Why are mics so expensive?
- Thread starter NRS
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recordingpro
New member
mics are expensive to separate the "haves" from the "have nots" Pros buy the spendy stuff that creates predictable and reliable results, Results you can count on to work. Some of the cheaper stuff might fit that scenario but not much. I've got both cheap stuff and expensive stuff, the expensive stuff sounds great the cheap stuff sounds mediocre to crappy and it usually gets used when I run out of the good stuff.
Cheap crappy mics going through a $10,000 signal chain can sound pretty good BUT good mics going through the same chain sound incredible.
Someday they'll probably conquer a bunch of the manufacturing issues and create great sounding cheap mics but so far it hasn't happened.
Cheap crappy mics going through a $10,000 signal chain can sound pretty good BUT good mics going through the same chain sound incredible.
Someday they'll probably conquer a bunch of the manufacturing issues and create great sounding cheap mics but so far it hasn't happened.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Soundmind?? said:
Let me correct that wording: the more expensive mic manufacturers reject as many as four out of five capsules due to low quality control standards during manufacturing. If their manufacturing process weren't churning out parts with unacceptably wide tolerances, they wouldn't have an 80% reject rate.
That's alarmingly high for modern manufacturing. I can't think of any modern manufacturing where a 20% yield is not considered horrible quality control. An 80% yield is considered low in most high-tech areas. They're keeping less than most companies throw out....
The plant operator and/or chip designer would get canned in a chip production factory if the reject rate exceeded 1-2% unless they're fabbing something immensely complex like a CPU, and even then a yield below 30% would be considered abysmal even in prototype manufacturing, and a yield below 80% in final production would likely be grounds for either redesigning the part or hiring a different company to fab it.
So if capsules really have only a 20% yield, either their design has flaws that lead to a ludicrously high failure rate or their process sucks horribly. Period. Having a 20% yield on capsules doesn't make me value their capsules more. It makes me question their competence more. Maybe it's just me, but....
PhilGood
Juice box hero
dgatwood said:
Actually, no, and you're comparing apples and oranges. Neumann has very strict tolerances for how the capsules are designed and assembled. There are many variances involved, especially in the tuning process, which is done by weights on the membrane as its being glued to the ring, and then screwed into the capsule. The tech can do everything right, but there may be a slight imperfection that causes the tuning frequency to be off a bit. The capsule might sound really good, but not good enough for Neumann to say it deserves the Neumann name. So it gets the boot.
It has nothing to do with a bad manufacturing process. They're just super snooty when it comes to the sound.
They are the same way with tubes. A Telefunken VF14 has about a 1 in 4 chance of being good enough for a U47. An RFT VF14 has about a 1 in 20 chance of being good enough.
mshilarious
Banned
PhilGood said:
Which would imply they need a better manufacturing process. It has to be much harder to make a modern CPU than a mic capsule; the difference is many millions of CPUs are sold, so the R&D to improve the process gets done, whereas apparently for a high-end mic manufacturer, it is cheaper to discard rejects than spend the money to improve the process because volumes are so low. Both are rational business decisions, but there is no need to attach a mystique to microphones as a result.
Perspective from a high end manufacturer
I thought you all might like the perspective of a high end mike manufacturer on this issue, so I sent a question last night to David Josephson of Josephson Engineering, asking for his perspective and experience on different mike production processes, comparing, say, the production process for a $100 retail mike from China versus his Series Seven mike. Thankfully, he was generous enough to take the time to reply and he tried to answer the questions I would have asked, had I known the right questions to ask. I've attached his complete, unedited response below (with permission, as noted at the end). I think you'll find it interesting and informative.
Cheers,
Otto
"Otto,
There's obviously only so much time for answering such a question ... but I'll try. I know a bit about Chinese production strategy, having worked in that country about half time for five years in the 1980's (not in audio, but in geophysical and lab instrumentation). I have a lot of respect for their industry and resourcefulness, having seen the results of their pulling themselves out of a Soviet-generated technological dark ages in the 1960's (read up on the history of the famine and the USSR's technical pullout from China during 1959-1961). They kept the brute force engineering they learned from Soviet universities in the 50's which was focused on producing adequate and robust technology cheaply in huge quantity. If you make a thousand toasters, no one minds if 5% of them are faulty when there's an extra 10% included for free with the thousand you made. This is a valid and powerful cost reduction strategy -- but not for us. Today of course Chinese industry is moving beyond that in semiconductors and other major technologies, but studio microphone capsule production is still a small business for everyone. There are something like 20 billion electret condenser microphone capsules made every year -- a few tens of thousands of studio condenser mic capsules are in the noise and the few hundred we make aren't even on the chart. No one discussing these issues has a clue unless they have been through the process themselves, and those who have, typically find no reason to participate in the discussions.
All of the aspects you mention are relevant, and there are many others. A capsule is designed based on the knowledge that certain tolerances can be achieved in production. The first difference is that when you know tolerances are loose, you can't specify dimensions in the design that must be held to close tolerances. Some dimensions in the Series Seven capsule must be held within a ten-thousandth of an inch; if you can only get to a thousandth, you can't make that part, so you're constrained to designs that don't require such tolerances. The capsule in most Chinese big-diaphragm mics is a derivative of the Neumann KK67 capsule, which is an improvement of the Norddeutscher Rundfunks M7 capsule designed by Braunmuehl and Weber in the 1930's. Ones that won't work in a multi-pattern mic because the halves don't match will work OK in cardioid only (as they were originally conceived); one side or the other will work OK. The AKG CK12 capsule of the 1950's was far more demanding in terms of machining precision; even AKG had a hard time getting them right (different examples are all over the map in terms of response, for reasons we understand) and they ultimately decided they were too difficult to make. The guy responsible for that manufacture, as far as I know, was Bernhard Weingartner who left AKG and went on to found Neutrik. That design is the basis of the Series Seven capsule, and we have been producing our version with continual improvement since 1989 ... we have learned a lot. AKG would probably have done the same if they had decided to stick with that design. There are several books of notes on this topic here chronicling successes and failures, true discoveries and barking up wrong trees, which as you can imagine I'm not about to share. The three principals of the company have unique skills in manufacturing, electrical engineering and physical acoustics, and without this combination of skills I don't think we would have been able to get to where we are today -- which is that one of our techs can set out the parts to make 20 capsules and come up in a few weeks with exactly 20 capsules which are all the same (unless we want them to be different, which we sometimes do for our OEM customers). There is no single key to this performance -- it is the sum of a thousand little pieces.
And then there is the issue of reliability. Nearly all of the original large diaphragm capsules that I made in the early 1990's are still in use and performing exactly as they did originally (although it took me much longer to get them there than it does today). There were failures and degradation issues for the first couple years of production but all of those capsules (which reached the market in very early Manley Gold Reference microphones) have been replaced, and those issues are now fixed. Since my last industry work before starting my company was in a military quality control system that I developed and managed, I was preoccupied with this from the beginning. You can look at many of the low cost microphones on the market today and see where economies result in tolerances that degrade with age, and this degradation is seldom good. This is the ultimate limit to the low cost, weed-out-the-duds approach. A capsule that sounds OK today may not tomorrow; there's no way to predict how things will warp and stretch if the materials are not stable. We simply don't have capsule failures in production mics anymore, these are fairly easy to prevent if you know what's going on for any manufacturer that's willing to take the time and expense to engineer the process properly. Even that doesn't prevent big name companies from rushing capsules into production when their long term reliability isn't known -- there has been at least one example of this in recent years where a whole production run had to be recalled.
Feel free to quote and distribute this reply as you like.
Cheers
David Josephson"
I thought you all might like the perspective of a high end mike manufacturer on this issue, so I sent a question last night to David Josephson of Josephson Engineering, asking for his perspective and experience on different mike production processes, comparing, say, the production process for a $100 retail mike from China versus his Series Seven mike. Thankfully, he was generous enough to take the time to reply and he tried to answer the questions I would have asked, had I known the right questions to ask. I've attached his complete, unedited response below (with permission, as noted at the end). I think you'll find it interesting and informative.
Cheers,
Otto
"Otto,
There's obviously only so much time for answering such a question ... but I'll try. I know a bit about Chinese production strategy, having worked in that country about half time for five years in the 1980's (not in audio, but in geophysical and lab instrumentation). I have a lot of respect for their industry and resourcefulness, having seen the results of their pulling themselves out of a Soviet-generated technological dark ages in the 1960's (read up on the history of the famine and the USSR's technical pullout from China during 1959-1961). They kept the brute force engineering they learned from Soviet universities in the 50's which was focused on producing adequate and robust technology cheaply in huge quantity. If you make a thousand toasters, no one minds if 5% of them are faulty when there's an extra 10% included for free with the thousand you made. This is a valid and powerful cost reduction strategy -- but not for us. Today of course Chinese industry is moving beyond that in semiconductors and other major technologies, but studio microphone capsule production is still a small business for everyone. There are something like 20 billion electret condenser microphone capsules made every year -- a few tens of thousands of studio condenser mic capsules are in the noise and the few hundred we make aren't even on the chart. No one discussing these issues has a clue unless they have been through the process themselves, and those who have, typically find no reason to participate in the discussions.
All of the aspects you mention are relevant, and there are many others. A capsule is designed based on the knowledge that certain tolerances can be achieved in production. The first difference is that when you know tolerances are loose, you can't specify dimensions in the design that must be held to close tolerances. Some dimensions in the Series Seven capsule must be held within a ten-thousandth of an inch; if you can only get to a thousandth, you can't make that part, so you're constrained to designs that don't require such tolerances. The capsule in most Chinese big-diaphragm mics is a derivative of the Neumann KK67 capsule, which is an improvement of the Norddeutscher Rundfunks M7 capsule designed by Braunmuehl and Weber in the 1930's. Ones that won't work in a multi-pattern mic because the halves don't match will work OK in cardioid only (as they were originally conceived); one side or the other will work OK. The AKG CK12 capsule of the 1950's was far more demanding in terms of machining precision; even AKG had a hard time getting them right (different examples are all over the map in terms of response, for reasons we understand) and they ultimately decided they were too difficult to make. The guy responsible for that manufacture, as far as I know, was Bernhard Weingartner who left AKG and went on to found Neutrik. That design is the basis of the Series Seven capsule, and we have been producing our version with continual improvement since 1989 ... we have learned a lot. AKG would probably have done the same if they had decided to stick with that design. There are several books of notes on this topic here chronicling successes and failures, true discoveries and barking up wrong trees, which as you can imagine I'm not about to share. The three principals of the company have unique skills in manufacturing, electrical engineering and physical acoustics, and without this combination of skills I don't think we would have been able to get to where we are today -- which is that one of our techs can set out the parts to make 20 capsules and come up in a few weeks with exactly 20 capsules which are all the same (unless we want them to be different, which we sometimes do for our OEM customers). There is no single key to this performance -- it is the sum of a thousand little pieces.
And then there is the issue of reliability. Nearly all of the original large diaphragm capsules that I made in the early 1990's are still in use and performing exactly as they did originally (although it took me much longer to get them there than it does today). There were failures and degradation issues for the first couple years of production but all of those capsules (which reached the market in very early Manley Gold Reference microphones) have been replaced, and those issues are now fixed. Since my last industry work before starting my company was in a military quality control system that I developed and managed, I was preoccupied with this from the beginning. You can look at many of the low cost microphones on the market today and see where economies result in tolerances that degrade with age, and this degradation is seldom good. This is the ultimate limit to the low cost, weed-out-the-duds approach. A capsule that sounds OK today may not tomorrow; there's no way to predict how things will warp and stretch if the materials are not stable. We simply don't have capsule failures in production mics anymore, these are fairly easy to prevent if you know what's going on for any manufacturer that's willing to take the time and expense to engineer the process properly. Even that doesn't prevent big name companies from rushing capsules into production when their long term reliability isn't known -- there has been at least one example of this in recent years where a whole production run had to be recalled.
Feel free to quote and distribute this reply as you like.
Cheers
David Josephson"
mshilarious
Banned
Wow, 3 electret capsules for every person on the Earth every year? Yikes!
mshilarious
Banned
scrubs said:yup, one for each of my cell phones.
Plus the drive-through at all the Mickey D's
mshilarious
Banned
Warning: Screed Ahead!
Actually I found his basic premise lacking:
Either the written language has a purpose, or we are all wasting time here. Has anyone ever learned anything from reading something with which they didn't have personal experience? And are they subsequently able to communicate the knowledge they have learned? Indeed, that is a distinguishing feature of humanity.
And then he goes on to completely refute that point by clearly explaining the difficulties in the process--which, by the way, do not seem to greatly differ in magnitude (for example, the manufacturer that had to recall an entire model's production, vs. the 80% rejection rate mentioned above) from what had been posted in the thread.
And also:
So if a company lacks those unique skills, then they would tend to have a higher rejection rate. Also consistent with this thread, even though we are a bunch of ignoramouses.
I'm sorry, obviously Josephson makes better mics than I do (which I don't know from personal experience, since I can't afford them, but does anybody doubt the truth of that statement?), but I really react adversely to exclusionary statements. If I am too stupid to understand a three-paragraph explanation of their manufacturing process, why would I be smart enough to realize that their mics are superior?
Nobody ever showed me anything about electronics, I never took a tech course, never worked in a factory, nothing like that. I learned it all by reading--almost all stuff on the internet, posted by hacks like me. Imagine that.
I am also not real fond of the concept of proprietary knowledge, but that's for another thread . . .
I'll just slip in this motto of my alma mater, free gift for the first person to tell me the source:
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
Timothy Lawler said:
Actually I found his basic premise lacking:
Either the written language has a purpose, or we are all wasting time here. Has anyone ever learned anything from reading something with which they didn't have personal experience? And are they subsequently able to communicate the knowledge they have learned? Indeed, that is a distinguishing feature of humanity.
And then he goes on to completely refute that point by clearly explaining the difficulties in the process--which, by the way, do not seem to greatly differ in magnitude (for example, the manufacturer that had to recall an entire model's production, vs. the 80% rejection rate mentioned above) from what had been posted in the thread.
And also:
So if a company lacks those unique skills, then they would tend to have a higher rejection rate. Also consistent with this thread, even though we are a bunch of ignoramouses.
I'm sorry, obviously Josephson makes better mics than I do (which I don't know from personal experience, since I can't afford them, but does anybody doubt the truth of that statement?), but I really react adversely to exclusionary statements. If I am too stupid to understand a three-paragraph explanation of their manufacturing process, why would I be smart enough to realize that their mics are superior?
Nobody ever showed me anything about electronics, I never took a tech course, never worked in a factory, nothing like that. I learned it all by reading--almost all stuff on the internet, posted by hacks like me. Imagine that.
I am also not real fond of the concept of proprietary knowledge, but that's for another thread . . .
I'll just slip in this motto of my alma mater, free gift for the first person to tell me the source:
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
mshilarious
Banned
apl said:
Cheater
A few follow up thoughts. David J is not much into small talk and he tells it the way he sees it, so he's bound to say things that cause people to react. I'm more interested in the comments he made that were truly germane to the thread.
To me, his key points for the purpose of this thread (about cheap vs. expensive mikes) were:
1) A capsule is designed based on the knowledge that certain tolerances can be achieved in production, and low tolerances exclude certain, high precision capsule designs.
2) Low tolerances produce low cost microphones that degrade with age, meaning a capsule that sounds OK now may not in the near future.
3) Their staff's special skills in manufacturing, electrical engineering and physical acoustics allow their techs to reliably make every capsule the same.
4) Skill, care, high precision, effort and expense can produce capsules that don't fail over time.
Thus, what you should get from paying more from a high-end manufacturer is much greater consistency from unit to unit, potentially better performing units (for specific purposes) using hard-to-make capsule designs, and real confidence that the sound will remain consistent over the long term. Of course, whether that's what you really get will depend upon the manufacturer.
Cheers,
Otto
To me, his key points for the purpose of this thread (about cheap vs. expensive mikes) were:
1) A capsule is designed based on the knowledge that certain tolerances can be achieved in production, and low tolerances exclude certain, high precision capsule designs.
2) Low tolerances produce low cost microphones that degrade with age, meaning a capsule that sounds OK now may not in the near future.
3) Their staff's special skills in manufacturing, electrical engineering and physical acoustics allow their techs to reliably make every capsule the same.
4) Skill, care, high precision, effort and expense can produce capsules that don't fail over time.
Thus, what you should get from paying more from a high-end manufacturer is much greater consistency from unit to unit, potentially better performing units (for specific purposes) using hard-to-make capsule designs, and real confidence that the sound will remain consistent over the long term. Of course, whether that's what you really get will depend upon the manufacturer.
Cheers,
Otto
ofajen said:
Which is why I always buy quality equipment. This philosophy extends to all things in life. If you need something to get a job done NOW with no reguard to using that tool as a staple, then buying low end stuff can get you by. Buying low end stuff and trying to rely on it over the long haul is throwing money away. It affects the quality of work and creates neverending problems.
mshilarious said:Actually I found his basic premise lacking:
Either the written language has a purpose, or we are all wasting time here. Has anyone ever learned anything from reading something with which they didn't have personal experience? And are they subsequently able to communicate the knowledge they have learned? Indeed, that is a distinguishing feature of humanity.
And then he goes on to completely refute that point by clearly explaining the difficulties in the process--which, by the way, do not seem to greatly differ in magnitude (for example, the manufacturer that had to recall an entire model's production, vs. the 80% rejection rate mentioned above) from what had been posted in the thread.
And also:
So if a company lacks those unique skills, then they would tend to have a higher rejection rate. Also consistent with this thread, even though we are a bunch of ignoramouses.
I'm sorry, obviously Josephson makes better mics than I do (which I don't know from personal experience, since I can't afford them, but does anybody doubt the truth of that statement?), but I really react adversely to exclusionary statements. If I am too stupid to understand a three-paragraph explanation of their manufacturing process, why would I be smart enough to realize that their mics are superior?
Nobody ever showed me anything about electronics, I never took a tech course, never worked in a factory, nothing like that. I learned it all by reading--almost all stuff on the internet, posted by hacks like me. Imagine that.
I am also not real fond of the concept of proprietary knowledge, but that's for another thread . . .
I'll just slip in this motto of my alma mater, free gift for the first person to tell me the source:
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
These quotes have been taken out of context. I have been working in electronics manufacturing/design in the testing field for over 20 years. The process is quite complex and products like CPUs and computor motherboards are manufactured almost 100% by machines. Easy to make a "run" of 1000s and have a yield of 99% good.
Mic capsule cannot be done by machines. The people build the capsules and there is as much "art" in it as audio recording. Some people have a talant and some don't and everything in-between. The best at it make the best mics. The late Stephan Paul is a good example. These people have to charge more as they can only do a handfull of mics per month. Chinese workers are there to work. They do these mics all day long. If they are good at it, their mics have a "sound" If they are bad at it, they have a "bad" sound. The factories look at yield of "working" mics and ship. The company who contracts the chinese factories are responsible for the schematics, parts lists and manufacturing process/testing procedures. If the company does'nt care, they spec the cheapest parts imaginable and only cares about product that passes a signal. Other companies (like Studio Projects) take it to a "real" product level and babysit these factories to get the results they seek.
Their prices reflect the constant manufacturing problems that are friggin endless and testing to a standard. Quality is a never ending job that costs big-time and, I can tell you from experience, once you let ANY factory build your product - unchecked- they ALL fuck up in a hurry.
It is all in the hands of the one who assembles the mic and you can't get around that. Most other electronic equipment is much more geared towards automatic assembly (like all pc boards) and therfore, easier to control the yields with far less costs of having to "look over the shoulder" of hand labor.