Are the Mackie HR824's now made in China?

[Myriad_Rocker]

I read this on someone's ebay page....

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mackie-HR824-Stu...QQcmdZViewItem

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Define "made".

Thy are probably assembled in China. But the key parts from which it's assembled are not necessaily manufactured in China.

It's just like my Chevy Impala. It's assembled in Mexico from parts made in the US and Canada.

There is not all that much of complex design and heavy cost that is actually assembled in the United States any more. It's actually cheaper in many cases to ship the parts from the US to another country, assemble the final product there, and then ship the assembled unit back to the States than it is to just assemble them here.

From a sonic standpoint and a construction quality standpoint it's irrelevant. This guy is just trying to put a positive sales spin on the fact that his monitors are a few years old.

G.

[studiomaster]

Who cares where it's made...its a Mackie, not some fake Chinese brand.

[Myriad_Rocker]

Originally Posted by studiomaster

Who cares where it's made...its a Mackie, not some fake Chinese brand.

Whoa there. I was just asking.

[petermiller]

mackie has moved all production of its complete line to china. No more made in usa only on the design stage now. + they are being distributed by st. louis music (crate,ampeg) so there will definately be some problems in the future. There had already been problems getting mackie products and its bound to get worse. They may still assemble a few speaker cabs here in the us but everything else is made by small hands in a land far away.

[studiomaster]

Originally Posted by Myriad_Rocker

Whoa there. I was just asking.

No no..not you. there are many others who hate chinese made speakers in this board..

[xstatic]

Last I checked, Mackie's speaker contract was still with RCF which means the drivers will remain Italian. I can not say for sure what has been going into the studio monitors though.

[Ironklad Audio]

eh...everything's made in china

seriously, they have like a quarter of the population of the world over there. any product on the market anywhere in the world that requires more than a couple of parts/pieces is going to have chinese fingerprints on it somewhere

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by Ironklad Audio

eh...everything's made in china

seriously, they have like a quarter of the population of the world over there. any product on the market anywhere in the world that requires more than a couple of parts/pieces is going to have chinese fingerprints on it somewhere

And this is so sad...

About the Mackies, I would get the USA ones if I could.
I suspect they are much more reliable than the chineese ones.

[studiomaster]

Originally Posted by TheDewd

And this is so sad...

About the Mackies, I would get the USA ones if I could.
I suspect they are much more reliable than the chineese ones.

How are they more reliable? Give me your straight terms.

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by studiomaster

How are they more reliable? Give me your straight terms.

It is a known FACT that USA, JAPANEESE and EUROPEAN workmanship is of better quality than Chineese workmanship.
Wherever I look, the failure rate seems to skyrocket when there is a "made in china" sticker on something.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Everybody keeps using the word "made" without making any distinction about what that actually means. xstatic seems to be the only one here to understand the distinction between "fabricated" and "assembled". The parts from which the monitors are "made", e.g. the cones, the crossover networks, the power switches, the voice coils, etc. are neither designed nor fabricated in China. The drivers come from Italy. I'll bet even money that the power switches come from Korea. Perhaps the cabinet itself is manuafctured in the States, though that is probably also done in a low labor-cost country. It could be anywhere from El Salvador to the Belgian Congo, who knows?

Perhaps some of the solid state circuit components (e.g. resistors, capaciters, diodes) may be locally-supplied, but I'll bet that even China imports most of those from Taiwan, Korea, or Singapore. They almost certainly don't come from the US; and that's true for every brand of electronics out there, no matter how USA-sounding their name; there are very few solid-state component manufacturers in the Staes any more.

The point is that stuff these days is assembeled in a certain location, but that location is almost always entirely different - and usually half-way around the globe - from where it's component parts are fabricated. And even more so, it's only rarely that all the constituant parts are fabricated in the same location or even country.

So what if the Chinese are assembling the newer Mackie stuff? They are just putting together a kit, they are not building a monitor from scratch from raw materials. Zho Mar Tenh can use a Japanese-built automated soldering station and a Phillips screwdriver the same way and just as well as Jose Martinez or Joe Martin can.

When one talks about failure rates coming out of a factory (be it Chinese or Martain), 99 times out of 100 that has to do with poor quality control in the fabrication of a component, not in the assembly of the final product. Many Chinese condensors got a deserved bad rap for this a few years ago because the actual condensors they were fabricating were of poor or uneven quality. Their condensors may still have a bit of a ways to go, but the Chinese aren't stupid (nor are their non-Chinese contractors like Rode and MXL); they are learning and getting better at it every year.

But those are fabricated components, they are making the condensors from scratch. This is not the case with something like Mackie monitors. I have 7-yr-old 824s staring me in the face right now. They were assembled in the USA. I couldn't give a rat's ass; I know that is mext to meaningless these days because I know they are over half filled with parts from scattered locations from all over the globe. They are no more "American" than my Toshiba laptop with it's Intel chipset (US), Phoenix BIOS (US), LG LCD display (Korean)and Cubase software (German) is "Japanese".

I suggest that if someone is worried about whether the eBay 824s are manufactured in Swaziland or Tanu Tuva, they should perhaps be more worried about the fact that they are *used*. What kind of environmental conditions they have been used in and how much they have been used (not to mention the question of the integrity of your average eBay slime dog) can potentially have a MUCH greater bearing on their quality than who turned the screwdriver.

G.

P.S. This all reminds me of when I used to sell electronics 25 years ago. We sold probably a dozen brands of TVs. At the time, those brands included "American" brands such as Zenith, Magnavox and RCA (perhaps another brand or two that I forget offhand.) Every time I customer walked in and said they wanted an American-made television (usually an older couple ), I told them the truth. There wasn't a single TV sold that was American made in those days. The closest we had was one single model of Sony - the KV-1913R, if I remember correctly - was actually made in Mexico. The only major brand model of TV that was made on the North American continent was a Sony. All the "American" brands were actually made in Japan or Korea.

Of course the fact that I told the truth instead of being a good little sales boy by ignoring the truth and steering them right to the Zenith like they wanted to believe is a good indication of why I didn't stay in sales for very long

Nowdays it's even more acute. The brand names themselves aren't even American any more. Japan, Korea, China and Singapore have actually purchased the names themselves. "RCA", "Magnavox", "Memorex", etc. are no loner even companies...at least not in the traditional sense. They are brand names only, the rights to the names themselves having been purchaced by overseas companies with entirely different names.

[studiomaster]

Excellent pointers, Glen.

I don't get it why some of the guys here assume that the quality of a product decreases when it is assembled by Chinese dudes. They are only assembling it; the hardware and instructions are given by US or wherever the main quarters are. The reason why people love Sony over anything like RCA is because of it's quality, regardless of where it has been assembled. Who cares who assembled it, it's just a pair of hands and arms who have put together the missing pieces.

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by studiomaster

Excellent pointers, Glen.

I don't get it why some of the guys here assume that the quality of a product decreases when it is assembled by Chinese dudes. They are only assembling it; the hardware and instructions are given by US or wherever the main quarters are. The reason why people love Sony over anything like RCA is because of it's quality, regardless of where it has been assembled. Who cares who assembled it, it's just a pair of hands and arms who have put together the missing pieces.

Then you have to wonder where the QC check is made.
Let's face it, I wouldn't mind buying a product assembled in China after a north american has tested and verified it.
If it's QC'd in China, good luck with reliability.
If it's shipped back to USA and QC'd by people like Joe Smith or Greg Mackie himself, then you're in business because they actually CARE about the company more than does Zing Lee Chen who hates north america and wants to eat us up alive.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by studiomaster

The reason why people love Sony over anything like RCA is because of it's quality, regardless of where it has been assembled. Who cares who assembled it, it's just a pair of hands and arms who have put together the missing pieces.

Yep. And Sony has factories all over the world. They are not just "made in Japan". And BTW, those of us who were actually born before punk rock will remember that it wasn't that long ago that a "Made in Japan" stamp invaribly and automaticllay meant "cheap piece of junk"; even more so than "Made in China" means now.

After Japan it was Korea. Back when I was selling those Mexican Sonys and Japanese RCAs, there were basically two Korean electronics companies selling in this country: Samsung and Gold Star. We hated selling those things because they were inexpensive junk that was always breaking down, if it even worked to begin with. Now Samsung has become one of the most respected video display companies in the world, the acknowledged leader in LCD display technology (or at least one of the top two or three), and is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into state-of-the-art advanced research and development facilities that best anything Japan or America is doing. As far as Gold Star, well, they changed their name to LG Electronics and has practically single-handedly and very quickly stolen the cell phone and mobile communications market out from under the previously leading Scandinavian companies like like Ericcson and *****.

Now it's China. They started 5 or 10 years ago exactly where Japan started 40 years ago and Korea did 20 years ago. In another 5 or 10 years, the days of "Made in China" automatically meaning cheap, badly built crap will be as antequated as the idea of "Made in Japan" meaning the same thing.

G.

[giraffe]

all of you people just hate chinese 4 year olds and want them to starve to death because they have no work!

how could you?

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Now it's China. They started 5 or 10 years ago exactly where Japan started 40 years ago and Korea did 20 years ago. In another 5 or 10 years, the days of "Made in China" automatically meaning cheap, badly built crap will be as antequated as the idea of "Made in Japan" meaning the same thing.
G.

I wholeheartedly agree with that.
But what will happen to us then?
WE will be the ones starving
...and that's exactly what the Asians want!
Hell, I recall a couple of years ago, you could say "hey they have the arms, but here in North America, we have the brains".
Nowadays, India, Japan, Korea, China, etc are full of qualified engineers.
So what is next for us ?

[xstatic]

Wow, where the hell did all of this come from? This sounds like we are heading off into racist propaganda territory now. Paranoid thinking will do much more damage than anything else that could come down the pipeline. As far "made in america" goes.... that certainly does not guarantee a damned thing. I know plenty of "americans" who I certainly would not want having anything to do with anything that I will be buying. I am sure there are plenty of Chinese out there who are capable of doing a great job too. The truth is, quit blaming everyone else and start with the problem at home. How about the cheap ass CEO that allowed all that to happen to begin with? My bet is he is not chinese, so maybe we should lay off of them for a bit since they are just doing what the guy YOU paid is asking them to do......

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by xstatic

Wow, where the hell did all of this come from? This sounds like we are heading off into racist propaganda territory now. Paranoid thinking will do much more damage than anything else that could come down the pipeline. As far "made in america" goes.... that certainly does not guarantee a damned thing. I know plenty of "americans" who I certainly would not want having anything to do with anything that I will be buying. I am sure there are plenty of Chinese out there who are capable of doing a great job too. The truth is, quit blaming everyone else and start with the problem at home. How about the cheap ass CEO that allowed all that to happen to begin with? My bet is he is not chinese, so maybe we should lay off of them for a bit since they are just doing what the guy YOU paid is asking them to do......

This is exactly why I boycott Mackie since they now outsource to China (even if it's just assembly...).
Greg Mackie is the CEO you talk about that is too cheap and not proud enough to tolerate making less money, but better quality goods.

[xstatic]

Boy, sadly enough, it sounds like you would be right at home in Nazi Germany

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by TheDewd

I wholeheartedly agree with that.
But what will happen to us then?
WE will be the ones starving

Once again, history holds the answer. And that answer is, that's just a rehash of old prejudiced paranoia a few times over...

"Americans" complained about the same thing with "loss" of the manufacture of the transistor radio in the late 60s/early 70s.

Then it was the "loss" of television manufacture in the late 70s/early 80s.

Then it was the - if not the loss, the loss of the monopoly - of the automobile industry in the mid 80s.

Then came a similar trend with computer manufacture in the 90s.

Now it is the lost of the customer service industry.

There is a common denominator though all of this. It's all the natural evolution of technology and manufacture. Each of these technologies were - if not necessarily invented - matured and a mass market developed here. Once the market is mature and the technology becomes a commodity, the manufacturing moves to less-R&D-inovative countries and eventually to second-and third-world countries where manufacturing costs can be minimized because of the lack of R&D costs. In the meantime we move on to The Next Big Thing. There's nothing abnormal about that, it's the natural economic cycle of the global economy.

And there is, in fact, a certain amount of built-in self-security (though only to a point) in such global sharing of the wealth. It's the poor, the down-trodden and disrespected in other countries that cause the greatest long-term threat to global economic security. If we kept everything to ourselves and treated everybody else as Oliver Twist, we'd be stabbing ourselves in the economic back. As the globe goes, so do we.

The biggest danger is when we bcome lazy and lose our innovative edge. Japan gave us an economic and creative run for our money in the 80s, but our ability to innovate and adapt combined with our deep economic pockets gave us the personal computer, the Internet industry and vastly improved automobile quality, while giving Japan a deep recession in return. But there are a couple of disturbing trends now, and the disturbing trends are coming from within, not without.

First is that we have an increasing value system in this country that de-emphasizes the perceived value of both hard work and education. We have become too lazy or hoity toity to mow our own lawns or make our own food; we refuse to work at blue-collar or minimum wage jobs because we think we deserve better than that. And then we complain when foreigners come here and do the work for us or when our jobs wind up being exported overseas because we price ourselves right out of the market.

At the same time we are losing the education resources of our own colleges to those with student visas from other countries because we find it easier to play the pro ball player lottery at the age of 18 than we do to get a Bachelor's or Master's at the age of 20 or 21. We have - by any measure - the best colleges in the world, but we're exporting all our best education to students from other countries. The old cycle of "innovate more technology here, then export the matured industry there" is threatened to be usurped by all the Masters and PhD degrees going back overseas and all the money those countries are pouring into bleeding-edge R&D now.

But that's all not *their* fault. How can blame them? If we lose it'll be our fault for getting greedy and lazy. I can guarantee you that your average 20-year-old home recc'r in Korea or Japan is not looking for an Easy Button to do their mastering, or even looking for "mastering software". They learn the art and the science of audio engineering inside-out and then apply it creatively to the problem. They know there is no such thing as an "Easy Button", and frankly they are just fine with that, and laugh at us when we think different.

Xstatic is right. Country of origin is no guarantee of quality of worker. I couldn't get a neighbor kid to shovel my snow in the winter to make a few bucks if my life depended upon it. And the ones who do do their own driveways more often than not do a sloppy-assed job of it. And they want me to hire them as an AE or intern for my work here? Not a chance. I don't hire slack-asses. Give me a kid who offers to do my driveway for free in exchange for an opportunity to help me out in the studio, and I'll give you the next Warren Buffet or Bill Gates.

I mentioned in my first post that my Chevy Impala was assembled in Mexico. The plant that most (all?) Impalas are currently assembled is the same one in Mexico that the Buick LaCrosses are manufactured at. This assembly plant (as we've all in the States have seen in the TV commercials for the LaCrosse) has been rated by J.D. Powers as the highest-quality automobile assembly plant in North America. Of course the commercials don't bother to mention that the plant is in Mexico; they couldn't sell many cars that way any more than I could sell that Sony TV by saying the same thing. But the fact remains that the plant highest-rated in quality for assembling "American" cars is not even located in the United States. Some quality labor and QA force we have here, eh?

I'm not anti-American, not by a long shot. I'm just saying that if we "lose" to China, India, Korea or anyone else, it's our own laziness and complacence that'll be at fault, not theirs. We need to get off our asses, stop bitching and start working and studying and applying ourselves, not pretend life is a video game and think there is a free crack or an easy button for everything.

[end of rant, start of aplolgy ]

G.

[booyah14]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

We have - by any measure - the best colleges in the world, but we're exporting all our best education to students from other countries.

This is completely untrue. Almost all schools overseas are so hard to get into, that the ones that don't make the cut have to "settle" for Ivy league schools in the States.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by booyah14

This is completely untrue. Almost all schools overseas are so hard to get into, that the ones that don't make the cut have to "settle" for Ivy league schools in the States.

Oh, please.

Name the top colleges in the world; ones such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Northwestern, Whatsamatta U. US instutions, every one of them. Three of those are Ivy League, sure. I have never read an article or study or anything like that that said anything other than the idea that the best collection of universities in the world are in the States.

And nobody "settles" for getting into those schools. Only the richest and the brightest from overseas are the ones going to those schools, and picking those as their first choice.

And, this is interesting. Let's pretend for just a moment that what you say is true; that your average Venusian or Saturnian student has to "settle" for some shit institution like Harvard. That fact alone would prove the point beyond all doubt that we have a problem with education in this country if other countries consider Harvard a "fall-back position".

G.

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Oh, please.
Name the top colleges in the world; ones such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Northwestern, Whatsamatta U. US instutions, every one of them. Three of those are Ivy League, sure. I have never read an article or study or anything like that that said anything other than the idea that the best collection of universities in the world are in the States.
G.

I'm with you 100% Glen.
Being admitted to the MIT would mean more to me than winning a couple of millon dollars at the lottery.
The problem is that....I could only afford MIT if I won the lottery
Here in Quebec, education is DIRT cheap compared to the USA.

[giraffe]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Now it's China. They started 5 or 10 years ago exactly where Japan started 40 years ago and Korea did 20 years ago. In another 5 or 10 years, the days of "Made in China" automatically meaning cheap, badly built crap will be as antequated as the idea of "Made in Japan" meaning the same thing.

G.

but i think it will take quite a bit longer in china, the available labor pool is so huge that the market forces that make it (labor) more expensive will take some time to kick in.