geebo
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"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are driving taxicabs and cutting hair"
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Post by geebo on May 19, 2019 13:24:01 GMT -5
Geebo, he said " We'll leave both of those to boutique companies who build their products one at a time in someone's garage..." Just who was he referring to? I found his comment, as usual, incredibly patronizing and pedantic. Out. He specifically referred to "boutique" companies to make "overpriced products whose performance and sound quality don't justify their price.." and "coolest products that only a few people are actually going to buy." . I really don't think he was referring to McIntosh and Conrad-Johnson. The question is do you think he was. If so, maybe he will clarify.
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Post by pallpoul on May 19, 2019 13:30:32 GMT -5
You're entirely correct.... We have no aspirations whatsoever to make overpriced products whose performance and sound quality don't justify their price. We also simply cannot afford to design and build even the coolest products that only a few people are actually going to buy. We'll leave both of those to boutique companies who build their products one at a time in someone's garage... . You know what Keith, If Emotiva builds one good product, a high end amplifier for example, cost is no barrier, and do not discontinue it in few years, even if you build it at a customer's request, People will be lined up to buy it, and you'll be backlogged for months. Just stop producing and discontinuing stuff....Really, it is annoying for a company, any company. Back in the early days of Emotiva, the turnover was not as high and as rapid as nowadays. Seems to me Emotiva may be loosing it's focus. wanting to do too much and please every budget. You want to please your high end customers ? Make a high end tube amp, design it well, pull all the stops, and mostly stick to it, price it high, many people would still buy it.
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Post by monkumonku on May 19, 2019 16:18:44 GMT -5
"It would be great if..." I read a lot of comments like that when it comes to opinions as to what products Emo should produce. It's easy to be an arm chair quarterback, or to be the CEO when it isn't your own money that is at risk. Many of the opinions I read just don't seem to make business sense for a company like Emo. They are not known for esoteric products and/or really expensive things. Every company has to find its niche and for some of the products suggested, that niche has already been filled which makes competition difficult. Like in the past, people suggested Emo produce a Blu-Ray player. But that was already being done very well by Oppo. But now since Oppo has gotten out of the business, then hey, Emo should step in! But there's a reason Oppo left the business so why get into something that is being overtaken by streaming? Or why doesn't Emo make headphone amps? Because Schitt does a great job of making excellent amps at very reasonable prices. I've watched as Emo has come out with new products and then shortly thereafter discontinued the line. That doesn't look good and understandably leads to comments like why don't they stick to something instead of jumping all over the place? On the other hand, we don't know how these products sell so maybe the revenues didn't meet expectations and Dan decided to cut bait and get out instead of throwing more money into something that looks like a tough sell. Other criticisms I've read have been to the effect of why doesn't Emo stick to what they've done best in the past and stop coming out with all these new products that get discontinued. Or why doesn't Emo make product X or Y? We're just all on the sidelines and don't know all the inside details. But one thing that seems apparent to me here and in so many other places, it's DIYD, DIYD.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on May 19, 2019 17:07:46 GMT -5
I'm not actually sure..... how many amplifiers and processors did they each sell last year? (And, without a scorecard, it's getting difficult to even keep track of who owns McIntosh at the moment.) I'm not poking fun at companies whose business model makes it practical for them to come out with a great product - even if they never sell very many. (I'm simply using the term to denote companies who are small enough that they don't have to worry about how many products they actually sell every year.) HOWEVER, part of the reason why Emotiva can offer such high performing products at such reasonable prices is that we try to avoid low-volume products. I should also point out that, if you're keeping score, then you know how many of those companies who make those great high end products, and only sell a few to really dedicated audiophiles every year, have gone out of business in the last decade. Here at Emotiva we really kind of hope to be in business for along time. Do you consider McIntosh, Conrad-Johnson and the other two which I can't make out to be "boutique" companies?
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on May 19, 2019 17:24:15 GMT -5
That sounds really nice... however it simply doesn't always work out that way in real life. Those Bob Carver tube monoblocks were quite nice... And there seemed to be a lot of demand for them... (We were actually planning to continue the original models - and introduce some lower cost models to complement them.) However, as it turned out, the waiting line wasn't all that long, and disappeared rather quickly... And, in the end, we couldn't sell enough to keep paying people to build them... What you're describing is what I was referring to as a "boutique company"... Someone who builds their products, one by one, by hand, in a garage somewhere... And, yes, there was enough market for those Carver tube amps to keep a company like that going... barely... We think companies like that are great... But Emotiva is not one of them... You're entirely correct.... We have no aspirations whatsoever to make overpriced products whose performance and sound quality don't justify their price. We also simply cannot afford to design and build even the coolest products that only a few people are actually going to buy. We'll leave both of those to boutique companies who build their products one at a time in someone's garage... . You know what Keith, If Emotiva builds one good product, a high end amplifier for example, cost is no barrier, and do not discontinue it in few years, even if you build it at a customer's request, People will be lined up to buy it, and you'll be backlogged for months. Just stop producing and discontinuing stuff....Really, it is annoying for a company, any company. Back in the early days of Emotiva, the turnover was not as high and as rapid as nowadays. Seems to me Emotiva may be loosing it's focus. wanting to do too much and please every budget. You want to please your high end customers ? Make a high end tube amp, design it well, pull all the stops, and mostly stick to it, price it high, many people would still buy it.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on May 19, 2019 17:33:22 GMT -5
Just to be clear... We don't actually want to assault anyone... We just want to make really great sounding products that a lot of people can actually afford to listen to. No, but I take it our friend Keith might. If you want to “assault” the high end, here’s some of your competition. The other two are Cary and PS audio.
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Post by audiobill on May 19, 2019 17:37:47 GMT -5
Hold on, KeithL , the Emotiva motto was certainly touted to be "An All Out Assault On The High End"
Aren't you rewriting history as well as a strategic plan that never quite worked out, for a variety of reasons?
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Post by brubacca on May 19, 2019 17:39:33 GMT -5
KeithL.
I certainly don't know the details of the whole BOB Carver thing. I don't pretend too, but there are other companies who survive on lower cost, good sounding tube gear.
Rogue Audio and Prima Luna both come to mind.
At the time the Rogue Audio Cronus Int amp was about $2,200 and the mid range Prima Luna was $2,500.
I think Emotiva could have made a killing with an integrated Tube amp at about $1300-$1,500. Which should have been doable because of no dealer markup.
Maybe there are other reasons for not moving forward. Maybe Bob Carver didn't want to do inexpensive gear. Maybe his old stuff at discount didn't sell fast enough. You certainly don't owe us an explanation.
My point is tube gear can sustain a small company. I've been to Rogue and met the production staff. Its more than 5 people.
I'll even say that had I know we weren't getting Emotiva Glass I would have bought one of those clearance 20W amps. Forget the name, but you had them at a good price. I was waiting for EG.
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klinemj
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Post by klinemj on May 19, 2019 17:42:41 GMT -5
Those Bob Carver tube monoblocks were quite nice... And there seemed to be a lot of demand for them... (We were actually planning to continue the original models - and introduce some lower cost models to complement them.) However, as it turned out, the waiting line wasn't all that long, and disappeared rather quickly... And, in the end, we couldn't sell enough to keep paying people to build them... Interesting comments about the Carver Tube Amps. What I expected (based on what I heard directly from Big Dan and Lonnie in person at an Emofest) was that Emotiva was going to come out with its own line of tube amps (Emotiva Glass...IIRC) that combined the best of Bob's know-how with Emotiva value. So, during the era Emotiva owned Carver, I never considered the Carver legacy lines (that explains why I didn't buy one!). I was waiting for what I heard might come. When it didn't, I bought Prima Luna (after seriously considering VTA) and never looked back. I'm quite happy that I did. If Emotiva came out with a great tube option, I'd consider it. Mark
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Post by Loop 7 on May 19, 2019 18:13:42 GMT -5
I've watched as Emo has come out with new products and then shortly thereafter discontinued the line. That doesn't look good and understandably leads to comments like why don't they stick to something instead of jumping all over the place? On the other hand, we don't know how these products sell so maybe the revenues didn't meet expectations and Dan decided to cut bait and get out instead of throwing more money into something that looks like a tough sell. Good point and I've wondered about this for a while. I'm a big fan of Parasound amplifiers. Like other companies, they seem to offer a product for years and years and seem to do well. I don't know if the "boutique" label can be applied to them but I have thought Emotiva discontinues SOME products rather quickly; there's obviously a reason.
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Post by DavidR on May 19, 2019 18:33:59 GMT -5
You're entirely correct.... We have no aspirations whatsoever to make overpriced products whose performance and sound quality don't justify their price. We also simply cannot afford to design and build even the coolest products that only a few people are actually going to buy. We'll leave both of those to boutique companies who build their products one at a time in someone's garage... . You know what Keith, If Emotiva builds one good product, a high end amplifier for example, cost is no barrier, and do not discontinue it in few years, even if you build it at a customer's request, People will be lined up to buy it, and you'll be backlogged for months. Just stop producing and discontinuing stuff....Really, it is annoying for a company, any company. Back in the early days of Emotiva, the turnover was not as high and as rapid as nowadays. Seems to me Emotiva may be loosing it's focus. wanting to do too much and please every budget. You want to please your high end customers ? Make a high end tube amp, design it well, pull all the stops, and mostly stick to it, price it high, many people would still buy it. They had a great amp in the SA-250 (althou it was originally a Sherbourn) and offered it at a great price and they sat and sat. It took a looong time to sell the limited production 500 units. I think they have had their fill of high-end,
Its a great performer and excellent SQ. Maybe they should have asked $12,000 per unit.
From the Owner's manual: "The SA-250 was designed to be the the flagship amplifier for a new line of super-high-end studio equipment."
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on May 19, 2019 18:38:28 GMT -5
That was the original plan. We had hoped to be able to offer the original Bob Carver designs for a significantly lower price... And also offer a lower-cost line of gear at even lower prices... However, we found that the market for the original Bob Carver gear, even at significantly reduced prices, was very limited. And, as it turns out, there are plenty of companies offering lower cost tube gear at realatively reasonable prices. Prima Luna makes nice amplifiers at reasonable prices - and so do several other companies. As a larger company, with more overhead, the only way we could compete with them would be to sell higher volume, and leverage economies of scale. We could compete with them, and offer a better product at lower cost, but only if we could sell several hundred of each model every year. Unfortunately, the whole market for tube gear isn't that large, and there are already lots of companies competing in that market. I also really need to point something out that many people seem to have lost sight of... TUBE GEAR IS *NOT* DIFFICULT TO DESIGN.
You don't really need a guru to design it. .. and, in fact, in the old days, many excellent designs were provided free of charge by various tube manufacturers. Tube power amps can be tricky because certain parts, like output transformers, are difficult to design, and expensive to make, especially nowadays. However, tube preamps are actually quite simple to build, and schematics are readily available, often for free. Compared to modern solid state gear, the schematic for a typical tube preamp is relatively simple, making it easy to design a PCB, or to wire it by hand. (So, if you really think there's a good market for yet another expensive tube preamp, then there's your chance to get rich. ) For anybody who wants to actually learn about designing and building tube gear... This is an excellent resource... www.tubecad.com/Those Bob Carver tube monoblocks were quite nice... And there seemed to be a lot of demand for them... (We were actually planning to continue the original models - and introduce some lower cost models to complement them.) However, as it turned out, the waiting line wasn't all that long, and disappeared rather quickly... And, in the end, we couldn't sell enough to keep paying people to build them... Interesting comments about the Carver Tube Amps. What I expected (based on what I heard directly from Big Dan and Lonnie in person at an Emofest) was that Emotiva was going to come out with its own line of tube amps (Emotiva Glass...IIRC) that combined the best of Bob's know-how with Emotiva value. So, during the era Emotiva owned Carver, I never considered the Carver legacy lines (that explains why I didn't buy one!). I was waiting for what I heard might come. When it didn't, I bought Prima Luna (after seriously considering VTA) and never looked back. I'm quite happy that I did. If Emotiva came out with a great tube option, I'd consider it. Mark
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on May 19, 2019 18:40:29 GMT -5
Exactly.... We put a lot of nice extras into the SA-250, priced it a little higher than our other amps, and they didn't sell well at all... You know what Keith, If Emotiva builds one good product, a high end amplifier for example, cost is no barrier, and do not discontinue it in few years, even if you build it at a customer's request, People will be lined up to buy it, and you'll be backlogged for months. Just stop producing and discontinuing stuff....Really, it is annoying for a company, any company. Back in the early days of Emotiva, the turnover was not as high and as rapid as nowadays. Seems to me Emotiva may be loosing it's focus. wanting to do too much and please every budget. You want to please your high end customers ? Make a high end tube amp, design it well, pull all the stops, and mostly stick to it, price it high, many people would still buy it. They had a great amp in the SA-250 (althou it was originally a Sherbourn) and offered it at a great price and they sat and sat. It took a looong time to sell the limited production 500 units. I think they have had their fill of high-end, Its a great performer and excellent SQ. Maybe they should have asked $12,000 per unit.
From the Owner's manual: "The SA-250 was designed to be the the flagship amplifier for a new line of super-high-end studio equipment."
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Post by DavidR on May 19, 2019 19:43:18 GMT -5
Exactly.... We put a lot of nice extras into the SA-250, priced it a little higher than our other amps, and they didn't sell well at all... They had a great amp in the SA-250 (althou it was originally a Sherbourn) and offered it at a great price and they sat and sat. It took a looong time to sell the limited production 500 units. I think they have had their fill of high-end, Its a great performer and excellent SQ. Maybe they should have asked $12,000 per unit.
From the Owner's manual: "The SA-250 was designed to be the the flagship amplifier for a new line of super-high-end studio equipment."
Too bad people didn't grab them up. Performance is kick-butt. My AR9 and AR90 are difficult to drive as they probably have some difficult phase angles and the SA250 laughs at it and performs with stellar performance. My 901_II are difficult to drive for a totally different reason - the EQ can demand 8X the amplification at any time. I had a modified Carver M-1.0t that put out 450wpc and it didn't perform as well and definitely didn't sound as good. The SA250 never seems to get very warm and never misses a beat. I had first auditioned a Bryston 4BSST2 at $6000 and chose the SA250. I'm happy with my choice. I bet the SA250 would drive Infinity Kappa 9 (known as the 'Amp Killer') w/o issue.
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novisnick
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Post by novisnick on May 19, 2019 20:18:21 GMT -5
Exactly.... We put a lot of nice extras into the SA-250, priced it a little higher than our other amps, and they didn't sell well at all... Too bad people didn't grab them up. Performance is kick-butt. My AR9 and AR90 are difficult to drive as they probably have some difficult phase angles and the SA250 laughs at it and performs with stellar performance. My 901_II are difficult to drive for a totally different reason - the EQ can demand 8X the amplification at any time. I had a modified Carver M-1.0t that put out 450wpc and it didn't perform as well and definitely didn't sound as good. The SA250 never seems to get very warm and never misses a beat. I had first auditioned a Bryston 4BSST2 at $6000 and chose the SA250. I'm happy with my choice. I bet the SA250 would drive Infinity Kappa 9 (known as the 'Amp Killer') w/o issue. The SA-250 just didn’t seem to have the right hype or marketing. It just never appealed to me as anything special. Not my fault I didn’t “get it” ! wasn’t there a few problems with that amp?
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Post by DavidR on May 19, 2019 20:39:32 GMT -5
Too bad people didn't grab them up. Performance is kick-butt. My AR9 and AR90 are difficult to drive as they probably have some difficult phase angles and the SA250 laughs at it and performs with stellar performance. My 901_II are difficult to drive for a totally different reason - the EQ can demand 8X the amplification at any time. I had a modified Carver M-1.0t that put out 450wpc and it didn't perform as well and definitely didn't sound as good. The SA250 never seems to get very warm and never misses a beat. I had first auditioned a Bryston 4BSST2 at $6000 and chose the SA250. I'm happy with my choice. I bet the SA250 would drive Infinity Kappa 9 (known as the 'Amp Killer') w/o issue. The SA-250 just didn’t seem to have the right hype or marketing. It just never appealed to me as anything special. Not my fault I didn’t “get it” ! wasn’t there a few problems with that amp? I agree, the marketing could have been better. I knew from looking at the circuitry layout it was different. Like any piece of gear some percentage have problems. No issues with my two. From what I gather from reading is maybe < 1% had some issues. I can think of three where the issues were posted here: WilburThe Goose: protection kept tripping- he sent it back for refund; chicagorspec: protection trip and Emo found some faulty caps on the output board; Guy from Australia: PS caps keep blowing. Tells me the circuitry controlling the recharge of the PS caps is faulty.
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Post by pedrocols on May 19, 2019 20:59:12 GMT -5
Sometimes simpler is better.
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Post by Loop 7 on May 19, 2019 21:04:52 GMT -5
For some reason, I thought the SA-250's target market was studios.
Incorrect?
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novisnick
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Post by novisnick on May 19, 2019 21:16:47 GMT -5
For some reason, I thought the SA-250's target market was studios. Incorrect? I thought so too! I know, I know, Mytek was mostly for studio recording forever! It broke that mold in an announcement when they started their HiFi section. Thats how I found the trickle down DAC / preamp Brooklyn! Love all that it does and the way it sounds. Maybe it would have matched well with the SA-250.
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Post by brubacca on May 19, 2019 21:19:27 GMT -5
For some reason, I thought the SA-250's target market was studios. Incorrect? It was marketed as part of the pro line. I don't know, did SA-250 stand for Super Awesome 250/channel or Studio Amplifier 250/ch... hmmmmm.
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