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Post by @?,*???&? » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:55 pm

Parametric EQ.

Good quality.

2-channel units in the $200 to $500 range with shelving capability as well as lpf and hpf.

Why has no one done this yet?

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Post by kayagum » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:05 pm

Aphex 109 is not bad. Have you tried that?

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Post by RodC » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:51 pm

+1 I went looking a while back gave up.

The Aphex 109 would only give you 2 bands in stereo mode. I would like to have 4 at least.
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Post by Electricide » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:32 pm

I wish that Onyx Satellite had hi-pass filters. and Unity detents.

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Post by puffpastry » Fri Oct 27, 2006 5:45 pm

Parametric EQ.

Good quality.

2-channel units in the $200 to $500 range with shelving capability as well as lpf and hpf.
I agree with you, although the $200-$500 range might be a hard price point to meet. I'm working on three designs with a certain manufacturer at the moment. It was difficult at first to convince them that they should use the parts I've specified in the bill of materials.

I'm surprised at how much the list price increases as the cost of manufacturing goes up. You can expect to pay about five times what it costs to make. A $20 increase in manufacturing cost means another $100 to the consumer. Unfortunate, I know, but that's how it typically works. Some companies will spend more on advertising than they will on actually manufacturing the product. That seems backwards to me.

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Post by Cyan421 » Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:30 pm

Klark technik makes one but I think it is more that $500
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Post by Family Hoof » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:10 pm

puffpastry wrote:I'm surprised at how much the list price increases as the cost of manufacturing goes up. You can expect to pay about five times what it costs to make. A $20 increase in manufacturing cost means another $100 to the consumer. Unfortunate, I know, but that's how it typically works. Some companies will spend more on advertising than they will on actually manufacturing the product. That seems backwards to me.
Yes, five times markup is a very common starting point. Seemed awfully unreasonable to me too... until I started working in gear manufacturing.

Many end-users seem to act like the only cost in manufacturing a product is parts. It's easy to get caught up in this line of thought, but one must consider several other factors. For starters, what a dealer pays is already around %30 off MSRP (list price), if not less. So that brings us down to 3.5 times parts (which is where a less fortunate product might start at). If there's a distributor involved, then it will take a similar cut. Whatever remains is what the manufacturer gets, and this lesser markup must cover all of the associated costs of bringing the product to market. Nevermid advertising; monthly overhead can be enormous, even for a small boutique company. As with any business you've got rent, utilities, insurance, shipping, and however many mouths to feed. Did I mention R&D (research and design)? Meanwhile, we're just talking about covering costs - breaking even, so that you can pay your bills and afford to run another batch. Profit doesn't enter the picture until costs go down.

Getting back to the initial question, I can recall dozens of mixing consoles with a full-featured, decent-sounding channel EQ that could cost far, far less than $200 USD to produce. DDA, for example. The problem I suppose, is when you're selling only two channels instead of 24+, and you put them in a rack chassis with a power supply, and the cost of certifying a power supply... $200 suddenly becomes unrealistic.

That reminds me of an EQ design that Barry Porter made public domain some years ago called "NET EQ". His claim was that it'd be so affordable to produce, while still sounding good and having enough features, that a willing manufacturer could offer it for $200 - $300 USD. I wonder if any company ever followed through? I could certainly see some of Barry's Trident EQ deisgns fitting this criteria.

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Post by Professor » Sun Oct 29, 2006 1:16 am

It looks like it's discontinued, but maybe you can track down a used Symetrix 552e. And maybe there's an old DBX product.
If 3 bands are enough, there's stuff from Presonus or Joe Meek or probably a few others.
In that price range, you're looking at Chinese factories, and manufacturers that are going to market to the demands of the project studio. And project studio folks want preamps, and maybe compressors, and generally a simple equalizer.

You know full well that quality in that price range is a relative notion anyway. And you already know about the 5:1 rule of MSRP to parts cost which means that a $500 unit is going to need to only run about $100 in parts including the chassis and PSU. If you're building a preamp, that's not a problem because you can build a pretty good pair of op-amps for that price range. Same thing with building a two-channel compressor. And building a simple pair of EQs with an op-amp and a few relatively well-matched resistor & capacitor pairs. Hell, you could make a pretty good quality 15-band or even 31-band graphic in that range easily enough. But if you're looking for two channels with maybe two sweepable peak/notches, two sweepable shelves, and a Hi- and Lo-pass (maybe with a sweep?) and you want "quality", then you're asking for a lot out of $100 in parts.
If That Corp can build all the circuitry onto a single chip the way they build their opamps for cheap preamps and compressors, then maybe there would be a chance.

-Jeremy

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Post by ??????? » Sun Oct 29, 2006 6:04 am

puffpastry wrote:Some companies will spend more on advertising than they will on actually manufacturing the product. That seems backwards to me.
It's their version of "let's fix it in the marketing."

:D

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Post by @?,*???&? » Sun Oct 29, 2006 7:27 am

Professor wrote:there's stuff from Presonus or Joe Meek or probably a few others.
I've got one of the Presonus EQ3Bs and its okay, but not aggressive and gets hard-to-cheap sounding quickly. The Presonus only offers bandwidth control but does have a fixed high-pass filter. I've grown to really enjoy the flexibility of HPF features in various EQ plugins though- but I loath the sound of boosting and attenuating with a Q at a frequency in the digital domain.

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Post by @?,*???&? » Sun Oct 29, 2006 7:31 am

brad347 wrote:
puffpastry wrote:Some companies will spend more on advertising than they will on actually manufacturing the product. That seems backwards to me.
It's their version of "let's fix it in the marketing."

:D
On the flip side, take a company like Aardvark tht made great converters, they did not have the money to have a professional design of packaging and artwork and therefore could never score a retailer like Guitar Center to carry their product.

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Post by puffpastry » Sun Oct 29, 2006 2:35 pm

That reminds me of an EQ design that Barry Porter made public domain some years ago called "NET EQ". His claim was that it'd be so affordable to produce, while still sounding good and having enough features, that a willing manufacturer could offer it for $200 - $300 USD. I wonder if any company ever followed through? I could certainly see some of Barry's Trident EQ deisgns fitting this criteria.
I've seen that design--IIRC it's one of those constant amplitude phase shift things. It has something like 15 opamps in it, not including the I/O's. Budgetary pricing would definitely climb up there if one were to use anything decent for an IC.

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Post by Professor » Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:00 pm

@?,*???&? wrote: I've grown to really enjoy the flexibility of HPF features in various EQ plugins though...
I agree. Love 'em, love 'em, love 'em. But it's also easier to implement that as a feature when things are digital already. I've got the obvious plugs in PT-HD, and also have sweepable low-cuts in the Yamaha consoles.

But in analog hardware, that's a tough one. The only piece I can think of with that feature in that kind of range would be a used Symetrix 552e. And you I can't even say something like 'get a cheap Soundcraft mixer' because that feature doesn't appear on their gear until the Series Two consoles and above.
Of course, I imagine that there must be a way to design a simple, passive, variable low-cut filter. If you could pop it in on the insert of any ol' mic preamp that would be an easy enough fix there, and then that limits the expectations of the inexpensive equalizer.

I bet Brian could toss out a design for a passive, variable low-cut in about 5-minutes.

-Jeremy

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Post by snatchman » Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:48 pm

I have the ART 2-Channel Tube Parametric EQ. Sounds pretty good.... :) Hey..PuffPastry, any mods for it?.... 8)

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Post by puffpastry » Wed Nov 01, 2006 7:23 pm

I have the ART 2-Channel Tube Parametric EQ. Sounds pretty good.... Smile Hey..PuffPastry, any mods for it?....
I've looked at that design a little bit, Clinton. I think the thing that steered me away from it is that it took too much work to really get it to sound that much better. Unfortunately, modifying equipment can be similar to building it...there are paychecks to write, insurance, taxes, lawyers, accountants, and rent...it seemed so simple when I started! It gets complicated pretty quickly...and there never seems to be enough time in the day to do all that needs to be done!

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