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santosh.s · 16th July 2007, 13:06

I can't resist posting here in a nice debate.

ALL companies are there to make money, and that applies not just to audio. They are not doing social service, so they can't be expected to operate on non-profit basis. Just like they hire hyper-brains to take on the challenge of designing technically excellent products, they also have another set of super-brains to study the market/competition, analyze different market segments and diversify their product line to cater to all those segments. The target is to maximize the bottom line. It is very likely that the segment, which these purist HUs are positioned for, may include those who would buy it because it does NOT play mp3 or divx (thereby proving the point that they are indeed pure!).

Brand name is a MAJOR factor. Burr Brown DAC/ADC chips mentioned earlier are now made by TI (Texas Instruments) because they had bought BB. But they still continue to keep the name BB because that is a bigger name for intended customers. If they take that tag off, it will surely have an adverse impact on their sales. On the other hand, if BB was some unknown company but with same quality of products (say a Chinese one!), they would have definitely renamed those chips under TI banner after the takeover. I know such components which enjoy this level of brand image are easily sold at profit margins as high as 80%.

I have an interesting fact to share about some audio related chips. They have two flavors of a certain audio feature. One has SNR (signal to noise ratio) of 120dB or so, which is extremely good, highly "audiophile". The lower flavor has 20-30dB lesser. What I wanted to tell here is that -the lower version is actually nothing but the higher version plus some significant extra circuitry to add artificial noise to it- can you believe it? When you see products (especially electronics) with 3-4 variants with different sub-sets of features, it is very likely that the hardware and software therein is same for all of them, which obviously corresponds to the top most variant. Others just have a few of the features disabled so as to sell them at lower price ranges. Though I definitely feel that all these tricks are not high on morality/ethics, no one can blame them or accuse them of doing anything wrong as long as they don't force customers to buy their products at knife or gun point

. This is probably the meaning of "healthy" competition in a "free" economy!!

16th July 2007, 13:06	#19 (permalink)
santosh.s BHPian Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Bangalore Posts: 616	I can't resist posting here in a nice debate. ALL companies are there to make money, and that applies not just to audio. They are not doing social service, so they can't be expected to operate on non-profit basis. Just like they hire hyper-brains to take on the challenge of designing technically excellent products, they also have another set of super-brains to study the market/competition, analyze different market segments and diversify their product line to cater to all those segments. The target is to maximize the bottom line. It is very likely that the segment, which these purist HUs are positioned for, may include those who would buy it because it does NOT play mp3 or divx (thereby proving the point that they are indeed pure!). Brand name is a MAJOR factor. Burr Brown DAC/ADC chips mentioned earlier are now made by TI (Texas Instruments) because they had bought BB. But they still continue to keep the name BB because that is a bigger name for intended customers. If they take that tag off, it will surely have an adverse impact on their sales. On the other hand, if BB was some unknown company but with same quality of products (say a Chinese one!), they would have definitely renamed those chips under TI banner after the takeover. I know such components which enjoy this level of brand image are easily sold at profit margins as high as 80%. I have an interesting fact to share about some audio related chips. They have two flavors of a certain audio feature. One has SNR (signal to noise ratio) of 120dB or so, which is extremely good, highly "audiophile". The lower flavor has 20-30dB lesser. What I wanted to tell here is that -the lower version is actually nothing but the higher version plus some significant extra circuitry to add artificial noise to it- can you believe it? When you see products (especially electronics) with 3-4 variants with different sub-sets of features, it is very likely that the hardware and software therein is same for all of them, which obviously corresponds to the top most variant. Others just have a few of the features disabled so as to sell them at lower price ranges. Though I definitely feel that all these tricks are not high on morality/ethics, no one can blame them or accuse them of doing anything wrong as long as they don't force customers to buy their products at knife or gun point. This is probably the meaning of "healthy" competition in a "free" economy!!