Are Expensive Mic´s Expensive To Manufacture?

popkid

New member
This might be a stupid question, but are an expensive microphone expensive to manufacture, and a cheap microphone cheap to manufacture?

Or, is it that when a manufacturer comes up with a new microphone that sound great, they put a "great" pricetag on it?

I dont know, I´m just curious.
 
Most expensive mics have more expensive parts in them and there is more labor involved in assembly, tweaking and testing. Usually these mics are more reliable and the sound is more consistant from mic to mic (excluding vintage)

Cheap mics are stamped out of a cookie cutter and use as cheap of parts as can be found. They are usually inconsistant from mic to mic and little, if any. testing is done before it goes to the store. The build quality is usually lacking. Sometimes you can find a cheap mic that is a "keeper"
 
A lot of the expense is with the R&D and not the manufacturing cost. I'm sure it does not cost a whole lot more to make a housing for Nueman than it does for a SP. But also paying for something that preforms as it should. Its a tool and the better results you can get the greater the value.
 
popkid said:
This might be a stupid question, but are an expensive microphone expensive to manufacture, and a cheap microphone cheap to manufacture?

Or, is it that when a manufacturer comes up with a new microphone that sound great, they put a "great" pricetag on it?

I dont know, I´m just curious.

The cheap microphones are 99% fabricated and assembled in the far east, the wages are low, the testing and quality control is reasonable but not extensive and all parts conform to a lower spec.

Expensive microphones are generally manufactured in the west the parts are machined to a much higher spec from higher spec materials at much higher cost by higher paid, higher skilled workers using raw materials from higher cost supplier and higher cost assembly equipment. They are then put through an extensive qualitative, quantitive testing process using high cost, high accuracy testing equipment.

At the most basic level, in china the engineer to operator ratio is probably 1:50 whereas many 'expensive' microphone manufacturers employ a huge number of engineers even for assembly jobs. So the wages are probably 100 times greater before you even start producing microphones.

In short ...... YES
 
All that makes sense.

So, the follow-up question is then;
If a manufacturer of microphones have expensive and less expensive models in their line, are the expensive ones more expensive to make?

Take for example Neumann (it can be any brand), does a U87 (2500 bucks) cost 1500 bucks more to manufacture than a TLM103? I dont know, but I dont believe so.
Many people consider u87 to be a better microphone so Neumann knows that people are willing to pay more for it.

Am I wrong?
 
The parts are more expensive, hand wiring is more expensive. Percentage of markup applies, if it costs $100 to make a mic and the company wants to make 50% on their product, they will sell to distributors for $150 and they will sell to you for $200 (or whatever). If it costs $500 to make, they still want to make 50% and will sell THAT mic for $750 to the distributor and they will sell to you for $1000 (or whatever)
 
Big Kenny said:
The parts are more expensive, hand wiring is more expensive. Percentage of markup applies, if it costs $100 to make a mic and the company wants to make 50% on their product, they will sell to distributors for $150 and they will sell to you for $200 (or whatever). If it costs $500 to make, they still want to make 50% and will sell THAT mic for $750 to the distributor and they will sell to you for $1000 (or whatever)

That is, of course, true.
 
popkid said:
This might be a stupid question, but are an expensive microphone expensive to manufacture, and a cheap microphone cheap to manufacture?

Or, is it that when a manufacturer comes up with a new microphone that sound great, they put a "great" pricetag on it?

I dont know, I´m just curious.

Expensive mics cost because of the Research and development, testing, field testing and manufacturing process and parts. The QC and Manufacturing process is much more costly as there are many more steps that require engineers to oversee and quantify. There is also an issue with quantity manufactured. As lot quanity goes up, parts prices come down and labor cost is distributed over a wider profit range.


Any new product has to pay for the R&D and testing/manufacturing tooling costs. This is usually amortized over a 5 year period. The initial cost/unit to the consumer is high because of this. So, a 10 year old product is paid for and the only costs associated with it is manufacturing, parts, labor and upkeep of man. equipment. So, the price slides down to reflect these costs.
 
popkid said:
Take for example Neumann (it can be any brand), does a U87 (2500 bucks) cost 1500 bucks more to manufacture than a TLM103?

The TLM103 is transformerless and single-diaphragm, so the U87 is significantly more expensive to manufacture.
 
How many of the respondents to this post have any experience in electronic manufacturing? Hmm? Well, neither do I (well, not much), so I will wax eloquent with equal assurance. This should get some good flames.

popkid said:
This might be a stupid question, but are an expensive microphone expensive to manufacture, and a cheap microphone cheap to manufacture?

Or, is it that when a manufacturer comes up with a new microphone that sound great, they put a "great" pricetag on it?

A condenser microphone can be broken down into four broad components... research, housing, capsule, and electronics.

Circuitry is circuitry. All the various electronic components come out of a limited number of fabrication plants and I would wager that the resistor in a Neuman is no better (if not identical) to one found in a 797. Hand wiring is greatly overated. If anything the wiring of electronics in microphones are lagging behind the tech you might find in, say, video cards where highly reliable (and inexpensive) surface mount technology rules. In most markets hand assembly warrants a lower price, not a higher one. Microphone marketing has been successful at spinning this into a benefit. Kudos to them.

Much the same holds where the housing is concerned. Naturally you do not want your housing to interfere with the capsule, but accomplishing that is not rocket science; last I checked nobody is manufacturing their housing out of anything exotic. It might be a neat marketing idea... 'Nookie Microphones... the only microphones machined from solid magnesium!'

Capsules... ah... now there you start seperating the wheat from the chaff. Manufacturing capsules results in a lot of duds apparently, so your costs are directly tied to the efficency of your fabrication process. Every time you buy a mic you are paying for some duds. But having said that, if the fab process started producing 100% perfect capsules... well.... given human nature I am not too sure you would see the price drop.

Research? Phuleeessse. Piracy rules the day here. One guy pioneers a new capsule and reverse engineers the world over are tearing them apart.

So why the price??? Because they can! Because that is the market that they are aiming for, the price point they want to infest.

As a rank newbie this is where I had my greatest problem: I wanted a guarantee that if I was going to lay out a thousand bucks I was going to get a thousand dollar sound. But it doesn't work that way. All of the old stories that old engineers have told tell me that only the sound matters, and only God knows what is going to get you that sound. It may be a three thousand dollar mic, it may be thirty dollar mic. The only thing guarantee that you get with that three thousand dollar mic is a pristine manufacturing process that insures that it will sound (essentially) identical to it's clone on the rack, the only guarantee you get with the thirty dollar mic is that it was manufactured as cheaply as possible... but the thirty dollar mic may get you that platnium album.

Diversity is more important than price point. More power to you if you can afford that Geffell... wish I could... but better to have two dozen different mics that cost you three thousand all together than to have one mic that cost three thousand all by itself.
 
wheelema said:
Diversity is more important than price point. More power to you if you can afford that Geffell... wish I could... but better to have two dozen different mics that cost you three thousand all together than to have one mic that cost three thousand all by itself.

Unless your doing pop/rap/r&b where you just need one really killer vocal mic :p
 
wheelema said:
How many of the respondents to this post have any experience in electronic manufacturing? Hmm? Well, neither do I (well, not much), so I will wax eloquent with equal assurance. This should get some good flames.



A condenser microphone can be broken down into four broad components... research, housing, capsule, and electronics.

Circuitry is circuitry. All the various electronic components come out of a limited number of fabrication plants and I would wager that the resistor in a Neuman is no better (if not identical) to one found in a 797. Hand wiring is greatly overated. If anything the wiring of electronics in microphones are lagging behind the tech you might find in, say, video cards where highly reliable (and inexpensive) surface mount technology rules. In most markets hand assembly warrants a lower price, not a higher one. Microphone marketing has been successful at spinning this into a benefit. Kudos to them.

Much the same holds where the housing is concerned. Naturally you do not want your housing to interfere with the capsule, but accomplishing that is not rocket science; last I checked nobody is manufacturing their housing out of anything exotic. It might be a neat marketing idea... 'Nookie Microphones... the only microphones machined from solid magnesium!'

Capsules... ah... now there you start seperating the wheat from the chaff. Manufacturing capsules results in a lot of duds apparently, so your costs are directly tied to the efficency of your fabrication process. Every time you buy a mic you are paying for some duds. But having said that, if the fab process started producing 100% perfect capsules... well.... given human nature I am not too sure you would see the price drop.

Research? Phuleeessse. Piracy rules the day here. One guy pioneers a new capsule and reverse engineers the world over are tearing them apart.

So why the price??? Because they can! Because that is the market that they are aiming for, the price point they want to infest.

As a rank newbie this is where I had my greatest problem: I wanted a guarantee that if I was going to lay out a thousand bucks I was going to get a thousand dollar sound. But it doesn't work that way. All of the old stories that old engineers have told tell me that only the sound matters, and only God knows what is going to get you that sound. It may be a three thousand dollar mic, it may be thirty dollar mic. The only thing guarantee that you get with that three thousand dollar mic is a pristine manufacturing process that insures that it will sound (essentially) identical to it's clone on the rack, the only guarantee you get with the thirty dollar mic is that it was manufactured as cheaply as possible... but the thirty dollar mic may get you that platnium album.

Diversity is more important than price point. More power to you if you can afford that Geffell... wish I could... but better to have two dozen different mics that cost you three thousand all together than to have one mic that cost three thousand all by itself.

I have been an R&D engineer back when David Blackmer owned DBX in Watertown, Ma. I worked for him for a few years in the lab.

I have worked as a Manufacturing engineer/Test Engineer/R&D engineer (at different companies at different times) for Motorola, CTI-Helix, Poloroid, and a number of small companies. All toll. 25 years. Currently I am a Senior Manufacturing Electrical Engineer overseeing 18 projects both overseas and domestic. I think I am pretty qualified to speak about manufacturing and QC. I certainly know the problems and solutions and what the costs are.


Companies like Geffell have to charge the consumer more as they don't have anywhere near the volume or market that a company like Behringer have.

The real cost of a product is determined by the parts quality. the process and overseeing of the manufacturing process and ongoing product testing.

Any manufacturing process *anywhere in the world* left unchecked WILL go to hell in a hurry. Chinese and American manufcturing is identicle in the execution. It is the process monitoring and process improvement that makes a world class product. This costs much more money in salaries of engineers and test equipment/man. improvement hardware and software. There is so much to it that you would have to spend some years working in the manf. environment to understand.
 
When I was a kid, if something was stamped Made in Japan, it was considered a piece of crap. Nowadays the Japanese are known for their great, often innovative products.

That one product was made in Asia and another was made in Europe makes less and less of a difference these days.

People really need to get over this east vs. west mentality. There are sweatshops in Europe, too. Hell, there are sweatshops in the U.S. There are also production lines in western countries that work at the same pace as the production lines in Asia.

It's pretty silly to make a presumption about a product based on its manufacturer's country of origin. They're ALL capable of making quality as well as crap.
 
wheelema said:
Circuitry is circuitry. All the various electronic components come out of a limited number of fabrication plants and I would wager that the resistor in a Neuman is no better (if not identical) to one found in a 797. Hand wiring is greatly overated. If anything the wiring of electronics in microphones are lagging behind the tech you might find in, say, video cards where highly reliable (and inexpensive) surface mount technology rules.

Well they COULD use better resistors, I don't know if they do. More importantly you hope for the price they are using better capacitors. But certainly the most expensive electronic components for a high-end mic will be the transformer and the tube, if it has those items. And then if there is a tube, there is the additional expense of the power supply (another transformer, bigger caps, etc.) Audio tubes and transformers are relatively low-volume compared with the mass-produced capacitors and resistors, so there is no avoiding that cost if that's what you are using.

Many mics do have surface mount electronics--all my Shure condensers do. I think the reason thru-hole stuff is popular with consumers is because it's easy to mod (or repair).
 
No question that economies of scale rule.

I was reading an article in Tape-Op on The Residents. Apparently the only mics they use are Shure.
 
mshilarious said:
Well they COULD use better resistors, I don't know if they do. More importantly you hope for the price they are using better capacitors. But certainly the most expensive electronic components for a high-end mic will be the transformer and the tube, if it has those items. And then if there is a tube, there is the additional expense of the power supply (another transformer, bigger caps, etc.) Audio tubes and transformers are relatively low-volume compared with the mass-produced capacitors and resistors, so there is no avoiding that cost if that's what you are using.

Many mics do have surface mount electronics--all my Shure condensers do. I think the reason thru-hole stuff is popular with consumers is because it's easy to mod (or repair).

The truth of the matter is that surface mount is easier to service than thru-hole stuff. You just have to have experience with it. Our assemblers solder components in everyday and have become super fast at doing it.
 
wheelema said:
How many of the respondents to this post have any experience in electronic manufacturing? Hmm?

Well I've worked for Benchmark, Sanmina, Ogden Atlantic Design and Flextronics and I can tell you that there is probably quite a significant difference in a resistor in a neumann and a resistor in a chinese microphone,and a larger difference in capacitors and a world of a difference in the transformers.

Just for the sake of argument the resistors may be twice the price, capacitors 2-5 times the price and transformers may be 10-20 times the price to the manufacturer. The composition of resistors is of huge importance in audio woth regard to noise, as is the composition of capacitors, the fets in an expensive mic would also be selected to have a particular range of transconductance - all these add cost. The additional cost may be insignificant in the cost of production of a neumann or a geffell but if a chinese manufacturer can save 1.5c in the cost of resistors and capacitors you can be sure they will.

There is a collossal trade in the far east in low quality countefeit components that have made it into the supply chains of respected manufacturers, you can be sure thay find their way into the low cost houses pumping out these mics.
 
robgb said:
When I was a kid, if something was stamped Made in Japan, it was considered a piece of crap. Nowadays the Japanese are known for their great, often innovative products.

That one product was made in Asia and another was made in Europe makes less and less of a difference these days.

People really need to get over this east vs. west mentality. There are sweatshops in Europe, too. Hell, there are sweatshops in the U.S. There are also production lines in western countries that work at the same pace as the production lines in Asia.

It's pretty silly to make a presumption about a product based on its manufacturer's country of origin. They're ALL capable of making quality as well as crap.

True, but, now that the japanese have perfected the manufacturing process, they have become super anal and totally process oriented (a good thing for consumers). However, along the way they found out that quality of product and costs of manufacturing a great, comparable product to the rest of the world hiked their prices up a ton. The current japanese cars, for example, are the same price (or more) than the american cars.

In the future, I have confidence that the chinese manufacturers will get their act together (like japan), but the goverment attitude has to change politically for that to ever happen. If they can get past that, the budget chinese mics will be history and prices will rise to the norm.

The current chinese products are possible because most importers just go to china, see a mic, ask how much to buy 1000 and slap their logo on it and that is the end of it. The importer just advertises the cheap product and charges triple what he pays for it. You buy a bad one? No problem, he gives you a new one for free + shipping and handleing (which pays for the cost of him buying the mic in bulk).


This IS how it works. I worked for a Home theater company that, at the time, was the top rated, top selling system. We bought speakers and power amps rom china. Tested them before building. We threw out at least 1/2 of tose shitty cheap speakers because it would have been too expensive to return them. You got credit from the chinese manufacturer. The power amps were not much better. My poor techs had to fix so many of them.

This system was selling at the time for like $2500 and up.

Years later - This company is still around. Overhauled and re-designed stuff as they went into bankruptcy on the returns of like 90% of their great systems.

Cheap components, cheap labor, unchecked process, bad QC all takes its toll on the company in the end.

Therefore, it is not the price that the consumer pays for a product that dictates whether it is a great product or a bad product. It is the reputation and long-term buisiness that you pay for. There is alot of value in the reputation and longevity of companies like Shure, Neumann, AKG and Audio Technica to list a few.
 
Paddy,

You are SO lucky (at least from where I sit) to be in Ireland. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side.

The chinese may save a penny here and penny there. After a few billion mics you are looking at real money. But even if you pay twenty to one for the good stuff, you're still looking at under a buck for the vast majority of components. I don't think it adds up fast enough to justify several thousand dollars for a mic. Still, I haven't touched electronics now for near twenty years. As I pointed out, I am not much of a resource.
 
Back
Top