New QSC Product - TouchMix

[Scott Bolt]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

In 1928 Rolls Royce had power windows available on their cars.

The technology existed.

Neither my 2002 or 2013 trucks have had power windows. That feature was not part of the accessories package that met most of my needs and I wasn't willing to step up in price to the package that included them.

That is a normal car buying decision.

Jay,

I agree that there is a market for vehicles with manual windows. I am in automotive and can tell you that while there IS a market for this, it is quite tiny.

Steve,

I know quite a few people that believe the same way. It simply doesn't matter what Voldemort creates, they simply would never buy it.

 

[Chuck Simon]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

Funny, in the late 70's a friend of mine stopped by to show off his new car, and it was the first time I actually saw/used power windows. I remember thinking "this is the end of Western Civilization. We are in an energy crisis and people are too lazy to manually turn a crank to open their window!" I'm not so sure if I was wrong!

Buy the way, my wife and I have a Jeep, Toyota Yaris, and a Chevy van all with manual windows! Recallable pre-amps? - get outta here!

 

[John Roberts]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

Funny, in the late 70's a friend of mine stopped by to show off his new car, and it was the first time I actually saw/used power windows. I remember thinking "this is the end of Western Civilization. We are in an energy crisis and people are too lazy to manually turn a crank to open their window!" I'm not so sure if I was wrong!

Buy the way, my wife and I have a Jeep, Toyota Yaris, and a Chevy van all with manual windows! Recallable pre-amps? - get outta here!

I believe digitally controlled preamps have more utility than just the remote control, but this definitely falls into the feature cost and market sensitivity to that cost consideration.

If I had a choice my car would have hand crank windows, and my mixers would have digitally controlled preamps.

The market will sort out wether this product needs them or not. I am not smart enough to predict.

JR

 

[Scott Bolt]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

Funny, in the late 70's a friend of mine stopped by to show off his new car, and it was the first time I actually saw/used power windows. I remember thinking "this is the end of Western Civilization. We are in an energy crisis and people are too lazy to manually turn a crank to open their window!" I'm not so sure if I was wrong!

Buy the way, my wife and I have a Jeep, Toyota Yaris, and a Chevy van all with manual windows! Recallable pre-amps? - get outta here!

I am pretty comfortable with the data I see on a daily basis on the build metrics from several OEM's that you are most definitely in a small market slice. The majority of low content vehicles are produced for fleets like U-Haul, etc. If those were excluded, it would be a truly minuscule percentage.

I, like JR, would personally much rather have manual windows in my vehicles (I don't btw), than have to deal with non recallable pre's

There was a time when I wouldn't cook a hot dog in the microwave since I thought it tasted better if boiled in water (the way it was done before the microwave). I have given up this practice as my laziness has exceeded my stubbornness

 

[Tim Padrick]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

Recall-able preamps, electric windows (hard to drive whilst rolling the passenger window), microwave dogs (unless a friend is grilling).

 

[Brad Weber]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

And why us this argument even relative? They are not going to redesign based on this thread. Heck,I suspect they are not even going to suffer any sales. I expect they did run the numbers.

What argument? I was just commenting that to be accurate Bennett's example should probably include crediting the cost of the manual preamps that are in the mixer along with adding the cost of the digitally controlled preamps, which would then alter the additional cost presented.

 

[Tim McCulloch]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

Recall-able preamps, electric windows (hard to drive whilst rolling the passenger window), microwave dogs (unless a friend is grilling).

Don't microwave the dog, wok him. ;-) Spaniel stir fry, puppy fried rice. For the feline aficionados, I suggest the Moo Goo Gai Kat or sweet & sour kitten.

/bad humor

 

[John Roberts]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

What argument? I was just commenting that to be accurate Bennett's example should probably include crediting the cost of the manual preamps that are in the mixer along with adding the cost of the digitally controlled preamps, which would then alter the additional cost presented.

I love it when you guys debate cost engineering...

JR

PS: I already addressed that specific point. In the case of the THAT corp solution there are two ICs in the digitally controlled preamp, so the non-controlled preamp still uses the base IC. IMO in the context of this product, the marginal incremental cost would drive the finished good price point higher. I do not have an opinion about the correct call, just a personal preference for cybernetic control.

 

[Tim McCulloch]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

I love it when you guys debate cost engineering...

JR

PS: I already addressed that specific point. In the case of the THAT corp solution there are two ICs in the digitally controlled preamp, so the non-controlled preamp still uses the base IC. IMO in the context of this product, the marginal incremental cost would drive the finished good price point higher. I do not have an opinion about the correct call, just a personal preference for cybernetic control.

TANSTAAFL.... or "there aint no such thing as a free cyber-pre" or moving fader or... or... or.

Nothing is free, everything added to a design adds additional cost; anything that involves additional manufacturing steps (even storage) or time in process adds to costs.

The ignorance comes from not knowing what the impact of those small but incremental costs are. Thanks for sharing your experiences in design & management of products and their designers.

 

[John Roberts]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

TANSTAAFL.... or "there aint no such thing as a free cyber-pre" or moving fader or... or... or.

Nothing is free, everything added to a design adds additional cost; anything that involves additional manufacturing steps (even storage) or time in process adds to costs.

The ignorance comes from not knowing what the impact of those small but incremental costs are. Thanks for sharing your experiences in design & management of products and their designers.

When I started working at Peavey in the mid-'80s there was still enough fat on the pig, that I could include product content (with cost) that remained mostly invisible to the end user. I included some internal features to keep myself happy. By the end of my time there, the competition had tightened the screws to the point that sharp pencils were out, and I learned first hand how long it takes to fly to China. :-(

The general rule of thumb is that any cost inside a product that is not seen and valued by the end user at POS (point of sale) can create a competitive price disadvantage in the marketplace that hurts sales when competitors do not spend that hidden money. This can be especially difficult for design engineers with high personal standards. For another related anecdote I once signed an ECN (engineering change notice) to approve using a better performance capacitor dielectric in a passive crossover used inside a loudspeaker. 99.9% of the customers would never appreciate this subtle and mostly secret quality improvement, and that engineer's own boss refused to sign the ECN because it would have increased the BOM cost of the product $0.10-$0.20, making him look bad to the big boss. Me I was willing to piss away my limited political capital, even when it wasn't my area of direct engineering responsibility, because I appreciated how a few cents worth of parts cost increase can actually make the product better. IMO it was the right thing to do.

I have always been a value kind of guy, and well executed value products are under appreciated IMO. While some value products are just cheap. There is huge pressure from the sharp pencil crowd to make products so cheap they don't work properly. YMMV

JR

 

[Josh Millward]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

well executed value products are under appreciated IMO. While some value products are just cheap. There is huge pressure from the sharp pencil crowd to make products so cheap they don't work properly.

Indeed... this is a very key point.

Anyone can make something cheap.

It is a special mix that can make something that works well, yet be relatively inexpensive.

 

[David Sturzenbecher]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

When I started working at Peavey in the mid-'80s there was still enough fat on the pig, that I could include product content (with cost) that remained mostly invisible to the end user. I included some internal features to keep myself happy. By the end of my time there, the competition had tightened the screws to the point that sharp pencils were out, and I learned first hand how long it takes to fly to China. :-(

The general rule of thumb is that any cost inside a product that is not seen and valued by the end user at POS (point of sale) can create a competitive price disadvantage in the marketplace that hurts sales when competitors do not spend that hidden money. This can be especially difficult for design engineers with high personal standards. For another related anecdote I once signed an ECN (engineering change notice) to approve using a better performance capacitor dielectric in a passive crossover used inside a loudspeaker. 99.9% of the customers would never appreciate this subtle and mostly secret quality improvement, and that engineer's own boss refused to sign the ECN because it would have increased the BOM cost of the product $0.10-$0.20, making him look bad to the big boss. Me I was willing to piss away my limited political capital, even when it wasn't my area of direct engineering responsibility, because I appreciated how a few cents worth of parts cost increase can actually make the product better. IMO it was the right thing to do.

I have always been a value kind of guy, and well executed value products are under appreciated IMO. While some value products are just cheap. There is huge pressure from the sharp pencil crowd to make products so cheap they don't work properly. YMMV

JR

I am currently reading the Steve Jobs biography and I was surprised how many times he insisted that the inside components, the ones that no one saw, needed to be pretty, clean, and not skimped out on. He got away with it for a while.... I'm only half way through the book.


Sent from my iPhone

 

[John Roberts]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

I am currently reading the Steve Jobs biography and I was surprised how many times he insisted that the inside components, the ones that no one saw, needed to be pretty, clean, and not skimped out on. He got away with it for a while.... I'm only half way through the book.


Sent from my iPhone

I'm not quite sure what that means (pretty inside?). Wozniak the original apple engineer and Job's partner in the early days of apple did some respectable design engineering. Apple is not remotely a value brand and their success is from "pretty on the outside" ID (industrial design) and surrounding a product with a complete eco-system (like music for the I-pod, etc).

There are some subtle issues with the invisible to POS, inside the box engineering. I find really good value engineering can be elegant in it's simplicity. Design to facilitate service/repair is an incremental cost and investment in the long term cost of ownership that consumers at POS do not want to know about. Increasingly they do not want to pay for this future benefit at POS. I recall the difficulty my product manager for loudspeakers had selling the feature of field repairable drivers. It is never a good time to talk about future product failures, especially when SKUs are new sitting in a dealer's store. A difficult dance to communicate the value of the feature without drawing attention to the fact that drivers can and do fail. :-(


JR

 

[Tim McCulloch]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

I'm not quite sure what that means (pretty inside?). Wozniak the original apple engineer and Job's partner in the early days of apple did some respectable design engineering. Apple is not remotely a value brand and their success is from "pretty on the outside" ID (industrial design) and surrounding a product with a complete eco-system (like music for the I-pod, etc).

There are some subtle issues with the invisible to POS, inside the box engineering. I find really good value engineering can be elegant in it's simplicity. Design to facilitate service/repair is an incremental cost and investment in the long term cost of ownership that consumers at POS do not want to know about. Increasingly they do not want to pay for this future benefit at POS. I recall the difficulty my product manager for loudspeakers had selling the feature of field repairable drivers. It is never a good time to talk about future product failures, especially when SKUs are new sitting in a dealer's store. A difficult dance to communicate the value of the feature without drawing attention to the fact that drivers can and do fail. :-(


JR

"Pretty inside" means that the board/component layout, fit and finish receive the same attention to detail as the exterior, even if the end user never sees it. I agree with your inference that such elegance can be found in value products, too.

As for the difficult dance of failure, I think you highlight a certain level of end-user personal maturity (and maybe vocational insight). I think mature individuals realize that eventually all things will fail and that Mr. Murphy, patron devil of failures, will make sure it happens at the most inopportune time. Ubiquity of product and simplicity of field repairs are recognized as value when you can fix the 22A or re-basket a Black Widow 15" in <30 minutes. Immature users complain about the failure while never acknowledging what operational factors might have contributed to that failure. And I see more musicians that own PA "because someone has to buy it" think that things should never fail, whereas soundpersons of the mature variety will manage failures and, more importantly, manage the fix.

 

[Robert Lofgren]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

TANSTAAFL.... or "there aint no such thing as a free cyber-pre" or moving fader or... or... or.

Nothing is free, everything added to a design adds additional cost; anything that involves additional manufacturing steps (even storage) or time in process adds to costs.

The ignorance comes from not knowing what the impact of those small but incremental costs are. Thanks for sharing your experiences in design & management of products and their designers.

Once I designed a piece of gear for a client and I wanted to put one specific component into a socket for special service needs.

But since the item was going to be manufactured in thousands the client requested me to leave that tiny/cheap socket out of the design due to cost savings while also gaining some minimal pcb space as well...

 

[John Roberts]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

"Pretty inside" means that the board/component layout, fit and finish receive the same attention to detail as the exterior, even if the end user never sees it. I agree with your inference that such elegance can be found in value products, too.

As for the difficult dance of failure, I think you highlight a certain level of end-user personal maturity (and maybe vocational insight). I think mature individuals realize that eventually all things will fail and that Mr. Murphy, patron devil of failures, will make sure it happens at the most inopportune time. Ubiquity of product and simplicity of field repairs are recognized as value when you can fix the 22A or re-basket a Black Widow 15" in <30 minutes. Immature users complain about the failure while never acknowledging what operational factors might have contributed to that failure. And I see more musicians that own PA "because someone has to buy it" think that things should never fail, whereas soundpersons of the mature variety will manage failures and, more importantly, manage the fix.

Now think about Peavey's primary audience... entry level consumers are generally lacking in much sensibility about long term ownership cost. Thus the difficulty communicating that intangible value at POS. As dealer distribution lost influence at POS, this communication becomes even harder.

JR

 

[John Roberts]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

Once I designed a piece of gear for a client and I wanted to put one specific component into a socket for special service needs.

But since the item was going to be manufactured in thousands the client requested me to leave that tiny/cheap socket out of the design due to cost savings while also gaining some minimal pcb space as well...

While through hole design is archaic now, I recall going through the cost-benefit analysis at Peavey regarding removing sockets from PCBs. In large volume (more than thousands). Sockets cost around a penny and are machine inserted so not much incremental cost, with a noticeable payback benefit if/when that product ever requires service. A sharp pencil analysis revealed that IC failures were dominantly proximate to input and output circuits that were exposed to external stresses. As I recall we eliminated sockets on all but I/O related chips, but this became moot with the evolution to SMD technology.. SMD sockets are so rare I don't recall ever seeing one, let alone ever used one.

JR

 

[Jeff Carter]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

While through hole design is archaic now, I recall going through the cost-benefit analysis at Peavey regarding removing sockets from PCBs. In large volume (more than thousands). Sockets cost around a penny and are machine inserted so not much incremental cost, with a noticeable payback benefit if/when that product ever requires service. A sharp pencil analysis revealed that IC failures were dominantly proximate to input and output circuits that were exposed to external stresses. As I recall we eliminated sockets on all but I/O related chips, but this became moot with the evolution to SMD technology.. SMD sockets are so rare I don't recall ever seeing one, let alone ever used one.

JR

Were socket failures ever a concern?

We tended to use through-hole in my PhD lab, but were typically doing one-offs of MHz-bandwidth analog circuits. In general we tended to avoid putting in sockets because we were worried about reliability of the connections (I seem to recall the authors of The Art of Electronics advocating this approach). We did make some exceptions for components exposed to poorly-defined external stresses, however.

 

[John Roberts]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

Were socket failures ever a concern?

We tended to use through-hole in my PhD lab, but were typically doing one-offs of MHz-bandwidth analog circuits. In general we tended to avoid putting in sockets because we were worried about reliability of the connections (I seem to recall the authors of The Art of Electronics advocating this approach). We did make some exceptions for components exposed to poorly-defined external stresses, however.

At Peavey we used millions and millions of sockets where the ICs were machine inserted into the sockets by the same machine that inserted the socket into the PCB. I don't recall if they were Amp or Molex but a good quality brand name socket. I do not recall any failures because of the sockets. In manufacturing, you don't want humans touching ICs, machines cause less mischief from static and whatever.

In theory a metal to metal connection in a socket may seem suspect for degradation from oxidation or contamination, but when properly executed the socket connections are robust and reliable.

With modern IC reliability there is far less reason to ever use sockets. Back when I was starting out, decades ago even new ICs did not always work... For my kit business back in the '70s I used to test new IC's 100%, before re-selling them, and in the early days I weeded out a small fraction of weak sisters or duds.

JR

 

[Tom Blazek]

Re: New QSC Product - TouchMix

So basically, you want a REALLY GOOD product? Join the club.

Answer: SAC (software audio console) ~~:smile:

It is all those things (and more) except recallable head amps (so far....) which, as noted, an XL4 never had. I've been using this for about 5 years and there really is nothing like it on the market. I have a Touchmix 16 to fill some gaps here and there, but the SAC system is the king.

check it out at www.softwareaudioconsole.com Free download to try it. A word of note: It is powerful in ways other digital consoles cannot be, so the user guide is invaluable.