Filed under: Business | Tags: audio business, made in usa, manufacturing, small business
With the Aeolus magiDAC, we’ve begun our first venture into making our products in the US — and have found it to be more of an adventure than expected. We’ve learned much and are still learning.
We expected it to cost more than working with Asian businesses. What we didn’t expect was that it would take longer. It is as though American small manufacturing is suffering from a sort of “weekend warrior” effect. Any of you past the precipice of 40 will know the feeling: You’re out shape; just a bit less resilient and not a quick as you once were.
We’re not doing this just so we can slap a “Made in USA” sticker on our products. Part of our mission is to work with other small businesses and to encourage small manufacturing. We strongly believe that small business builds economic stability and stronger communities.
While we remain committed to this mission, we are reappraising how difficult it will be. Taking a realistic view of what condition we, our manufacturing partners and the US economy are in will be a key part to our continued success. (I remember going through a similar painful process on the Monday morning following a weekend game of hard-fought volleyball.)
More to come…
Steve Guttenberg, in his excellent c/net High-end audio blog, the Audiophiliac, writes about his visit to the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center in East Hampton, New York. In touring the house, he discovered Pollock’s stereo setup, including a Bogen DB-20 tube amplifier.
There are some 650 surviving violins made by Antonio Stradivari. Their exceptional beauty in form and function — and their high prices — have brought them worldwide renown and their own names. (Itzhak Perlman acquired “Soil” from Yehudi Menuhin for $1.25 million. Heifetz played “Dolphin,” and “Lady Tennant” brought $2 million last year at auction.)
What makes these violins so different from others? Music lovers and scientists have been working to solve this mystery for nearly 300 years. And now it looks like it comes down to a bit of bad weather.
Scientisits at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands tweaked a computer program used to analyze scans measuring lung density in patients with emphysema to get a highly detailed look at microstructure structure of the violins’ wood.
Lead author and violinist, Dr. Berend Stoel put five of the classic instruments and seven modern violins through acomputed tomographic (CT) scanner. The research, published Wednesday in the online journal PLoS ONE, states that they found the classic violins to have a more consistent wood thickness and density throughout the growth rings. This structure would influence how vibrations travel through the wood.
It is thought that a mini European ice age in the 1600s might have helped to keep the growth rings consistent by eliminating the variation caused by faster growth during summer.
