The ethics of cabinet copying

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Daniel Postilnik

Junior
Jan 14, 2011
304
1
18
37
San Francisco, CA
One of the tenants in the warehouse building where I rent space is a local flight-case and custom cabinet builder. While he was fixing a case of mine he told me how a local rental house asked him to build copies of their expensive line-array boxes so they could fit them with cheaper drivers and rent out a ''B'' system that looked the same but didn't sound as good.



As a small sound company owner, this seems to me to be kind of a fishy practice. I believe the client should know that when they pay more, they get more, and when they pay less, that sacrifices are being made. I also believe that people should be more educated about how the equipment works, not less.



Obviously it's a much cheaper way to get a sexy line-array system (I don't know HOW much cheaper, actually), but it still strikes me as pretty cutthroat. Is this a common practice? I've only heard of people swapping drivers out for cheaper components intentionally at sheisty music resale shops.

 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Cheaper drivers in a similar-looking box would seem to be the least of the problems with a provider willing to do this.



I would be more concerned about flying a product not rated for flying, being lied to by someone promising one thing and then delivering another, and any other ways they may be cheating me.



Maybe they would accept Xerox copies of $$ to pay for their copied speakers?
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Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

There is a gray area, if the boxes are made for personal use, and if the copying involves any protected IP. If they are copying the look of the purchased line array that seem like a trade dress or perhaps a design patent issue. While unlikely to be worth pursuing legally other than to make an example of them.



There is a long tradition of small sound companies rolling their own speaker cabinets to save money, but flying cabinets is a completely different animal. Where they are putting audiences at risk with possibly under engineered internal support structure. It seems their liability insurance provider might object if they knew. If a failure happens they are on their own.



JR









 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

I have never heard of someone duplicating a line array, as TJ says the flyware is not going to be OK. I have, however, heard of someone duplicating subwoofers and loading them identically so they could get 50% more for their money... same product, same drivers, only the manufacturer is getting hurt.



No viable company can copy a known product and put cheaper drivers in it and get away with it. One reason is because even high end engineers work in the sticks 25% of the time to keep jobs on the books. I will figure that shit out pretty quick, and I'm going to be pretty angry when your cheap driver selection means I need to throw out my predictions, measure a box one bandpass at a time to build a preset for it, and then rebuild the array from scratch. On top of that they're probably not powering it properly, and when I put in the HF correction I expect that box to be able to handle it's going to blow up their cheap compression drivers, which take all the load in a line array anyway.
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Bennett Prescott wrote on Mon said:
I have never heard of someone duplicating a line array, as TJ says the flyware is not going to be OK. I have, however, heard of someone duplicating subwoofers and loading them identically so they could get 50% more for their money... same product, same drivers, only the manufacturer is getting hurt.



No viable company can copy a known product and put cheaper drivers in it and get away with it. One reason is because even high end engineers work in the sticks 25% of the time to keep jobs on the books. I will figure that shit out pretty quick, and I'm going to be pretty angry when your cheap driver selection means I need to throw out my predictions, measure a box one bandpass at a time to build a preset for it, and then rebuild the array from scratch. On top of that they're probably not powering it properly, and when I put in the HF correction I expect that box to be able to handle it's going to blow up their cheap compression drivers, which take all the load in a line array anyway.
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Actually I didn't think of that at first but I like the idea. Scam artist provider puts up an ''imitation'' trying to fool people, so a visiting tech toasts everything because it doesn't perform the same as the boxes he thought he was working with.



Just desserts. (People with a tendency to ''flexible'' ethics tend to on my badside pretty quick.)
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Its pretty unethical to steal a box design.

Granted I do see a fair amount of subwoofer ''clones'' out there.



As far as ''jobs with guest engineers'' There are plenty of jobs out there, like small festivals, etc that arent going to have BE's, that I could see a line array being a usefull marketing tool.



There have been some homebrew line arrays plans out there, Harmony central had a thread about them years ago, I belive Ford audio Services made one and had Plans including CNC info for them available for sale @ one time. I would do that before I ripped off a design.
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Of course, if a rental house is willing to put out counterfeit boxes for their main arrays, what other ''compromises'' are they going to be willing to make on the other aspects of their operation?



Their attitude to rigging safety seems cavalier at best, I wonder what kind of condition the power distro and feeder cable is likely to be in?
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Jason Dermer wrote on Thu said:
Not to mention HF (and maybe other bandpass) horn design that I doubt very many ''cabinet makers'' would have the proper equipment to build or ability to acquire.
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I would think cabinet makers would be just the people to copy intricate woodworking designs actually. Unless you're talking metal/ fiberglass proprietary horns, in which case, I guess thats why they always catch a counterfeiter.
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Graham C Mellor wrote on Thu said:
I would think cabinet makers would be just the people to copy intricate woodworking designs actually. Unless you're talking metal/ fiberglass proprietary horns, in which case, I guess thats why they always catch a counterfeiter.
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Have you ever seen some of the waveguides and horns in ''A'' level line arrays? The fiberglass/ plastic/ metal/ carbon fibre structures are EXACTLY what I am talking about. Short of using some pretty serious multimillion $$$ CAD machinery that can read and duplicate in 3 dimensions down to thousandths of an inch, it just isn't going to happen.



edit:clarity
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

I think a few may have missed my point.



Yes, it's very difficult to make an accurate copy of the cabinet.

----This is not the goal. The goal is to make a similar-looking cabinet that sounds worse, and thus it costs less to rent (or maybe the same).



Yes, attempting to copy a flying cabinet increases the likelihood of unsafe rigging setups.

----Asssume for a minute that it's not flying. Does this change the ethics?





 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Jason Dermer wrote on Thu said:
Have you ever seen some of the waveguides and horns in ''A'' level line arrays? The fiberglass/ plastic/ metal/ carbon fibre structures are EXACTLY what I am talking about. Short of using some pretty serious multimillion CAD machinery that can read and duplicate in 3 dimensions down to thousandths of an inch, it just isn't going to happen.
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I wonder if, as manufacturing continues to move offshore, you might get the issue where counterfeit product is produced using the same factory? (i.e. the factory sell counterfeit product, with cheaper components but almost identical cosmetic appearance, out of the back door)



This kind of trouble has (allegedly) already befallen some microphone manufacturers...
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Realizing that they probably don't want your opinion but maybe they'll take it anyway, if they are looking for a lower cost alternative, instead of attempting to copy a line array, which again is highly unlikely to be safe/ correct or approaching either, why not build some solid, semi proprietary double 15'' and 2'' boxes with relatively narrow horns that can be groundstacked 3 wide and 2 deep? There are some excellent designs readily available out there, and with just a bit of DSP magic and a PM4k with half decent outboard it will work quite well for the lower end of the regional market and offer excellent ROI.



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edit: added the photo, unfortunately everything was tarped due to the rain but we deployed just such a rig on the B stage of this festival, and it served (and still serves) it's purpose well. Yes it's our rig on the ''A'' stage as well, please feel free to blast the stadium's grounds staff for the piss poor hanging of the banners, which they trotted out after we had already dismissed the riggers.

 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Stuart Høgg wrote on Thu said:
This kind of trouble has (allegedly) already befallen some microphone manufacturers...
Click to expand...



I've identified several fake B58a in a a/b-comparison. Fake ones had identical markings on itself and it's box, but had a slightly different marking on it's capsules and a tiny difference in ''feel'' and weight.

Handling noise was the big difference, you couldn't see any difference on the units or their box. They looked like they came of the same production line.
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

Just to be clear. Making a copy of a cabinet that costs 4-5000 usd will surely end up costing less then half even if you have to pay for a very well equipped shop to do all difficult things that you cant including laser cut and 3-4 axis cnc machining.



And why will the rigging hardware be unsafe if you do it the same?



All of the high league boxes are extremely overpriced having the production cost in mind.
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

The copy of Adobe CS4 I just bought for $1200 included about $1.13 in packaging and printing. That's INCREDIBLY overpriced!
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(Discounting of course the hundreds of millions of dollars it took to develop the software.
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Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

With companies like RCF, B&C, Beyma and I'm sure others all offering line array wave guides and drivers building two way or quasi three way compact/mid size line array cabinets is possible. Spend some quality time with your software and DSP of choice, good results can be had. Now getting proper,safe, easy to use rigging would be the tricky part.



Going back to what Jason said about solid proprietary boxes like double 18, double 15, double 12 x 2 inch, etc. That's what I am using and get great ROI. In my local, small regional service market they fit the needs perfect. I get many good compliments on the quality of the system. It's not only about the equipment but the service to the client that goes along with it.
 
Re: The ethics of cabinet copying

It's funny how this converstation has drifted away from the original question. We are now discussing the practical aspects of speaker building and not the ethics of stealing someone else's design!



Personally, I think it is unethical to copy any other products and I wish we had better laws to prevent it and some means to enforce those laws. Of course that is probably impossible so we must rely on the ethics of the consumer. Ha, that's a good one!
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