Tuesday 24 November 2009

Think inside the box! (First!)

The other day a friendly chap called Bernie brought in his Campion amplifier for an upgrade and a general service. When we took it in we realised his amp was one of the first few sold in the UK and it is about 13 years old. I have to say it is always quite exciting to see such a unit back after so long as we hardly ever see them back being such a reliable product especially the Campion was our first commmercial product and commpletely hand made!

From past work experience I realised that even the most robust circuit designs often fail outside the laboratory caused by so many factors: temperature, moisture, dust, foreign obbjects... they all call really screw things up inside a product. I'll give you an example: Heat generates air current flows which draws in dust and don't forget gravity of course. The dust lands on electrical parts, which has static, will then hang on to the components and over time this layer of dust gets thicker and stickier... which causes more heat to gather... See the cycle? Then of course moisture can get in and start corroding electrically charged parts... All thses nasties accumulate over time and not many products escapes the ultimmate price!

When designing the Campion we wanted this baby to last so we gave it a few tricks to achieve longivity: Quality component choice, correctly temp. rated parts, and protect it with the most stable enviroment possible. For this reason, the Campion and all other Sonneteer products, is inside nearly sealed case. No grills, vents, slots whatsoever. Then to make sure the internal enviroment remains constant, so that the unit performs constantly too, we gave it some low efficiency but oversized heat sinks which also formed part of the entire chassis. What this does is to give it sufficient cooling with excellent temperature stability because a high mass low efficiency heat sink is far more stable to ambient temperature changes than a low mass high efficiency heat sink, so the unuit performs consistantly.

Anyway, enough talking! Just take a look inside Bernie's Campion which has been in use almost every day and has never been serviced for 13 years! The shine is still there as if we built it 10 minutes ago with hardly a spec of dust on it! We have checked its calibration and being in such stable enviroment, the drift recorded hardly warranted a tweak but we are fastidious like that... To be honest the drift was probably because the mains voltage drift from where we first made them!


I'm glad that Bernie wanted to upgraded the Campion with an internal phonostage, otherwise I would feel bad charging for such an easy service!

Friday 13 November 2009

Blue Ray Blues....

Finally, you can get a BlueRay player for less than £100! and it's a branded one not some Somy Hyachi Fanaponic branded one!!! In fact it's a Philips with nearly all the bells and whistles on it!!! My god! I remember seeing the technology being shown at CES in Las Vegas some 5-6 years ago when it was the size of a microwave and they told me it will be ready in about 3 or 4 years... hmmm was there ever a cash cow period for them? I don't know but in the beginning many opted for the PS3 for its "bargain" BlueRay capability and at the same time the PS3 made some serious losses too...

The past 30 days we sold out our all Byron CD players, something we started making about 10 years ago... for the price of about 11 of those BlueRay players... so would I suggest making a BlueRay player? Nope... streaming is the future for me (well, to me anyway).

Thursday 5 November 2009

Service service service!!!

I think time and time again people are forgetting about servicing a customer PROPERLY!

I went to a McD's the other day with a friend... and to save time we decided to go thru the drive in order to get faster fast food, or fast food faster! First there was this girl with a wireless PDA, a wireless headsets with mic, and other gizmos to take our orders. Then we were moved along to the next window where there was this psychic person with good math ability who knew what we ordered and the exact money we had to pay.... then we were moved along to the next window to collect our order... Erm... but we were told to drive along to a parking spot to wait for our orders to be delivered, becasue they were busy in the restaurant... 15 minutes later the order finally arrived but there were no ketchup or knapkins in the bag... sigh... 5 people to serve fast food 15 minutes late and badly!

This is the thing that bothered me. It's fast food right? It's a set menu right? Their job isn't all that difficult right? I haven't ordered a Kobe beef burger did I? But they had people equipped to the teeth to take my money in a split second and they think they have served me? Not even close... I know it's only a McD's but I am definitely "Lovin' it!"

Sadly, this seems to be happening everywhere else too with all these point and click online stores and you still wonder when will it ever arrive! Yes okay if you are getting a bargain then perhaps, and I don't mind waiting for something that's worth waiting for, as long as I'm being kept informed... but if you are selling on speed with (ahem) quality then you better be damn good at both!

Rant over!

To tell or not to tell...

Hmmm just completed the basic design of my next baby... and as usual I can't comment too much on here since we always unveil the product only when it's ready... kind of common practice in all new product concepts...

...but this time is different, I can't even tell Haider... oppss!

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Found an interesting book!

Anyway... yeah... my last entry remined me while on my way to meet those exclusive people... I bought a book cos I had a little over an hour to waste....

The title of the book was "Who Moved My Cheese?" After reading it I can only say: Get it!

(Especially if you are a HiFi dealer!)

Back in action

Haven't managed to type much during most of last week and this week due one's index finger was bandaged most of the time... so while my finger's been taking a break, the good ol' mind hasn't... so whats been going on last week?

Well first of all we are close to completion in the design and testing of the new Sonneteer prototype for CES, remaining to do is to get the casing sorted which hopefully will all be done by the end of this month, in time so we can take a much needed break during Christmas... for once!

Apart from projects, I have been catching up with a few dealers up and down the country to see what can we do for them to prepare for Christmas and the new season coming, and Haider has been doing pretty much the same with some overseas customers. The response we got back from the UK was that the conventional products aren't really moving so some had to discount and some decided to sell the lower end stuff, or the "safe bet" stuff, which of course competes on prices only... (means you don't make much money!). So yep, a lot of moaning...

Now without saying I told you so, we saw this coming 3-4 years back and that vision sparked off the BORO project where the Morpheus is the first to come from it. We wanted to offer something different, stylish and still offers the highest sound quality worthy of the Sonneteer name. Now with the Morpheus we have managed to enter markets and shops we couldn't before, and soon you can catch a glimpse of the Morpheus in more exclusive places... :o)