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R&D vs. Marketing: Are we paying for tech or fake online hype?

I opened up a highly-reviewed $3K streamer/DAC last week out of curiosity. The actual tech inside? An off-the-shelf ESS board and a basic switching power supply. The R&D budget clearly wasn't spent on the circuit design or component quality. But if you look at this brand online, they have massive social media accounts, thousands of likes, and constant hype. It’s pretty obvious what's happening. A lot of these newer boutique audio brands aren't growing organically. They just use panels like fameviso.com to buy thousands of followers and fake their prestige. They build a fancy aluminum chassis, buy the "clout" so reviewers take them seriously, and sell us basic, unoriginal tech at a huge markup. When did the audio industry shift from paying for massive toroidal transformers and custom capacitors to paying for a brand's fake Instagram budget? Am I the only one noticing that actual electrical engineering is taking a backseat to social media marketing?

radiantdream
jl35
4,449 posts
 

+2 kr4

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,507 posts
 

Well executed SMPS is way better that linear power supply IMHO.  They only got bad rap from very poor noisy computer implementations.
Linear power supply with huge transformer and a lot of capacitors is in reality a primitive SMPS operating at 120Hz drawing current from mains in short pulses of high amplitude, switching at maximum voltage.  It produces not only 120Hz ripple (hard to filter out), but also high frequency switching noise, not to mention that is line and load unregulated and sensitive to DC presence in supply.   In contrast, resonant mode SMPS is very quiet switching at zero voltage / zero current.  Transformer can be very small because of high switching frequency that is also easy to filter out without huge capacitors.  In addition it is line and load regulated and insensitive to DC on mains (can operate from DC).  Benchmark Media reduced noise in DAC2 by 10dB replacing linear supply with SMPS.  They use SMPS in AHB2 power amp achieving 132dB S/N.  Other companies, like Rowland, eliminated linear power supplies completely.  So, with all these benefits of well executed SMPS, why do we still produce these monstrous unregulated linear supplies?  Perhaps it is because designing resonant mode SMPS is not so easy, while Linear Supply has only 3 components?  Perhaps market demands it (People still strongly believe in them.  Big and heavy must be good)?

I'm also not sure what "Off-the-shelf" ESS board is.

In general, if somebody is taking advantage by selling gear consisting of some kind of generic modules people are free not to buy.  If these modules are so generic it would be easy to buy them and to build DAC or amp.

Are we offended by fake or inflated advertising?  Not in audio, for sure. 

 

kr4's avatar
kr4
3,781 posts
 

I'm also not sure what "Off-the-shelf" ESS board is.

It probably means an exact duplication of the ESS Evaluation boards.

See: ESS Evaluation Boards

kr4's avatar
kr4
3,781 posts
 

Of course, there’s really nothing wrong with this because ESS probably know how to get this right.  OTOH, it’s wrong if the product manufacturer implies otherwise.

easystreamer
119 posts
 

Don't forget that the magic sauce is the software that makes the hardware sing. This is where a lot of manufacturers struggle (or fail) to keep up with compatibility and new developments. A major cause of much frustration for users that want our equipment to just work. Software development is not cheap.

So yeah, once you get past the sexy first impressions of the jewelry boxes, there is not much to look at inside except for some circuit boards and power supplies. This is particularly true of streamers (glorified computers) and DACs.

How special it feels when you do look inside to see copper screws holding down those PCBs or beautiful cable routing :)

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