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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: In their engineering lab. posted by Tweekeng on July 5, 2012 at 16:53:54:
The most basic level of Underwriters Laboratories Product Certification will cost between $40,000 to $80,000 and goes up. As for the FCC, only transmitters and antennas are currently required to be tested in a laboratory accredited to ISO 17025, not required for say a turntable, speaker or bandwidth limited audio only amplifier.
There are worldwide, over 830 boutique manufacturers of what we think of as “High-End” audio products. The vast majority of which are very small shop producers, either one man operations or very small 2 to 5 employee affairs. They may produce one hundred units a year or less of any given model. As such the overhead, read expense, of full on “Certification” such as you would find from the likes of Sony or Bose will not be found here.
To give an example, although I do not wish to single out a particular manufacturer, this is just to illustrate my point. Take the Brown Electronics Labs amplifier, the BEL1001, Mr. Brown once told me that he only did a manufacturing run of his amp once a year, between 150 to 200 units and that was it. The total run depended on his past months orders from dealers, gauging his next years orders. The point being at that time his amp was around $2,400 retail at dealers, that means the Gross income before expenses for Mr. Brown was only $240,000 at best for a given year. Take the parts cost, shop expense, insurance, etc., and his net profit was likely far below $100,000. At that time the BEL amp was well known in audio circles and a popular product in the High-End market. For many boutique manufacturers today who are not as well known as Brown they will not sell anywhere near that number per year. There are some that will not sell even fifty units in a year.
To Illustrate that last point, take the early years of Apogee and Hill's Plasmatronics speakers. The first Apogee product was the Full-Range ribbon, their top of the line speaker and yet over its total run less than 85 pairs were ever made and from what I have heard between 200 and 300 pairs of its replacement the Diva. True, they eventually did make thousands of pairs of Duettas and there's no telling how many thousands of speakers Magnepan has produced over the years but those are exceptions. In the case of the Plasmatronics, definitely a boutique product of its era, the 1980s, the total number known is less than 80 pairs ever made.
A last example, Julius Futterman with his OTL amp the H3 was known to solder them up on a portable table at his home back in the 60s. You can bet they never went through Underwriters Labs.
For a large section of our hobby the most interesting products are more akin to a custom shop turning out a one off hot rod than a factory assembly line churning out a thousand a day of product.
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Follow Ups
- This may come as a shock, but most of the boutique “High-End” audio products are not UL or FCC certified. - cfb 09:40:25 07/08/12 (3)
- Great Post, cfb... - c1ferrari 21:17:23 07/15/12 (0)
- How about power cords??....nt - Dynobot 14:37:13 07/14/12 (1)
- Power Cords are covered under UL 817 and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) - cfb 12:47:28 07/31/12 (0)
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