The Chinese fallacy

[gikigill]

It doesn't bother me in the least. Should it?

PS and Schiit are boutique manufacturers playing with the audiophile's desire for a story, a character or two, and a point of difference. They play well in that space. (I dislike that term don't you?)



Revolutionized, I don't think so. That's funny. The big brands (the Japanese) simply abandoned vrtually the entire HiFi market and the Chinese slid into the bottom tier. There are thousands of way higher performing real HiFi components still out there, produced in the 80s and 90s.

People just have forgotten (or just never knew) how good HiFi got in the 80s and 90s.

Of course it should bother you, you go on and on about low quality Chinese stuff but have nothing to say when to comes to low quality US made equipment. I,m not Chinese BTW, I,m of Indian origin who migrated to Oz.

I,m guessing its less to do with the equipment and more to do with with wheres it made from and who made it and I assure you, I have 1970s Stax and Sansui so I know how good Japanese manufacturing can be. I grew up in a house where even the alarm clocks were Sony. We had Sansui, Akai, Aiwa and even today my Minidisc collection borders on more than 100 recorders/players and most of it from Sony, Sharp, Aiwa, Kenwood, JVC, Pioneer, Denon and others.

A vintage Onkyo A-5100 is sitting next to me as I type this and an AMB M3 and AMB Beta 22 which were both designed by a Chinese designer are on my left acting as my main headphone amps.

Problem is 1970/80s Japanese top of the line was just as expensive as any top of the line audio kit today. The top of the line Sony amps of the 70s would be worth more than AUD $7000 today.

 

[gikigill]

It depends on whether the manufacturing is supervised by a US, Japanese or European company. Lots of good stuff is made in China, but it has foreign design and management.

Exactly, the Chinese build on the specs and budget given to them.

Pay them peanuts and give them garbage designs and you wont magically get a miracle out of them.

 

[Ron Texas]

Exactly, the Chinese build on the specs and budget given to them.

Pay them peanuts and give them garbage designs and you wont magically get a miracle out of them.

The problems are with totally Chinese operations. Their business ethics are deficient, so we get drywall with sulfuric acid, adulterated milk and flooring made with toxic glue. But put a foreign company in supervision and you get iPhones, KEF speakers and Nikon lenses, to name a few.

 

[DDF]

Exactly, the Chinese build on the specs and budget given to them.

Pay them peanuts and give them garbage designs and you wont magically get a miracle out of them.

IME western factories will be more prone to pointing out a problem in a design or manufacturing method, Chinese factories are more prone to just build it.

I had my home renovators do the exact same thing multiple times when given inane instructions from the project mgr so I hope no one assumes that I'm saying this is cultural (its not), but it seems to be a trend for high tech mfg, again IME. As an aside, I also have experience with modern Japanese mfg and its the most conservative and quality focussed I have ever seen.

My experience may not be the norm. I'd be interested in hearing from more people with actual deep manufacturing experience in the west and east vs just heresay.

 

[gikigill]

The problems are with totally Chinese operations. Their business ethics are deficient, so we get drywall with sulfuric acid, adulterated milk and flooring made with toxic glue. But put a foreign company in supervision and you get iPhones, KEF speakers and Nikon lenses, to name a few.

It all boils down to cheap vs expensive. None of the items under foreign supervision are cheap.

Same happens to China made tiling and the quality difference can be seen in the price. Expensive Chinese tiling is high quality, cheap Chinese tiling is low quality/hazy.

 

[g29]

It all boils down to cheap vs expensive. ....

There is also a difference between safe and cosmetic. Getting a hazy tile is quite different than getting something that will make you sick or worse.

 

[BillG]

Of course it should bother you, you go on and on about low quality Chinese stuff but have nothing to say when to comes to low quality US made equipment

They'll talk about toxic this and that coming out of China, while the capitalist nature of their economics runs a confidence game on entire planet.

Chinese business people caught up in corruption are typically sentenced to hard labor or executed. Western business people doing the same are given huge bonuses like what happened during the subprime mortgage scandal; Unless they cross the wrong powerful person, and then they get a slap on the wrist.

 

[FrantzM]

It doesn't bother me in the least. Should it?

PS and Schiit are boutique manufacturers playing with the audiophile's desire for a story, a character or two, and a point of difference. They play well in that space. (I dislike that term don't you?)



Revolutionized, I don't think so. That's funny. The big brands (the Japanese) simply abandoned vrtually the entire HiFi market and the Chinese slid into the bottom tier. There are thousands of way higher performing real HiFi components still out there, produced in the 80s and 90s.

People just have forgotten (or just never knew) how good HiFi got in the 80s and 90s.

Then the West was claiming these to be inferior. An entire industry based on an ever increasing price got the best of these great products, from Japan. who if I remember correctly were accused of producing cheap things too, about 60 years ago ... To this day many believe that the great products from these companies ( Pioneer, Sansui, Technics, Kenwood, etc) were inferior to the BS wares from Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, Linn Sondek or other manufacturers not from Japan ... Are we seeing the same thing? We can see many products from China routinely surpassing those from so called "High End Audio" Not-From_China, exemples , the poor showing from BS Audio , Total Crap and Schiit ... the Khadas Tone Board being an exemple of a seriously well engineered product .. Really a Giant Killer that would wipe the floor with the Total Crap or the Schiit Ass Guard ( Sorry I couldn't resist )

As for the safety certification, we can also look at history and remember the resistance with which, such certifications were met in the West... The fight continue ... to this day ....

 

[raif71]

I for one am grateful to the abundance of quality and affordable chi-fi products. Now, everyone can enjoy hi-res audio. Truly the products coming from there are a game changer and industry disrupter. Resistance is futile . As for quality, they are gonna get better and future looks bright, I gotta wear shades

 

[Wombat]

One can ask the question whether it is sensible to always go for the lowest prices. Remember for instance the CD rewritables that couldn’t be read after only a few years? Going for the lowest prices nowadays gives us again and again polluted medicines, because all the production is tranferred to China and no one else in the world is producing the necessary raw materials for these medicines anymore. Not to mention that this complete dependency of the western world could be used (and already has been used) for economic warfare in times of conflicts. You get what you pay for. If one wants to keep this industry alive (and keep employment) one has to be willing to pay a fair price for products.

India is a very large producer of pharmaceuticals.

 

[Wombat]

China. Developed or developing nation. Not so black and white
.

 

[carlosmante]

The problems are with totally Chinese operations. Their business ethics are deficient, so we get drywall with sulfuric acid, adulterated milk and flooring made with toxic glue. But put a foreign company in supervision and you get iPhones, KEF speakers and Nikon lenses, to name a few.

The West is not and never has been the lighthouse of morality or ethics. Le'ts remember the last century of Genocides. Who controls the arms traffic, the drugs traffic, the Pharmafia? U.S.A. and their allies or complicits.

 

[PierreV]

You are better off spending tons of cash on US engineering

The Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Progression Mono is a powerful amplifier indeed, and the measured performance of the second sample does suggest that the first sample I received had somehow suffered during its travels. I was still puzzled by what appeared to be crossover distortion.
https://www.stereophile.com/content...n-mono-monoblock-power-amplifier-measurements

or German engineering.

I encountered just two issues with the Mono IIs. The first was minor: The on/off buttons didn't always depress smoothly. Although neither ever got stuck, they felt a bit chintzy. More concerning, the left-channel amp began to hum audibly on my last day of listening and continued to do so even when I removed it from the Niagara 5000 power conditioner and plugged it into the wall outlet.

was puzzled by the Accustic Arts Mono II's measured performance. Some aspects are excellent—the low levels of noise; the very low levels of distortion at low and middle frequencies with balanced drive; the dominance of the second harmonic in the distortion signature; the reproduction of squarewaves; and the generally excellent matching between the two samples. But the Mono II's inability to meet its specified powers and the dramatic rise in distortion at high frequencies into low impedances are disappointing.

It's all in the quality control you see

Editor: The lack of performance of the Accustic Arts Mono II power amplifiers was caused by the fact that we unfortunately installed wrong transformers.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/accustic-arts-audio-mono-ii-monoblock-power-amplifier

So, is that the US or the German fallacy?

 

[Ron Texas]

The West is not and never has been the lighthouse of morality or ethics. Le'ts remember the last century of Genocides. Who controls the arms traffic, the drugs traffic, the Pharmafia? U.S.A. and their allies or complicits.

I suppose Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are as pure as the driven snow. Who gave you the right to hate the USA?

 

[Bmoze]

Last year I tried a smsl dac in my office system. It lasted three days before one channel stopped working. I had purchased it through massdrop, who let me return it, but it was a bit of a hassle. Wasn’t worth the aggravation to me. I want gear that works well and is fairly priced, but I strongly prefer and am willing to pay more for a non-Chinese product.

 

[Wombat]

I suppose Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are as pure as the driven snow. Who gave you the right to hate the USA?

Not hate. Just a wider, non-partisan, unblinkered, non-binary, non-flag-waving, education and understanding of history. And, no, those others are not as pure as snow.

"Two wrongs don't make a right", though.

A moral question. Who originally trained and supplied the Mujahedin/Taliban with all that they required to a be significant political and military entity in Afghanistan?

To avoid a political thread diversion, the answer is the CIA, pure and simple - on the quiet as they say. Secret US budget allocations. Oops.

 

[gikigill]

I suppose Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are as pure as the driven snow. Who gave you the right to hate the USA?

You,ve lost the argument if you have to compare your standards to those low grade countries. So much for American exceptionalism.

We don't need permission from the US to form our opinions. So much for freedom of speech.

Now do I have your permission to post this or will this post be monitored as per this article?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...rr-wants-backdoor-access-messages/3858584002/

 

[g29]

You,ve lost the argument if you have to compare your standards to those low grade countries. So much for American exceptionalism.

We don't need permission from the US to form our opinions. So much for freedom of speech.

Now do I have your permission to post this or will this post be monitored as per this article?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...rr-wants-backdoor-access-messages/3858584002/

This is laughable coming from Facebook. Nothing on Facebook is private including private groups and private chats. Facebook just opposes the competition having access to their data mining.

Facebook opposes Barr's request.

"We believe people have the right to have a private conversation online, wherever they are in the world,” the company wrote in a statement shared with USA TODAY. "End-to-end encryption already protects the messages of over a billion people every day....We strongly oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere.”

 

[maxxevv]

I'm old enough to remember when you commonly heard swearing because someone purchased something finding out it was cheap Japanese junk. I remember when Japan made forays into fields producing cheaper alternatives. Sometimes not as heavy duty as American made goods, but much cheaper and not usually junk. I've heard from people who were in Japan just after WWII that worked helping Japan re-start manufacturing. Cheap labor and low pricing got them started, but they moved into high quality fairly soon. Eventually being known mostly for their quality.

People have selective memories. Largely.

China can now produce things of quality. They supply a market that likes cheap stuff. Sometimes to its detriment. I've heard of factory execs in China wondering why Americans buy this junk. They'll take the business, but even they see it is garbage. Most poor optical gear (camera lenses, scopes etc.) are still Chinese. They actually are able to make some very high quality optics and do when they get large enough contracts from customers willing to pay for it. I do think there is a cultural problem holding them back from moving more quickly into better quality in general. I still think it will happen.

That's what most companies will do. Deliver what the customers are willing to pay for.
But if the opportunity presents itself, move up the food chain into higher value-add realms / tiers / niches.

Even before the chinese factories, just look at Taiwanese ones who were OEMs who progressed to be ODMs and then establish their own brands and makes. Such as Acer, Asus, Gigabyte for example. TSMC if you want to go higher up the chain.

On the chinese audio scene, SMSL started out as OEM factory for foreign makes, ( @SMSL-Mandy please correct me if I'm wrong) and learned their craft to step into the ODM realm and almost concurrently into the original branding manufacturers because they have developed the capability and capacity over the years.

On the other well known front, Lenovo being an example.

There is a tremendously big chinese market for them, 400+ million "middle-income " ( by chinese income standards) is way bigger than any other singular market can offer anywhere. That's partly what has motivated companies like Khadas and Matrix startup too.

 

[beefkabob]

Indeed, no country is good and pure all the way through. The US has the Sackler family, among other scumballs. We even have a politician or two of ill repute. Plenty to complain about.

But in manufacturing and business, China has worked hard and consistently to do the wrong thing. Can they make an A+ product? Yes. Do they usually? Nope. Did my TV and laptop die from garbage capacitors or out-of-spec solder? Yes! Did they steal tech, ship toxic products, and lie in massive numbers? Absolutely. Did they totally screw up the order of children's clothing that my uncle's business ordered? Yeah, that too.

As bad as we are in the US, China is 1000 times worse. Sure, our president locked immigrant children away from their families, which is an atrocity. However, in the US, the majority of people are angry over such awful crimes. Meanwhile, in China, a million Muslims have been put into concentration camps, and the populace says, "Hey, as long as I'm getting paid, who gives a damn?"

As for India, just look at the number of FDA drug recalls. They're nowhere near as bad as China, but they're not exactly a western nation. Meanwhile, Modi's hateful rhetoric about Muslims and martial law in Kashmir makes Trump look like a dove.