A Look Inside the Chinese Audio Industry (Dussun, Opera, Original etc.)

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Κάντε ένα κόπο να διαβάσετε την τελευταία καταχώρηση στο blog του Robert Harley. :cool_4:
Θα τη βρείτε εδώ: avguide.com

 

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Απάντηση: A Look Inside the Chinese Audio Industry (Dussun, Opera, Original etc.)

Nα σας θυμήσω και την αντίστοιχη επίσκεψη του Wes Phillips (για λογαριασμό του Stereophile) στις εγκαταστάσεις της IAG. Εν συντομία αναφέρω: 1500+ υπάλληλοι, πάνω από 20 κτίρια και τουλάχιστον άλλα 5 υπό κατασκευή, ISO 9001 και πάει λέγοντας. Μπορείτε να διαβάσετε τις εντυπώσεις του εδώ (προς το τέλος της σελίδας).

 

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The GuangZhou Hi-Fi Show

December 3 - China’s booming economy and rise as an exporting giant are having an increasingly important effect on the audio industry. The influence is two-fold. First, Chinese audio factories are turning out high-quality products in every category at prices that U.S. and European manufacturers can’t match.

Second, China’s growing middle and upper classes now have the means to buy quality hi-fi, not just from domestic manufacturers, but from those same U.S. and European companies with which the local factories compete. The bottom line is that China is producing—and consuming—an increasingly large share of the world’s hi-fi.

These trends were on vivid display at the GuangZhou AV Fair. I’m on a ten-day trip through China, starting with three days at the GuangZhou show followed by visits to hi-fi factories in GuangZhou, Shanghai, and Beijing.

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The country holds a number of hi-fi exhibitions, but the GuangZhou show is the largest, most prominent, and most prestigious. Consequently, virtually every manufacturer in China and every distributor of foreign-made gear converge on the magnificent Whit Swan hotel, home of the show since the event’s inception 14 years ago.

This year’s show hosted 150 exhibitors in 160 rooms, and was expected to attract more than 25,000 attendees, each of whom paid 50 RMB (about $7.75) to see and hear the latest gear.

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China must be dotted with small factories turning out tubed amplifiers, most of them for domestic consumption.

There’s a reason tubes are so popular in everything from entry-level gear to esoteric models: There’s a huge disparity between the costs of labor and raw materials in China. Labor is cheap, but parts cost about the same as they would anywhere in the world. But if you make your own tubes with hand-assembly, tubed amplifiers suddenly become less expensive to manufacture than transistor amps.

In addition, tube amplifiers are simpler to design and build—the circuit designs are often taken right out of a textbook. It all adds up to about a 10:1 ratio between tubed and solid-state gear from Chinese manufacturers.

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Going around the show, talking with manufacturers (through the capable interpretation of my guide, Ping Gong of U.S. distributor aaa-audio), and hearing the sounds produced, it was apparent that the Chinese manufacturers are divided into two groups.

The first, which is by far the larger, is composed of electronics manufacturers who build hi-fi gear because there’s a market for it. The second group is made up of musically sensitive listeners who tweak their designs until they are happy with the sound.

It’s easy to tell the two groups apart by when walking into an exhibit room. The audiophile-oriented companies know how to set up a system and put on a compelling demo—and the others don’t. Consequently, the range of sound quality, from poor to great, is exceptionally wide at this show.


Περισσότερα: avguide.com