ESI Professional concerned about M-Audio Studiophile BX5a product design

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fernandoesmaron

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http://www.esi-pro.com/news.php?mode=view&id=56


ESI Professional concerned about M-Audio Studiophile BX5a product design

ESI Professional wants to inform its worldwide customers about the design similarities of the new M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers and the top-selling ESI nEar05 eXperience monitoring speakers. The new M-Audio Studiophile BX5a replicates many of the distinctive cosmetic design features and most technical design features of the ESI nEar05 eXperience. The main technical specifications of both products are identical, including the used materials, including the basic design of electronics, and even including the meassurements down to the mm of the cabinet given in the specification tables. A close look on the back panel of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a even shows that the position of every single cabinet screw as well as screws to fix the internal electronic parts are matching the original ESI nEar05 eXperience exactly.

ESI Professional in the meantime verified that the chinese supplier that is manufacturing the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers for M-Audio did obviously try to copy the successful ESI nEar05 eXperience monitoring speakers during the development process.

ESI assumes that the cosmetic design concept, the actual technical design and specifications of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers are intended to confuse consumers as to the origin and quality of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers, obviously intending to profit from ESI's success with the nEar05 eXperience product.

This is underlined by the fact that the M-Audio website still uses quotes from reviews of one of the predecessors, the M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B that has since been discontinued, to advertise the new M-Audio Studiophile BX5a. It is interesting to know that the M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B was a product designed by the ESI engineering team. ESI offered the OEM product to M-Audio, however no successor of the M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B was designed or engineered by ESI.

Our initial concerns after the anouncement of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers have sadly been confirmed. ESI has since received several comments from international distributors, music instrument retailers and end users indicating that they believed ESI to be the supplier of M-Audio for the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a model.

ESI Professional would like to inform all its customers that the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a is not manufactured by ESI Professional or by any factory affiliated with ESI Professional. Only the original design and tuning by ESI Professional engineering delivers the exceptional sound quality you can expect from the company that has been the market leader for extremly affordable active monitoring speakers in recent years in many markets around the globe. This has been confirmed after verifying the design and sound quality of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers - as a result, ESI Professional can only advise its customers to favor the original product.

Chess Lim, President of ESI Professional, commented: "We are very concerned that M-Audio obviously has taken advantage of our existing design, which is the result of years of hard work. Considering that it was ESI that designed the product that allowed M-Audio to enter the market for active monitoring speakers several years ago in the first place, we are now extremly dissapointed that M-Audio took this route to save development cost. Imitation is not flattery, especially not in a competitive market like this where actual technology is more important on the long term than the pricing and quality of a product."

http://esi-pro.com/nek/PressRelease111005.pdf
 
Interesting PR. I wonder how the popular BX5 (before the BX5a) fits into this picture. I'm guessing it was a modified SP-5B design--the two models seem to look and sound so similar-- but I don't know for sure. Anyone?

J.
 
Hmmm...

There are certainly some physical similarities between the two units, but I'm not convinced yet. Personally, I've never even heard of ESI and their speakers sell for less than the M-Audios. ESI states that they sold the original design of the SP-5b to M-audio and there are more similarities between this speaker and the ESI than with the new BX5a. I suspect this is simply a case of all of the speakers coming out of the same factory and being rebranded and/or modded by their respective resellers. Reminds me of the Telefunken/Apex/Nady tube mic debate.
 

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It looks as though they are a South Korean company. Could be that they developed products and worked out an agreement with M-Audio rebadge their product for sale in America.

Sort of similar to what BLUE microphones is going through with their Latvian contractor.

This is their primary contact information

ESI Professional
2nd Fl., SAMICK MUSIC PLAZA Bldg., #58-3, NonHyun-Dong, KangNam-Gu,
Seoul, KOREA, 135-815
Tel : +82-2-3498-3358 Fax : +82-2-3444-5935


Wonder if they are related to the old Samick Brand. Thought that company disappeared for cheap products...

Well on further look, it appears as if samick reworked their image and product line.
 
On a related note... I finally ran into a pair of the new BX5As in my local shopm but didn't have time to give them a listen. The staff, whom I know a bit, likes them because of their improved bass response. What I noticed, though, is that the total design has really departed from the BX5: no more contoured design, no more EQ adaptability, and a cheap-looking plastic front. What happened? They may sound better in some way, but why would M-Audio drop some of the key features that brought them such popularity in the first place, especially those good EQ options that other companies have since copied? Something doesn't add up for me.

J.
 
COuld be the typical Digidesign influence in a company. Even Focusrite woke up and ended that "lovely" relationship with Digi/Avid
 
scrubs said:
There are certainly some physical similarities between the two units, but I'm not convinced yet. Personally, I've never even heard of ESI and their speakers sell for less than the M-Audios. ESI states that they sold the original design of the SP-5b to M-audio and there are more similarities between this speaker and the ESI than with the new BX5a. I suspect this is simply a case of all of the speakers coming out of the same factory and being rebranded and/or modded by their respective resellers. Reminds me of the Telefunken/Apex/Nady tube mic debate.
Click to expand...

Have a look at the back panel of both speakers:

http://www.esi-pro.com/upload/product/near05(E)-s-2-L-M.jpg
http://www.m-audio.com/images/en/callouts/big/bx5a_focus_big.jpg

I can ensure you that the two products are not coming from the same source and are definitly produced in different factories.

Regarding pricing: in Europe (where ESI is market leading for 5" active monitors), M-Audio matches the street price of ESI in most countries with BX5a.

Best regards,

Claus Riethmueller
Sales & Marketing Director
ESI Professional
 
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Claus R said:
Have a look at the back panel of both speakers:

http://www.esi-pro.com/upload/product/near05(E)-s-2-L-M.jpg
http://www.m-audio.com/images/en/callouts/big/bx5a_focus_big.jpg

I can ensure you that the two products are not coming from the same source and are definitly produced in different factories.

Regarding pricing: in Europe (where ESI is market leading for 5" active monitors), M-Audio matches the street price of ESI in most countries with BX5a.

Best regards,

Claus Riethmueller
Sales & Marketing Director
ESI Professional
Click to expand...

I'll take your word for it. However, the back panels of many rear-ported monitors look very similar. There are only so many ways you can arrange the knobs and jacks. I'm interested to find out how all this shakes out. IMO, M-Audio has a reputation for providing products with a good combination of price and quality geared toward home recording. I can't think of any of their other products that would appear to be copies of existing gear (unlike behringer, who deliberately and flagrantly copy/reverse-engineer other company's products). M-Audio monitors, while certainly decent and priced right, are not among their finest products.
 
scrubs said:
However, the back panels of many rear-ported monitors look very similar. There are only so many ways you can arrange the knobs and jacks.
Click to expand...
You are right with that. However, there are many ways to position the screws that fix the panel to the wood cabinet, there are many ways to position the screws that mount the amplifier pcb or that mount the power supply / cooling, etc. - it is more than just an interesting coincidence that all the holes in the back panel for the various screws are exactly at the identical position.

The linked PDF file from the original post has an interesting picture of both back panels, dismounted, next to each other.

scrubs said:
M-Audio monitors, while certainly decent and priced right, are not among their finest products.
Click to expand...
I would say that M-Audio is market leading in most areas with most of their products, globally. Yet, one area where they are far from that are the monitoring speakers. Obviously they are planing to change that; sadly the route they have taken to achieve that makes us a bit concerned.

After the third phone call from a journalist who called us to ask if we are the manufacturer of the M-Audio speakers, we decided that we had to do something.
 
So, uh, if this is a legitimate concern, why have you not entered a lawsuit about it?
I'm no legal expert but I think that first trying to influence the public opinion on what is really a legal matter will only weaken your case should you choose to take it to court... and so it should! There aren't any real facts here beyond a striking similarity (and yeah, it is striking, but this doesn't quite prove anything).

If you ask me, your statements here are the fishiest thing, as the generally accepted practice in dealing with a situation like this is to use the legal system to your advantage, not try to sway the court of public opinion.
Go prove that they are wrong, and then you won't need to convince us anymore.
 
bleyrad

i did post this news here and not C. Riethmüller.

I did read about this news in keyboards forum and wanted to post it here, too.

i find it right that customers know what´s going up there. I myself thought before i read the infos that esi & m-audio do work alltogether and are partners :rolleyes:
 
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bleyrad said:
So, uh, if this is a legitimate concern, why have you not entered a lawsuit about it?
Click to expand...
I appreciate your comments, especially as you bring up a very valid point.

While the products are very similar, the similarity does not justify a lawsuit from our point of view. The internal design of the two products is too different for that, which also results in a noticable difference in sound quality.

Our only intention is to clarify that ESI is not the manufacturer of the M-Audio speakers and that the products are not coming from the same source / factory. We are forced to do that because there seems to be a public opinion that ESI would manufacture this product for M-Audio. This has been mentioned quite a number of times in various places, also here in this forum.

By the way - the noticable difference in sound quality is part of the reason we are doing something. If a few potential customers that are interested to purchase either nEar05 eXperience or BX5a are made aware of the issue by our actions and as result are really comparing the two products (if they are lucky enough to have the chance, e.g. at their local retailer), it can only be to the advantage of the customer himself.

Just last friday I was talking with the editor of germany's largest magazine for video editing who was in the process to prepare a in-depth article about audio monitoring that includes reviews and comparisson of several budget near field monitors. He was convinved that ESI would be the manufacturer of the M-Audio speakers and was really surprised when I informed him that this is not the case. This is just one of many examples where ESI was mentioned in relation to M-Audio speaker products recently; it reached an extend where we had to do something.

We now have released a statement about the issue and we hope it generates some attention (not too many people are concerned about the issue anyway). In any case, it now gives us something we can refer people to in case the topic and wrong assumptions are coming up again.

Please note that I participate in the discussion here simply because a thread on this forum appears in Google when you search for "bx5a near05" (again with the claim that both speakers would be identical). I realize that everything I write here as a representative of a manufacturer must be considered to be biased - I am well aware of that and I hope that everyone reading this is aware of it as well :)

bleyrad said:
If you ask me, your statements here are the fishiest thing, as the generally accepted practice in dealing with a situation like this is to use the legal system to your advantage, not try to sway the court of public opinion.
Click to expand...
While it is certainly interesting for us to see the public opinion on the issue, influencing this opinion is not the main intention of our actions.

We have a lot of respect of M-Audio, their product design and achievements in this industry, especially in recent years. Yet, we are disappointed by the way this new M-Audio product was designed and presented in countries where ESI has a higher market share for active monitors. I guess and hope this is understandable, but it does not justify legal actions from our perspective - we simply see no real need for that.

I hope this clarifies our intentions a little bit :cool:
 
Claus, I can accept your points here. You explain yourself clearly and with some necessary qualifications. Let me again ask a question that I asked above: what's the relationship of ESI to the former M-Audio BX5 monitor? If I understand things correctly, your company was involved in the original SP-5B design, but what about the BX5 model that followed it? Was ESI involved in that design?

J.
 
ESI,
sounds like you need to keep your R&D under closer supervision, like the auto mfgs. do, or do your patent work more often.
maybe you have a design team leak, secret speaker agent sneaking the back panel plate design around to your competition? (conspiracy theroy)


whats strange is the BX5's seem to get better praise than the BX5A's??
the beveled cabinet, switches in the back, magazine shootout winner, etc...
M-Audio may have done better by leaving the old BX5's alone.

Next time...Come out with an Orange line, everything Orange...fhkng ORANGE CONES, ORaNGE KNOBS, ORANGE BOXES, ORANGES TWEETRS!!!

then!! if M-Audio comes out with all ORANGE monitors... then you'll know..you'll know for sure..those orangy theive fhkrs. :eek:

hehee
 
jeffree said:
Claus, I can accept your points here. You explain yourself clearly and with some necessary qualifications. Let me again ask a question that I asked above: what's the relationship of ESI to the former M-Audio BX5 monitor? If I understand things correctly, your company was involved in the original SP-5B design, but what about the BX5 model that followed it? Was ESI involved in that design?
Click to expand...
ESI was not involved in the BX5 development / design or production. SP-5B is an ESI product however. M-Audio purchased the speakers from ESI, we have been their OEM supplier.

During development of the speakers that later became the M-Audio SP-5B, we tried to solve the problem that we did not have a usable sales channel for monitoring speakers anywhere in the world, especially not in North America. The solution was found when M-Audio showed interest to add active monitoring speakers to their product line. M-Audio then sold the product exclusivly as SP-5B worldwide - with quite some success looking at the sales numbers and the positive reviews for SP-5B at that time.

Now as you know, most budget monitoring speakers are manufactured in China due to manufacturing cost and to stay competitive on the market. The SP-5B have been produced by a contracted factory in China for ESI. After some time, M-Audio directly contacted the factory that was producing the product for ESI probably to avoid paying any margin to ESI in Korea for the design. As ESI owns the SP-5B design, they could not get the same product directly from the factory but M-Audio relativly quickly after that discontinued SP-5B and released BX5 as replacement - produced at the same factory but not based on an ESI design and without any margin for ESI. We have not been involved in the BX5 design at all, however the product obviously inherited some features of SP-5B.

As soon as M-Audio discontinued SP-5B and stopped ordering the product from ESI, we released a slightly modified version of the speaker (different color/finish, position of power LED changed - everything else identical) as nEar05 (also nEar05 classic) and started to build up sales channels for active monitors ourself. We have been very successful with that in Europe and Asia, not at all in North America however.

As you can imagine, the relationship between ESI and the chinese factory that has since then been producing for ESI and M-Audio has been affected a little bit by this. As result, we moved the production of all our newer models (nEar06, SW10K, nEar04 and especially nEar05 eXperience) to a different factory that has become a very valuable and important partner for us. This factory is not working with M-Audio. The release of nEar05 eXperience as successor of nEar05 classic end of last year was a major success.

I hope this clarifies this a little bit :)
 
thanks for infos mister riethmüller.

you did right to change the factory :)

Which one is better now - Expirience or bx5a :rolleyes: :) couldn´t hear both until now but i am interested. In homerecording.de German pc sound portal the esi experience are recommended often, and well known.

But what i not understand ist why the near06 is build different ? other Woofer - not kevlar and another sound told me an friend and did´nt like the near06 but the smaller modell :rolleyes: Why not kevlar in near06 ? M-audio do use kevlar in their new bx modell too ? Will there come an near08 ?
 
Frankly, they're both typical powered two-way designs, with similar cosmetics... nothing earth-shaking about either designs. I'd wager there are no new patented technologies in either one, including the rear-venting patent (which was issued quite some time ago), so, it probably doesn't matter that they look similar... as do so many other two-way powered monitors. There's just so many ways to approach conventional vented monitor design... ;)
 
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