[SoundManiac]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

NONONONO
the screen is not a "screen"
It is just a screen for the i-pod. An enlarged i-pod screen. Doesnt show any video.

Well if it is just a bigger screen for Ipod then I seriously doubt it selling at that price. If price is a lil lower then the controller and screen make it appealing for a niche market.

Another option may be an idea for future development. How about adding a Hard Disk to the system, that way we can use even a basic ipod with say 512 MB of memory. And even the users of Ipods with lotsa memory surely wont mind more storage space!!

[navin]

with this product your ipod can be hidden. it allows you better control over the ipod. unfortunately the market might be small as many HUs now have the ability to control ipods (with add on connectors). the larger screen on this product will allow you to scroll easier.

my fear (unfounded) is that if 2 DIN HUs become he norm there will enough real estate on the HU to provide the kind of display you need to control an ipod. with most 1 DIN HU the display does not allow you to control the HU properly as you cant really see many songs on he long list only the song that is being played.

[SoundManiac]

Originally Posted by k_ajay

SM, Sam isn't saying that Infinity won't sell or that it never sells, but his Q is how many guys are there like you who'd be interested to spend so much on car audio.... To most people I know, pioneer and sony are the only brands available for car audio and 90% of them go in for a complete pioneer set, HU, speakers and all, and wrap up everything under 10k....

A colleague in my dept recently bought an Alto and she has a horrible sounding pioneer setup, which he got done for 8500/-, including fixing and mdf board, etc.... To her, it sounds excellent...

That my friend, is the state of preference of the mass market for car audio in India..

Agree with you Ajay, but that is where Marketing will have to step in. You got to educate people.

Give the customer an option to compare Sony setup in one car, Pioneer in one, JBL in another, or may be A demo Car housing all three. Jeez!!! Also give him finer points of music.
I've always wanted good music for my home and car. but had zero knowledge. Sony was king for me in home audio. So went ahead and bought Sony for my Car. A better setup for me meant - a costly head unit, and speakers with highest wattage available. The higher the Wattage the better. My second Car, I installed Pioneer - found it better than sony - was very happy.

Now with my Swift, wanted the best i could afford. But now I had a good resource to get knowledge, the NET. And how my world of Audio has changed!!! I had to search and search for right answers. Crutchfield gave me a real insight! The moment I understood the diff between compos and normal coaxials, i wanted compos. Have seen many car audio sellers who never heard the word components and hardly any actually stocking compos. How can anyone even wanting a good sound system get one good system installed in such a market scenario? The Customer, and the Car audio seller should first know what a good system is. If i'd gone back to the old seller, like many of us do, for advice I would still have ended up with a sony or a pioneer system. But thank fully I went to the net and Team-BHP for advice......

In fact for more than a month now I've been browsing sites and forums for knowledge of what makes a good system. Never heard the word soundstage before. My Car audio installer infact tells me big speakers for the rear and any 4" for the front or may be an added chinese tweeter for 800 will sound best. If this guy tells me this set up will rock and I don't need to spend more, why will I spend? Iremember telling the guy to install 6" in front and he told me they would disturb the sound coming from behind - which is where sound should come from!!! I foudn it strange at times especially when listening to commentaries that the speaker was sitting behind my back. But this is how it should be I was told!!

just have a look at indiacar message board and the number of queries there on a good sound system. I visited many forums in other countries for advice and knowledge and found so many indians looking for similar answers. For each lucky one who will be able to search for this forums and sites, there will be many more who will not be able to but would want a "better system", and for each such guy not being able to properly search sites on the net there will be so many many more who just do not search net or just don't know how to surf net and would still want a "better system". I for one know so many such people. In fact a couple of my friends have been taking my advice of late (Thanks Sam and Navin and other forums and site).

woof! another lenghty mail. but rest assured my dear friend, there is a huge untapped market for finer sound! the need is to tap it.


(This is in a way is what I was telling with my "SHAKTI" example. Auto fellows blast the staff of any petrol pump giving back a change of even 25 paise less to him. And imagine we could sell him diesel worth Rs. 2.25 a litre more!!! This auto fellow was spending around Rs. 20 more on fuel . Now Rs. 20 could buy him two meals a day. and yet he was willing to forego this amount and fill shakti. In fact officials from IBP were surprised and personally visited my Pump to guage how exactly we were doing it.)

[SoundManiac]

A rejoinder

All that I wrote in my preceding post notwithstanding, I cannot understand why we Indians have to shell out more than the nationals of other countries like US, UK, UAE, Singapore etc for the same product.

Many a times these companies just fleece customers. I had an experience in Computers. The compaq notebook I purchased for 71000/- B&W in INdia was available for Rs. 50,000/- in Dubai and Singapore. Acer started a Price war and the same notebook was retailing for around Rs. 56,000/- with B & Wwithin 2 months of my purchase!!

[navin]

Q: soundmaniac, how come you listened to the installer. You trusted him? I've had the same installer for 10+ years and still dont trust him. I tell them what i want.

All my years in audio and I dont think I have listened to anyone but my ears. If i did i would not have ahd the confidence to for example "change that 3.3 ohms resistor in the difraction compensation network to a 2.7 ohms resistor". you get the idea. it is by not listening to anyone but your inner voice that you find answers. Otherwise you find advise.

this aim of forums like these are not about providing answers but letting people know where to look. all those subscribed to forums like these are smart enough to find the right answers themsleves.

[k_ajay]

Originally Posted by SoundManiac

A rejoinder

All that I wrote in my preceding post notwithstanding, I cannot understand why we Indians have to shell out more than the nationals of other countries like US, UK, UAE, Singapore etc for the same product.

Many a times these companies just fleece customers. I had an experience in Computers. The compaq notebook I purchased for 71000/- B&W in INdia was available for Rs. 50,000/- in Dubai and Singapore. Acer started a Price war and the same notebook was retailing for around Rs. 56,000/- with B & Wwithin 2 months of my purchase!!

disguisting, isn't it?? knowing others pay less and we pay more...

[SoundManiac]

Originally Posted by navin

Q: soundmaniac, how come you listened to the installer. You trusted him? I've had the same installer for 10+ years and still dont trust him. I tell them what i want.

All my years in audio and I dont think I have listened to anyone but my ears. If i did i would not have ahd the confidence to for example "change that 3.3 ohms resistor in the difraction compensation network to a 2.7 ohms resistor". you get the idea. it is by not listening to anyone but your inner voice that you find answers. Otherwise you find advise.

Very Well said. I fully concour with you,only that I learnt this lesson a lil later. Go by your instincts and decision - right or wrong.

As to why I heard the installer, well he seemed to be knowledgeable and why i chose to gain knowledge for self this time was because i found somehting amiss even more so While listening to a commentary on cassette I found it real strange that audio was coming from back Decided to check up. And to be very frank till a week back I'd not seen a single car with a dominant front stage. Most of them in fact had no front speakers at all!!! The first car i saw with dominant front stage was the demo car of the blaupunkt distributor but to be very frank it suc#$d. Don't know if it was the install or what but i sounded lifeless.

I kept the balance equal between front and rear speakers in my santro but the fronts were just 4 inchers and I blew them up. Then I thought may be the installer was right if not why would the Car manufacturer give such tiny spaces for fronts and the whole boot for the rear? And went on to the net to find out... and here I am.

But now I guess, I've got many things figured out. Waiting to see what my install will be this time - I myself do not know. If i have time, I'll do it tomorrow or else next week!!

[SoundManiac]

Originally Posted by k_ajay

disguisting, isn't it?? knowing others pay less and we pay more...

It sure is

Wonder how much of it would be applicable to car audio.

[Sam Kapasi]

Well it depends. Long term players don't fleece. Short term, High end players do. Cant blame them. The market here is more passion, less money.
Some of us find a balance, some fleece customers

[k_ajay]

Still, SM... no matter how effective your marketing initiatives are, and your inputs to educate people about good sound, its very hard to make people part with their paisa selling them costlier, better stuff...

There is only a select market of people who'd be happy and willing to invest in quality audio equipment, and thats for the love of sound....

Innit, Sam

[Sam Kapasi]

ubetcha Ajay. Took the words right outta my heart.

[SoundManiac]

Originally Posted by k_ajay

Still, SM... no matter how effective your marketing initiatives are, and your inputs to educate people about good sound, its very hard to make people part with their paisa selling them costlier, better stuff...

There is only a select market of people who'd be happy and willing to invest in quality audio equipment, and thats for the love of sound....

Innit, Sam

Agreed again that there is a select market but how big is the select market? Sam is a better guy for that as he's in the market but let me give you an insight into my perception of the customer.

This select market is growing. A lot many people are ready to part with around Rs. 15,000/- already. JBL can be squeezed in. if customer is not ready to increase budget, to start with Sam can't you reduce your price may be just a lil bit. Don't scream just a suggestion...

Hey, but what have we to gain out of this discussion? Nothing.....
So, I rest my case......

Still believing that there is a market - dynamics have to be tweaked a lil......May be I should market some stuff from my petrol pump

[gunbir]

Interesting discussion...

Crap sells!!! as the american phrase goes "a sucker is born every minute", well going by our population, in India there are 10 born every minute. For every nokomoo, pokomoo brand (read 2$ sub from china with my choice of color and logo printing as long as I can pickup a 5000 pcs) there are as many buyers here.

We are talking about automobile related products. Lets talk cars. How many countries do you know of where Suzuki is the no. 1 brand and the highest selling product. In some countries, people dont even know Suzuki makes cars.

In India however, suzuki has managed to repeatedly sell obscene numbers of cars that would barely scrape through even the most lenient of quality control or safety checks in developed countries. Indians are suckers for mass market produced, bottom of the pile, crappy products that no one else in the world wants to buy.

Though that is the general scenario, things are changing. Markets are like pyramids, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. The width of this pyramid is the size of this market. While some brands prefer to play it safe and sell bottom segment products which sell purely because of lack of options in the lower segments, there are others who prefer to brave it out and sell better quality products even though the size of the market may be smaller.

We are a high end products company and we represent high end brands. I think it takes more passion to sell expensive products in India. It means more resources are spent educating and converting customers, lesser quantities are sold, business is more difficult. But we are committed to the concept of car audio and we will prevail... it is our choice to do so with more expensive and better quality products.

We have spent days and weeks at our dealers outlets hanging around customers and gauging their response when they see an Image Dynamics or a Hertz sub next to a Sony / Alpine / JBL.

First reaction... the customer has a tilt towards the known brands. Then they hear the demo. Confusion... They cant grasp why the big names sound like crap and the unknowns sound... better? We had never though we would be able to sell a Rs 13000 sub driver to a guy who wandered off the street to buy a Rs. 2900 Pioneer sub. But it happens, more often than not. First time car buyers, with no experience with car audio, demo a bunch of spreakers and pick the more expensive brands, all the time. This being India, I cant explain it in any other way except this...

Indians are NOT fools. Better quality WILL prevail. Companies like ours WILL give you options. The best of the world WILL be available here at more or less the same prices.

Rather than mass market product pushers, YOU... the customer should be able to choose whats available here. This can only happen when you open your eyes and ears, look around, do your research, demand demos, then make your decision. We know choices are limited in your city but things will improve. We will be there soon and so will others. At the end of the day, keep your mind open and trust your ears alone.

[Autophile]

You cannot critisize the finest wines and caviar....until and unless you have tasted them.

Same goes for high end audio.

Its all about micro-dynamics not macro-dynamics in high end audio. The latter is very easy to achieve. Couple of 15" bass drivers running off a class-D macro-watt amplifier...BOOOM there you go.

Its the microdynamics for which you have to work hard. And even with all the equipment in hand not everyone can do that.

Has anyone from this forum ever cared about imaging, soundstage, phase coherence, timbre in mobile audio. I guess not...but these words do exist in car audio. Its just that someone has to crave for them.

You have to try different things to have a opinion which one is the best and which is not.

Only believe your associated senses (Hearing) and decide.

[navin]

micro-dynamics? cool!. i get what you are saying JB. i think the word you are looking for is "nuances".

I call it the morning after syndrome. you know the senario.

you used your fantasic 1000W stereo at a party last night and it rocked. then you use it the next morning to play some jazz at low volumes and it sounds dead.