and just bought his wife a second Buick. The youngest of them is 60 and the oldest is 81.
My father who actually drives for a living basically as an outside sales guy has a Chevy as does my brother who does mental health. I don't know a single person around my age who owns any buick and only 1 person around my age who owns a Hyundai (and had a Kia before). Everyone else owns Chevy,Toyota ,Lexus , Nissan, Infiniti, Honda, Cadillac, Mercedes, Ford, Dodge basically in that order of the number of people...

I am not really sure how any of that is a conspiracy. You think stats are so awesome and yet they are the most manipulated BS thing on the planet. Maybe that is why you think they are awesome since you can twist the data to see it however you like it. For me I live in the real world of hard data and personal + extended experiences. 9/10 times I am right, just like how I have "heard the difference" between multiple different DAC's which when they were tested here they measured similarly & came out ranking exactly as I "heard". You just have to know how to process and catagorize data as you experience/learn about it.

Now you are accusing me of being a plant by "big audio"? Talk about a Conspiracy Theorist. I am one of the people who helped make this site popular by constantly arguing with people on MassDrop and telling them to come check this site to see where the performance of products really lays. I also sent in several controversial pieces of hardware back before Topping or SMSL was well known and they were "hated" by big Audio. I also shared this site IRL with people who asked me about audio equipment as well as via my website & Twitter.

I'm not sure what your last comment is about being "sexist" or whatever you are trying to construe here, I think you are just a bit off your rocker...

You do know everything you said above is a conspiracy claim right? You actually have to provide evidence for stuff to be something besides a conspiracy theory. All politicians have been bought! Consumer Reports doesn't analyze their data! The earth is flat! Jimster480 is one of those democrats who are killing babies for their adrenachrome in pizza parlor basements as part of a $6 billion industry fronted by Big Pizza!

 

[Jimster480]

You do know everything you said above is a conspiracy claim right? You actually have to provide evidence for stuff to be something besides a conspiracy theory. All politicians have been bought! Consumer Reports doesn't analyze their data! The earth is flat! Jimster480 is one of those democrats who are killing babies for their adrenachrome in pizza parlor basements as part of a $6 billion industry fronted by Big Pizza!

I don't think you have a single idea what you are talking about. Not only am I neither a Democrat or a Republican; I simply don't follow political parties since they are inheritly corrupt, just like blindly following brands. However that doesn't have anything to so with any topic here as none of what I just wrote is a conspiracy theory. It is simply explaining how the data is not accurate.
You are literally trying to say that I am a conspiracy theorist while making up your own conspiracy theories because you don't like the information that I have offered. It's fine for you to disagree but that doesn't make me a conspiracy theorist and it doesn't make anything that I have explained about how the data is inaccurate a conspiracy in any way.
Now if I said that JD Power always ignores replies from companies that don't pay them to discard them that would be a conspiracy theory that would need some kind of weight in it. For all I know maybe that really is a thing but I don't have any data to back that up so I'm not going to make that claim.
But I can say for certainty though is that it is not likely to be very accurate. The other thing that is misleading is this report from 2022 is based on vehicles from 2019. When they come out with the 2023 report it will also be from vehicles from 2020. Considering what happened in the world over the past couple years and the lack of driving that went on in the USA through 2020 and through most of 2021 it would also give Brands and even bigger pass and cause a bigger imbalance in the data. This would especially skew for older people who are less likely to have gone anywhere during this time. However younger people are less likely to reply to the survey considering that it typically doesn't pay any money or if there is a paid version of the survey it is only a couple dollars and it takes quite a while to do. If you have ever seen one of these surveys you would understand what I'm talking about.

It's people like you who make the internet a worse place because instead of debating anything based on logic you just want to believe your previous premonitions. When you don't like what somebody has to say you attack them personally instead of provide a reasonable counter argument. I am so sick and tired of all of the internet denizens claiming "prove it" constantly when they don't like the data they are offered.
Knowing very well that it is near impossible to prove most things claimed on the internet today and when the data is proven through a website that they don't like they also won't consider it to be real.

This is the exact same argument that most of the audiophiles make against this site. Say "topping D70 better than that Chord MOJO at half the price". Then they say "prove it", even if I were to waste time to provide the links (which I did tons of times) they would say "site isn't credible" or "that's a topping shill site" or something along those lines.
The same principle applies everywhere else.

Now if I wanted to subscribe to JD Power and to go download all of their transparency reports about the people that they survey and how they process the data and go spend hours analyzing all of the data then I could prove to you what I'm talking about. But unless you've got a payment for $2000+ I just don't care enough to waste my time doing such a thing especially when it comes to paid data sources like JD Power and consumer reports.

 

[Holdt]

Now if I wanted to subscribe to JD Power and to go download all of their transparency reports about the people that they survey and how they process the data and go spend hours analyzing all of the data then I could prove to you what I'm talking about. But unless you've got a payment for $2000+ I just don't care enough to waste my time doing such a thing especially when it comes to paid data sources like JD Power and consumer reports.

So. You are in fact admitting to have provided a claim without evidence.

 

[Jimster480]

So. You are in fact admitting to have provided a claim without evidence.

What I am explaining is how the data can be skewed and why it overall is not accurate.
If the scope is too large for you to understand then fine.

 

[Rthomas]

I worked for a consumer audio business for several years, from 2012-2015 and 2017-2020. It was a tiny company and we aimed directly for the middle of the market, say $100-300, which for our target customer, was expensive. Mainstream. (I won't say which one but you can probably figure it out if you're good with Google.) So much of what I say won't apply to bigger companies, or higher-end ones.

However, it might be good to know a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes. I see some assumptions about the biz that are not quite on the mark here and there, so maybe my experience can "lift some veils".

None of this is actually secret (it would be common knowledge for anyone employed in the industry) but isn't well-known outside of it. This audience has a lot of professionals in it so a lot of this might not be news to you. Also, I only worked at small volumes. Our company was a startup and about 10 people. My view of the industry would pale in comparison to someone who worked for Bose, Logitech, UE, etc. But these were some of my observations.

• The cost of building a consumer audio product is generally no more than 30% of retail. 30% COGS (cost of goods sold) is virtually a maximum for items sold at mainstream retailers.
  • Our company's COGS were higher than this, which was a problem. It didn't allow for us to recoup our costs, make enough money to pay our expenses (like salary, electric bill), and also leave something for the retailer. The rule of thumb for us in the US was retailers will ask for half of the retail price, or more. That leaves us to make our cut from the remaining half.
• Retail price is free to deviate upward from COGS in an unlimited fashion.
  • We all know Beats headphones. Undoubtedly they don't cost more in parts than an MPOW or Anker set. But people will pay more, so they charge more. What people will pay is much more important than how much something costs.
• Except for outlier brands, marketing expenses don't have a lot to do with COGS / product quality.
  • It's common to attribute high cost / low performance equipment to "too much spent on marketing, not enough on R&D". This is only true for the absolutely massive brands that can afford to saturate the airwaves. You can name all of them because there aren't very many, and their advertising works.
    
    When a small brand (sub-$100M in revenue at the lowest) spends money on marketing, they generally intend to (need to) make the money back in short order. They can't make the sale on name recognition alone. (I can go further into the math on this, but the numbers don't work unless you can shovel money at your audience for years at a stretch before making the sale.) Unless you can outspend Sony or Apple for 2+ years without going under... forget this strategy.
    
    Smaller brands have to compete on actual product features, reviews, and quality in general - which means that taking significant budget out of COGS to buy ads is often self-defeating. These brands do spend a good deal on marketing, but it tends to come out of profit margins, not COGS.
• Very few audio brands operate their own factories.
  • You can probably name most of them. Even big reputable names do not manufacture all of their own parts. Almost all consumer brands are simply re-selling or contracting out to overseas factories. (This isn't a bad thing - it's really hard to competently manufacture many types of components like drivers, cables and housings under one roof, and usually inefficient. But if you assumed XYZ brand did everything in house from soup to nuts, you very likely assumed wrong.)
• Most Chinese factories and engineers are perfectly capable of producing high-end equipment... but their customers don't ask for it.
  • Would you rather make $50 per unit on 100 units, or $5 per unit on 100,000 units? Yes, so would they. Niche applications are not of interest to most manufacturers, especially in China, because marketing to high end audiences isn't (at least a few years ago, it wasn't) as easy for them. They mostly operate on a B2B model focused on high volume orders. A major reason for that is switching production lines from product to product is costly. They much prefer to make 10,000 of something mainstream and fast-moving than 10 runs of 1,000 that might (or might not) sell for a high price. Many can do either, but prefer a few large contracts over many small ones.
    
    The factor that drives "Chinese (or insert the country of your choosing here) audio is low quality" attitudes is actually the customer. I will never forget the man who walked up to a booth attendant in Hong Kong on a sourcing trip. He skipped the formalities and brusquely said to the woman: "Show me your biggest speaker. Biggest and cheapest. I want, BIG, CHEAP and LOUD." This was actually at a booth that had some items approaching hi-fi. Too bad. But they make what they can sell.
    
    In truth, this man did understand the mainstream western consumer pretty well, but it's not nice to say it out loud.
• Economies of scale are really important.
  • Speaking of factories. Factories that are willing to do small runs are often less established, working with new suppliers themselves, and therefore can run into QC issues. This combined with low quantities pushes up the price of small-run products even more. Niche products are more expensive in large part because the cost per unit goes way up when you fall below 50K or 10K units per run.
• Audio companies are not all as sophisticated as you'd like to think.
  • You don't need a degree in anything to start an audio brand. Many companies don't even employ any engineers or design their own products. Many audio execs would be totally lost reading threads here, and have the critical listening skills of a shriveled potato. They're in the role for business, not functional reasons.
    
    If you find yourself wondering "Did they even measure XYZ before shipping this" the answer could actually be "no".
    
    This is far from all companies, and I do think it speaks to the sophistication of ASR and DIYaudio and similar forums, than it speaks to laziness or malfeasance on the part of manufacturers. Although, that is a factor too.
    
    The people who do actually design and build speakers tend to be quite sophisticated and skilled. You don't drop $100K on an injection mold on a hunch. The people making decisions about speakers, what to sell, how to price them, etc - often have less knowledge than a serious hobbyist. They may or may not follow the advice of knowledgeable people. They may just ask their golf buddy what they think of the sound. So, I'm here to confirm that your thoughts of "I could surely do better" are sometimes correct.
    
    edit: A note on people working in audio companies who aren't experts in audio. Product development and management (among others) are important skills that most businesses can't live without. And you don't need audio expertise to be good at them. Audio companies simply suffer from the same problems as any other technical business - sometimes management ignores engineers at the wrong time. Or engineers don't speak up at the right time. You may have heard the results of such failures here and there.
• Shipping costs are a huge factor.
  • This won't surprise anyone, but keep in mind that the manufacturer has to ship all the big / heavy parts of a speaker at least once or twice before they ship it to you. This adds up and there is a disproportionate incentive to keep the size and weight of a mainstream speaker down. Really everyone knows that heavier parts tend to work better (housings, magnets, etc.) but the cost explodes due to logistics costs, not just quality / tolerances.
• Packaging costs are probably a bigger factor than you think.
  • There are undoubtedly mid-low-end IEMs where the package costs more than the IEM. In fact it's not even hard to do this. You can source a low-end IEM for $2 and put it in a $3 box without going out of your way. It goes on Amazon for $20 or so and oddly enough everyone seems happy.
    
    However, it's possible to spend a significant fraction of COGS on packaging even at the higher end. $10 worth of box (printing, foam, nice manual, etc.) is not hard to do. When the COGS of that product are around $100 you're actually ultimately paying nearly $30 or $40 for the box. Best to keep it for resale value, then...
• Big retailers can't focus on sound quality or sell SOTA gear.
  • I do mean "can't". A major retailer like Target, Best Buy, Walmart etc. isn't set up to focus on extra-high quality sound like ASR members are looking for. The buyers at these stores are good at their jobs. And they do have ears. But their job isn't to offer the absolute highest-end gear. It's to make sure they make good money on the shelf space allocated to audio. They do this by ensuring they stock the type of thing their customers are likely to buy. To do THAT, they look for items that already sell, or brands that are well-established. This also excludes state-of-the-art stuff, which is by definition new, and therefore unproven.
    
    If the thing that sells well happens to sound good, they'll stock it. They may use sound quality as a tie-breaker between two equally salable goods. But they aren't in the business of introducing the best sound to people.
    
    If you want excellent sound, you need to look for a specialty shop or a DTC online marketplace (e.g. Amazon). If you want anyone in retail to know and care about audio, well, follow the advice of many people in this thread exhorting you to support local specialty shops. They are the only ones who can afford to care.

Edit: Cliche: "wow, this blew up". I will update later with some clarifications and responses to comments here! Glad this is interesting to read.

A note on DIY: When you build your own gear, you pay a lot more for parts. But DIY is often apparently cheaper for high-quality speakers? Why? because you don't have to pay for: Overhead (unless you rent or buy a workshop), wages (unless you pay yourself for your time?), sales taxes (you're not selling it, right?), shipping (except the parts to your house, and often wood comes from the local DIY store), etc. This should illustrate directionally why gear costs what it costs. In some cases even with high-end equipment, parts cost is a small fraction of what it costs to develop, build, and deliver the item to you.

Note: COGS doesn't include R&D or other costs of running a business. Some have noted that the Genelec teardowns don't reveal any unobtanium or incredibly fancy innards. Sure, but they have spent decades learning how to put those things together properly - at significant cost. I would personally rather pay $100 for $10 worth of parts combined in the best way possible, than pay $100 for $50 worth of parts assembled by drunk baboons. YMMV.

In that sense, a 3:1 retail to COGS price is arguably very fair or even low, especially for firms that do any R&D at all. I personally wouldn't say something is overpriced until you hit 10:1 or more. If you try to list all the costs (other than parts and R&D) that companies need to bear, you will get bored of writing before you think of them all. From employee health insurance to RoHS certification, it all costs money, and either you the consumer pay for it, or the company goes under eventually.

Great write up. Would love your thoughts on the following:

The Susvara is $6000 and made in China. The Focal Utopia is $5000 and made in France.

If you have to guess the COGS for them what would it be?

My uneducated guess is that the Utopia probably costs 2 to 3 times more to manufacture but I’m not sure….

Thanks!

 

[Holdt]

What I am explaining is how the data can be skewed and why it overall is not accurate.
If the scope is too large for you to understand then fine.

Without evidence that is.

I'll omit the insult. Your psyops is weak.

On the list you go..

 

[Jimster480]

Without evidence that is.

I'll omit the insult. Your psyops is weak.

On the list you go..

I mean it isn't possible for me to provide a full suite of evidence without literally 100+ hours of time to write into its own entire thread here.
From information on how many hours/miles older people drive.
To a database of the ages and lifestyles of people polled and how those people typically use their cars.
To data from all manufacturers on their recalls, service calls, claims / warranty services, etc and then breakdowns for those model years.
Honestly all that data will be too much for most people to understand so then it would also have to be formatted. Basically I would need to start a website much like this one filled with databases of car information to show concrete evidence that the JD Power reliabilty report isn't exactly accurate to real world car reliability.

The fact that you don't even want to discuss how their methodology can be easily skewed or is ripe for the data being inaccurate due to the small sample sizes and under-representations of brands as well as their type of polling has me wondering. Maybe you work for them or to an agency related to them? I thought this was a forum of science, but scientific method apparently isn't important here. This is just the same as the rest of the internet where if a claim is made that goes against a mainstream source; the person who is making said claim is expected to come armed with hundreds of hours of work as well as extensive documentation to back up any suggestions other than that this mainstream source is a truthful and benevolent organization that has only the most trusted experts who don't make mistakes and only filter data in the best possible most accurate way to deliver the best information to the world just for the sake of being right.
Insanity.

Just as a little bit of what I was mentioning about brand reliability:

These car manufacturers issued the most recalls in 2022

These manufacturers had the most recalls in 2022. The automaker with the most recalls averaged one recall every 5.4 days.

www.autoblog.com

Looks like Hyundai/Kia & GM are all in the middle of the TOP 10. Wonder how they made it to the top of reliability?

Which Automakers Have The Best Recall Rate and Timeliness? - iSeeCars.com

A new study by iSeeCars.com analyzed over 31 years of recall history and found that Porsche boasts the lowest “recall rate” and Volkswagen the highest, GM...

www.iseecars.com

Here is a study for you:

Hyundai is near the bottom... Kia near the top and GM in the middle. However;

By Severity GM, Kia, Hyundai all under the industry average.
This data goes to 2016 only (as it says in the images) but it gives you an idea.

Not that it matters though since this simple to search information isn't "proof that JD Power's Reliability study isn't accurate". It is just other data that follows with what I mentioned vs what the study says.

 

[Jimster480]

Uh huh.



And here I was thinking I hadn't achieved enough in my life.

Edit: not being US-ian, I don't follow all the cray-cray, but if you'd taken your vaccine, the microchips in your bloodstream would have alerted you to Snopes debunking the Bryson Gray BS (the song is still on Apple Music though, and that article will explain why you and your sources are approx. 50 times wrong).

Again that one song isn't the problem. If you could read at all you would see that in fact he did reach the top song. He actually got a billboard for it and made a video about it.
However that specific song wasn't even what I was talking about.
The snopes article (which clearly you didn't read) shows that he did get #1 but just that "it's not the best metric for what is the most popular".
So again in fact I was right and you were spewing nonsense in a fury because you didn't like the artist for political or faith based reasons (likely both).

You conveniently ignored the facts mentioned in my previous post because they confirm what I said half a year ago and confirm your ignorance on the topic. It seems that your ego and pompousness didn't afford you a proper check of what was claimed before being foolish enough to bring up a claim I had made before into a new thread.

What you should be doing is apologizing for not only falsely accusing me, but also coordinating and filing fake reports against me and my company through several avenues.


What I suggest is that you keep an open mind so you can actually learn something, rather than just believe that you have all the answers. This way when someone brings up something you know nothing about it would be possible to expand your horizons.

This way the thread can get back on topic and you can stop derailing it and trying to turn it against me, rather than discuss the issues at hand.