MD x Airist x Sosolar: RDAC design mysteries

After reading this thread I am canceling my order. I believe that's the ethical thing to do.
Will look forward to soslar release.

 

I applaud you. The explanations provided by Massdrop/Airist people have been very far from convincing. The opposite actually. I am sure better DACs will be released to the market soon, no need to rush.

 

Just forgot to mention one point...we will never sell our product in such low price range. Simply lowering price for more profit is not our intention. It is more likely to be 1500-2000USD for a balanced version. No worries, some of our authorized products would make it much lower, but never 349USD.

 

I'd be very interested to listen to those once they're available.

 

This whole situation is a bummer, and makes me feel like I need a shower. I just don’t want to fund crap like this, and it’s bigger than the RDAC. I’m in the market for iems, and now I don’t care if the Plus is competitive with the Orion. I’d rather spend the extra $50 because I feel like I can trust Campfire to be a stand-up company. I hope Massdrop does some soul searching and thinks about the kind of company they want to be going forward. They have a lot of power to make great products, and this is a shitty way to use it (in my opinion).

 

Just want to give you a valuable input regarding US high-end dac market status.

Currently, there are

• One extremely high-performing high value OS r2r dac is sold at $1,249, that shames on most sub-3k dacs.
• Also state-of-the-art, (arguably) the best sounding dac on the planet to date is sold at $2,399.

So with these price conditions, choosing the right price segment may be crucial for business successes.

As a usual consumer on the DAC market, if you can come up with a super competitive dac around $1,000 (and find a good US distributor), it can attract many US audiophiles imho. Not sure about Asian markets though.

 

I think maybe we don't have enough information to make a judgment like this. MD may very well be a good faith purchaser of this tech, making them as much a victim in this situation as the guy from sosolar. Food for thought.

 

They may also be in a contract with Airist, where it may be very difficult to backout without proof of illegality on Airist's part. However that doesn't necessarily mean we'll ever see a 2nd run of these.

 

While I'm generally someone who will spare no expenses (within my capabilities) when it comes to purchasing quality gears, as my friends here can attest to, I just wanna say... it would be better if you can consider pulling your price range down to a lower tier due to these reasons:

1. It provides a good entry point for those who are considering your higher-end models. Those who want to try out your offerings are more willing to do so when it doesn't break their bank accounts on the first try.

2. If your customer base is bigger, that means your more expensive products have a higher chance of being considered as a purchase. People are very reluctant to purchase a very expensive piece of gear especially when they have no idea how it will do.

3. You don't have to become a paragon of good value, but having "good value" tacked on to some of your products is a better way to get them sold.

4. If you are planning for the long term, it's better to have all price tiers considered.

Now, if you're just doing this as a side hobby and you have no plan on doing it professionally over a long period of time, then... please ignore what I just wrote.

 

- sorry, but that part of your business plan kind of confusing.
There is a reason why massdrop doing it at $350.

 

This is an absurdly long post so I'm spoiler-ing the bulk of it to keep from cluttering this thread too much (I need to learn to make good on my signature, sorry, but this is me being candid):

Hi @sosolar,

I considered sending this via PM, but feel it may be more useful out in the open: I'm likely an idiot for having to ask, but why do you outright refuse to sell something for $350?

Spoiler

I admit I'm a Massdrop fanboi, but that's only because I've had nothing but stellar dealings with them from Day 1 in all my transactions with them: headphones, fountain pens, inks, and unless I'm misremembering, a sharpening stone as well. More importantly, during the one instance I encountered a problem with something purchased from them, Massdrop shipped me a replacement part gratis, no fuss or fimble. It was a complete X00 headband assembly, and while I realize the cost of one of those is chump change for quite a few people on SBAF, it meant a great deal to me since I was panicking about what was my only pair of "nice" headphones at the time's being unusable. While I'm not poor, I don't exactly have a great deal in the way of disposable income. That's the same reason I love Schiit, really, because they offer excellent value products and have managed to come across as nothing but warm and professional in my (admittedly limited) dealings with them. On the scales that these two entities operate, that's no mean feat.

Now I'm not saying that I think everyone's being entirely sincere. They are brands after all, brands that do a hell of a great job marketing themselves to boot, and as has been said many times before it would be silly to think that anyone who speaks for them would be doing so with the same reckless candor that someone like myself, with absolutely nothing on behalf of which I have to speak for, would.

Now, is the above enough to offset Massdrop's allegedly shady doings in the Great Karmic Scale? f**k no, treating customers well is different from turning a blind eye to IP thievery. I dream of working in the academe, and as such plagiarism is something that triggers* me; I view intellectual property theft as a more damnable form thereof, because it can involve the callous appropriation of a product, and not merely an idea, that people have spent countless hours toiling over. If true, then that's a stain that won't be washing out any time soon. I'd rather not let people who would be so disingenuous earn a single red cent off my back.

However, they are offering a far better deal.

Is it because you wish to only use good-quality components in what you create, or because creating a single DAC will take so much of your time? Do you want to establish yourself as a luxury brand that only caters to people who can afford to spend four digits USD on a DAC? Are you trying to actively limit the demand for your products by pricing it out of many hobbyist's ranges? Do you fear that your brand will be perceived as "cheap" if you dip below a certain lofty threshold?

The fact of the matter is you've yet to build yourself up. I don't frequent Chinese fora (even though the Philippines is on the verge of becoming a Chinese province), but it seems to me you're doing quite well for yourself reputation-wise. Still, should you wish to reach a wider customer base, you have to understand that not a great many people value your reputation or engineering chops well enough to buy something that pricey on a lark, and that's because they've not had a chance to know you or your products.

I'm not looking for a new DAC just now since I just got one, but for what it's worth I'd have happily bought your design over Airist's, as the allegations that the latter effectively stole your work seem well-substantiated. Not for your projected price, though, not really, not even if it blows what I have out of the water and into the stratosphere— I'd rather stick with my audibly inferior gear and forget about upgrades for a good long while. I wish I could do otherwise, but them's the breaks.

Ultimately, the call is yours, and I do wish you luck in your endeavors.

Bill-P sent the above before I had a chance to hit Send, which is my comeuppance for being so long-winded. Still, that aside I do hope you can reconsider.


*Yes, I know my millennial is showing.

 

If it takes longer than half a page to convey...

Haha, just kidding. Admittedly, I support some Massdrop stuffs because they are of high quality, but for the most part, it's mostly quality that matters to me. If I can have it at a lower price, cool. But it's not like I'm not willing to splurge on things when I'm able to.

So if @sosolar comes out with a $2K no-holds-barred DAC that sounds the way I want, hell yeah I'll pay for it. I'm still waiting on some folks to get back on how much they want to charge for their high quality projects, and I never set a ceiling for them. Right, @n3rdling?

The only reason why I haven't paid for too many things above $2K is more because I'm not able to, and less because I'm not willing to.

Still, with all that said, I do recognize that there is still the lower tier part of the market that's not ready to jump into TOTL yet. And also the fact is that... aside from Massdrop and Schiit, who else is making mid-tiered priced gears with decent quality anymore? Once you realize that's the state of the industry (we have cheap stuffs from Fiio and some other Chinese manufacturers, then we have everything else above $1000), there's a hole to be filled. (i.e.: mid-fi purgatory)

I think it would be FOOLISH not to jump in and fill up that hole, but that may just be me.

 

I think all that good will is going to dry up pretty fast if you insist on large margins for the sake of prestige or something.

People tend not to mind as much when a riped off a design sells for a fraction of the original's price. The fact that it's possible for someone else to do it so much cheaper makes you look incompetent or greedy regardless of the actual circumstances.

 

Not specifically relevant to the RDAC, nor am I speculating on that, but ...

Of course someone else can do it cheaper if they don't have to recover the original R&D costs.​

Big difference between full-cycle product development and cloning-to-manufacture an end result.

 

@Bill-P I try to be concise with most of my posts, but I felt rather strongly about this since it involved my mid-fi lifestyle, haha. Still, sorry for rambling for... sweet Hesus, 1.5 pages?!! Dafuq, Kevin.

I also hope mid-fi (i.e. $300-$600) gets more excellent value stuff, if not at least things that have reasonable performance for the price. Count me as another willing to spend over $2k on something if it ticks all the right boxes for me and I could afford it; as I've been saying for around a year now I've been pinching pennies saving up for an EC ZDS, never mind the fact that I get sidetracked by great deals on here. That's only because the brand is one that I find respectable, mind, and impressions on the product lead me to think I'd like it a lot. Sosolar ain't quite there yet, and the adamant refusal to make something mid-fi just drags my opinion of them down a bit.

 

While I am not fully in favor of sosolar's pricing targets, I can agree with his positions opting out $350

1. MD's $350 is at a cost of huge (imo) risk of consumers' side. If rdac is manufactured, advertised, and sold at regular supply-chain process, I bet it will cost $450-600. Also $350 may be helped by potential copy-cat-ing..

2. Even with MD's process and structure, there seem A LOT of compromises. For example, resistor accuracy is far from 0.01% Of course lower accuracy may sound pleasant as our three reviewer explained, but such gears are HARDLY considered as reliable "primary" source gears (Note that even those three reviewers already own state-of-the-art reference dacs). Except some magical wonders, I think extremely lower price is more likely to result in chi-fi things such as Topping.

3. I don't know the real dac development. However, I believe cost-cutting is totally different headache, and struggle developers, independently from their main R&D focus. Even Schiit did NOT begin from Modi Multibit... Rather opposite. Modi Multibit was the cumulated results from all their previous know-how, efforts, and lessons learned from higher-tiered products. Too much cost-cutting burden may do more harm than good for the FIRST product.

 

I don't know why, but I always considered Mid-Fi to be $200 - $1000.

 

I agree. My two cents as an attorney and a litigator. Just because something may be legal, does not make it ethical. My personal ethics tell me that I should not reward someone who takes someone else's work, property, or efforts without permission. I don’t care how good of a deal it may be, I personally don’t want to reward that type of behavior.

 

Yes the "Jimster480" is rather bizarre with his lack of knowledge and how he pushes his worship of "the amir". He is human, but I use the word "human" with reservations.