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Post by svart on Aug 31, 2018 14:04:10 GMT -6
No I mean everything. Machines have and can manufacture items with much higher precision/accuracy, are perfectly repeatable, and much faster. Once set up and debugged, they take human-based mistakes out of the equation. "Hand made" still contains the problems of the human condition. Things don't align perfectly, aren't perfectly square, aren't repeatable to any significant precision, etc. There is artistry in the mastercraftsman that might build one-off guitars, but if you were to quantify the attributes that people like about them and put them in a CAD file, you'd get perfect guitars every single time from a CNC machine, and then be able to modify them quickly with a mouse and have the machine spit out perfection. Farmers vs. supermarkets.. Farmers supply supermarkets. The only difference is the type of genetically altered produce they choose to grow. Farmers that grow for supermarkets choose more hardy plants with attributes like "roundup ready", larger fruit/vegetable size, or simply more slowly ripening so the produce doesn't spoil in a truck on the way to the supermarket. A gardener who grows enough produce to sell on a roadside stand might choose a different variety that grows more quickly, is a smaller size but generates more individual pieces, and doesn't need to be resistant to herbicides or regional diseases. It's a simple as needs. The supermarket has a specific need to fill, as does the roadside seller. The produce to fill those needs doesn't necessarily have to align at all, so no comparison can be accurately made here. You're comparing guitars to tomatoes without looking at the details. The details are where the argument is fought, and the details are where the reasons come from, not the other way around. I saw something about a suit from Eric.. Once a pattern is made, a machine can cut and stitch with higher precision/accuracy and ultimately with stronger and more complex sewing techniques than a person can do. I mean you don't see people hand stitching anything on a 2K$ suit.. No, you see them use a sewing MACHINE, because they have become ubiquitous enough that the average person could afford one. At one time, they cost too much and people still sewed by hand, but not anymore because the machine can do the stitching is faster, more accurate and does things that humans can't do. I know some folks will say "but if machines were better, everyone would use them!". Machines are better. They're also ridiculously expensive. You think that guy who's building 10 guitars a year is going to be able to afford a 100K$ CNC/EDM/Waterjet/Laser machine to cut out guitar bodies, necks, fingerboards and pickguards? Not yet, but things like waterjets and 2D laser cutters are getting a LOT cheaper and some folks who make things like custom pickguards are already using those. But for our guitar guy, of course he can't afford the big CNC for cutting guitar bodies out. But if he did, and became proficient with some sort of CAD, he could design things that would make even the most learned master woodworker cry. The issue is that machines are completely able to do the manual labor much quicker, easier and more reliably than humans, but they cost a LOT to get going, which is why they've always been used for mass production. You can make your money back with mass production fairly quickly, but you can't with onesy-twosey products. Also, mass machine production has been seen as sub-quality for some time, but you also have to remember that even though these machines are much quicker than humans, they still take time. Someone makes the tradeoff between precision and speed to meet the market demands. You don't need widgets from wal-mart to have 1/10000th of an inch accuracy. Hell, probably 1/10" is probably still better than you need.. So they program the machines to be faster but more sloppy. You get more manufacturing throughput that way. Machines needing to change cutters or angles to increase precision takes time, and time is money. In fact, during my time working with CNC machines, they often charged increasing premiums for higher precision. +/-0.01" was a standard rate, which orders of magnitude higher precision added 10-50% to the costs per part depending on the complexity and materials. Mark my words though, we're going to see a renaissance with "printing" materials soon. They're on the cusp of mass metal printing and it'll revolutionize machine work. Places like NASA and car manufacturers already use additive metal printing or powdered metal forging for parts instead of CNC. In 25 years nothing will be CNC'd except the odd part. One more thing.. 3D scanning. We're already scanning objects with 3D laser capture devices. We can scan something, like a guitar, and then input it into CAD as a perfect digital copy, then export to a CNC for a perfect real copy. Now imagine if tailors started scanning human bodies to make their suits. You stand up in a booth, get scanned, and now your perfect suit dimensions are known. Human error is taken out of the equation as a CNC machine cuts out the cloth in your exact dimensions.. But I digress. "Hand made" does not equal quality. The attributes that define quality transcend artistry, which is what I think you're really equating as "quality".
I was going to do one of those tiresome, point by point critiques of the above but I'm just not up to it at the moment, so I'll try to make this brief.
Essentially, there's a basic fallacy here, which is that machines are "perfect", or at least closer to perfect than people. In reality, though, they're not. They're only as good as the people running them.
Machines have tolerances. Their output is only accurate within ther tolerances of the machine, which are not necessarily better than thoser of a really painstaking, perfectionist craftsman. It might take the craftsman a lopt longer to achieve a satisfactory result (by his standards) but, given adequate tools, the final output of the craftsman may be better than that of the machine. More expensive, due to the time and labor invested, but better.
Second, machines are programmed by people, and the tolerances of the machine can never be better than the tolerances programmed into it, compounded by the inherent tolerances of the machine itself. So if the tolerances are determined by som,e "producion efficiency expert" who is not himself a craftsman in the actual field of manufacture involved and who is answerable primarily to a board of directors and stockholders who demand a certain return on investment, the quality of the product may not be as high as that produced "the old fashioned way."
So, while it may be possible for machines to do very high quality work, it still comes down to the standsards fetermined by people, and it's still quite likely that the quality of products produced in a modern automated factory are not going to be up to the standards of highly skilled, painstakingly perfectionist craftsmen. If you take the craftsmen out of the picture then control defaults to bean counters, pen pushers, andf marketing "experts".
(I was going to go into a lengthy explanation on the subject of tomatos, but I'll resist the temptation, at least for now.)
And the bit on scanning is also based on fallacies.
Now, in all fairness, some areas of manufacture aree more vulnerable than others. It's not difficult to use machine techniques to reproduce an electronic circuit. It's a very different thing to use machine techniques to craft something dependent on mechanical skills like a fine guitar or microphone capsule. And it's proving to be the downfall of a number of companies whose reputations are based on hand craftsmanship, such as Gibson, which is living (barely) proof that you can't built a top quality acoustic guitar entirely via CNC machine. You cannot build a top quality instrument by relying on perfectly repeatable machine operations when the materials the instruments is constructed from are not "perfectly" repeatable. (This actually even holds in electronics in some cases, but to go farther into that would involve typing a long and somewhat involved anecdote that I'm not up to doing right now.)
Everything I said is correct. I work with my production personnel fairly closely to get things right. I've worked with CNC machines, machinists, industrial designers, as well as machinery manufacturers for a few decades now. If you read everything I said, I clearly said that if you can scrub the human error out of something you want built, the machines can do the rest without error. They do occasionally break down and wear out, but religious QA with set specifications designed to catch the overwhelming majority of issues. Infallible? No. Better than people at doing perfect labor? Yes. Human error is reduced by QA and double checking. Multiple QA personnel and test engineers go through planning of all contingencies, as well as how to check the checkers. You also miss some of the finer points that I didn't include, such as prior-screening parts, specified PCB materials, etc. I'll concede that the outcome of a product is extremely related to the raw materials, but that's also a consideration of pre-screening the materials by QA and materials engineers, which is something I didn't cover. It's easy to look at a piece of wood, see the grain and orient it in the machine for best outcome. Not all pieces might be viable for such things, and would be weeded out by selection. Master craftsmen select for best raw materials, and those doing QA for production line work would be no different. And we use 3D scanning all the time. Works as I mentioned. We 3D print things too. I don't know what fallacies you might be talking about, because it's real and it's only getting better.
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Post by christopher on Aug 31, 2018 17:34:09 GMT -6
I just worked a stint making heart valves (aye) for the top manufacturer of heart valves. We use extrusion machines, its a nightmare getting them to do what we need reliably. You'd think by now with a $130 billion market cap, and this being the core product of the company, we could just select the program for the machine and walk away. It just doesn't work that way. The tolerances are liquid and are never exact, the state of the machine is always in transition (temp rise and fall, tool expansion/contraction) and there's just not enough sensors to control for every change. It often takes 3 or 4 shifts to get the machine to reliably produce a product, which is basically like hollow fishing line that is cut to spec'd lengths. I learned a lot about these machines and the limits of automation. My father used to complain to me when he used to polish wafers for CPU's, the machines only work according to the manual for a little bit, after that the manual is useless and you have to create your own recipes. The guys who could secretly do that had the highest productivity. But the engineers would stop the lines if they found out.. "we need to fix this!" ..billions later on upgrades and etc, same issues, until layoffs. Not sure how this equate to pro audio, except for craftsman vs. machine. Anyway.. thanks for giving me somewhere to vent a little
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Post by m03 on Aug 31, 2018 19:01:19 GMT -6
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Post by christopher on Aug 31, 2018 19:15:08 GMT -6
It makes sense, and an engineer who spent 8 years in college and then went straight to work at a big company as a top engineer would always trust its the right and proper path to take. There are financial aspects though, those are not usually taught in college I don't think. Those financial aspects also have consequences, and when you follow ...where exactly did the money take a turn? Huh.. the manufacturers made the machines, and also who wrote the manuals, (edit: also sell the idea of perfection via automation)... happened to get the money in the form of tech help and upgrades, at the expense of the company ...what are the odds?
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Post by m03 on Aug 31, 2018 19:44:22 GMT -6
It makes sense, and an engineer who spent 8 years in college and then went straight to work at a big company as a top engineer would always trust its the right and proper path to take. There are financial aspects though, those are not usually taught in college I don't think. Those financial aspects also have consequences, and when you follow ...where exactly did the money take a turn? Huh.. the manufacturers made the machines, and also who wrote the manuals, (edit: also sell the idea of perfection via automation)... happened to get the money in the form of tech help and upgrades, at the expense of the company ...what are the odds? It can cut both ways. There are individuals within a company who don't have the best interests of the whole system/company in mind, and who may benefit directly from the system performing suboptimally. Skipping manufacturer-recommended maintenance schedules and not renewing expensive support contracts is a great way to make it look like you're saving the company money, ensuring that bonus and promotion, provided you move up/out before the long-term negative effects are noticed.
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Post by mrholmes on Sept 1, 2018 0:50:48 GMT -6
The quality of very cheap Chinese made electric guitars these days is out of this world, really, it's kinda unbelievable. Rock on CNC machines and great QC. You could buy a brand new guitar, quality replacement pups and electrics, and have a professional luthier install them and do a full setup (including fret dress and new nut) for around £500. Been fairly lucky with my "boutique", made in UK, Germany and US pieces. They have all had a single problem over the years, but I've had them a decade and don't think that's unreasonable. All were fixed by the relevant manufacturer in a timely and not too expensive fashion. Good example depending on who is running the line even acoustics get better. The Sigma Guitar brand bought by Germans. Even the cheapest OM sounds good. Solid spruce top forward shifted x bracing.... Studio gear. The ART stuff always impressed me and yet never let me down. A few China mics are good clones. But overall with mics most of the time the Germans bring it home. China is getting better its not 1980 anymore.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 2, 2018 0:32:30 GMT -6
You also miss some of the finer points that I didn't include, such as prior-screening parts, specified PCB materials, etc. I'll concede that the outcome of a product is extremely related to the raw materials, but that's also a consideration of pre-screening the materials by QA and materials engineers, which is something I didn't cover. It's easy to look at a piece of wood, see the grain and orient it in the machine for best outcome. Not all pieces might be viable for such things, and would be weeded out by selection. Master craftsmen select for best raw materials, and those doing QA for production line work would be no different. And we use 3D scanning all the time. Works as I mentioned. We 3D print things too. I don't know what fallacies you might be talking about, because it's real and it's only getting better. Ah, but there's a lot more to working with wood than simply choosing a piece for quality and orienting it properly. two pieces of wood may be of equal quality and may be oriented the same way, but still yield different results because wood is a natural, organic material and no two pieces are ever exactly the same. That's why the finest musical instruments have their component pieces tap tuned by a skilled craftsman listening for the resonances of each unique piece while the component parts are being finished and assembled. A machine cannot do this. Perhaps in theory one might, but to build in the necessary analytics and to construct a logic train capable of the fine judgements required would not be practical.
There's more to it that simply "materials engineering." That would assume that all the materials involved are homogeneous. That is a mistake when dealing with natural materials, and it would not surprise me if it were not also true of some manufactured materials as well. IN THEORY materials should bne able to be manufactured with perfect homogeneity, but the real world does not follow "theorectical" rules all the time, there are always tolerances. And tolerances must be compensated for - or not, in which case the product might be inferior.
It's the same thing with 3D scanning and printing. There are always tolerances. A highly skilled craftsman may be able to recognize the variations and compensate. A machine cannot because a machine cannot think, it can only do as it has been programmed.
As they say, the devil is in the details.
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Post by the other mark williams on Sept 2, 2018 19:58:00 GMT -6
I just worked a stint making heart valves (aye) for the top manufacturer of heart valves. We use extrusion machines, its a nightmare getting them to do what we need reliably. You'd think by now with a $130 billion market cap, and this being the core product of the company, we could just select the program for the machine and walk away. It just doesn't work that way. The tolerances are liquid and are never exact, the state of the machine is always in transition (temp rise and fall, tool expansion/contraction) and there's just not enough sensors to control for every change. It often takes 3 or 4 shifts to get the machine to reliably produce a product, which is basically like hollow fishing line that is cut to spec'd lengths. I learned a lot about these machines and the limits of automation. My father used to complain to me when he used to polish wafers for CPU's, the machines only work according to the manual for a little bit, after that the manual is useless and you have to create your own recipes. The guys who could secretly do that had the highest productivity. But the engineers would stop the lines if they found out.. "we need to fix this!" ..billions later on upgrades and etc, same issues, until layoffs. Not sure how this equate to pro audio, except for craftsman vs. machine. Anyway.. thanks for giving me somewhere to vent a little I'd like to hear more about the heart valve machine stuff, though perhaps via PM (unless others are also interested). I'm actually going to need one of those valves myself sometime in the next few years.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 2, 2018 20:51:44 GMT -6
The quality of very cheap Chinese made electric guitars these days is out of this world, really, it's kinda unbelievable. Rock on CNC machines and great QC. You could buy a brand new guitar, quality replacement pups and electrics, and have a professional luthier install them and do a full setup (including fret dress and new nut) for around £500. Been fairly lucky with my "boutique", made in UK, Germany and US pieces. They have all had a single problem over the years, but I've had them a decade and don't think that's unreasonable. All were fixed by the relevant manufacturer in a timely and not too expensive fashion. Good example depending on who is running the line even acoustics get better. The Sigma Guitar brand bought by Germans. Even the cheapest OM sounds good. Solid spruce top forward shifted x bracing.... I guess it's a matter of how high your standards are. Sigma was Martin's mass produced beginner's brand. Not bad at all, but not up to the standards of the original pre- '70s Martins or pre '62 Gibsons.
My reference instruments are a 1959 J-200 and a 1964 Guild D-40. No Sigma ever made can come within a hundred miles of either one. Neither can any recent mass produced Gibson.
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Post by christopher on Sept 3, 2018 22:55:29 GMT -6
I just worked a stint making heart valves (aye) for the top manufacturer of heart valves. We use extrusion machines, its a nightmare getting them to do what we need reliably. You'd think by now with a $130 billion market cap, and this being the core product of the company, we could just select the program for the machine and walk away. It just doesn't work that way. The tolerances are liquid and are never exact, the state of the machine is always in transition (temp rise and fall, tool expansion/contraction) and there's just not enough sensors to control for every change. It often takes 3 or 4 shifts to get the machine to reliably produce a product, which is basically like hollow fishing line that is cut to spec'd lengths. I learned a lot about these machines and the limits of automation. My father used to complain to me when he used to polish wafers for CPU's, the machines only work according to the manual for a little bit, after that the manual is useless and you have to create your own recipes. The guys who could secretly do that had the highest productivity. But the engineers would stop the lines if they found out.. "we need to fix this!" ..billions later on upgrades and etc, same issues, until layoffs. Not sure how this equate to pro audio, except for craftsman vs. machine. Anyway.. thanks for giving me somewhere to vent a little I'd like to hear more about the heart valve machine stuff, though perhaps via PM (unless others are also interested). I'm actually going to need one of those valves myself sometime in the next few years. Ok here's my all the nerdy stuff in one post so people can skip it if they want;) Well my perspective was limited: From my point of view, I only experienced the pieces before assembly which are just thousands of different tubes that we would extrude the tubing to spec. The business has been doing this for decades so there's tons of tubing. We would get a little training on what the final product looks like and how it works, so we could appreciate what we were doing. Most of the business is in heart stents, as they are quick procedures and don't require extensive hospital stay. Relatively Easy+Relatively 'cheap' procedure=they sell a lot of them! When stents are needed they save lives. It's basically like a hollow fishing line that is fed through a vein all the way to the heart, then the stent is on another tube inside and popped open where they want it, all while they watch with whatever live X-ray scanner thing they use. The tube will often have curves and bends that match to the artery shape and distance, they make them for all kinds of arteries and entry points, as we might need it in different places. It's statistically a good thing with no down sides, still my close friend's mom died from a stent that failed within a week so I have some reservations. And I'm always skeptical whenever money is a motivator, lol. I wanted the job partly to see if maybe I could offer any ideas to help the tech improve. But that's where I concluded we are just at the limits of automated production, for now anyway. The machines melt the plastic, then continuously try to apply a perfectly controlled force to drive the melted plastic through a crosshead, to generate a small tubing with specific inner and outer diameters. We then would check the stuff with microscopes and always measure with lasers to .0001.. The engineers were great there and understood that machines aren't perfect and that you can only do the best you can, and that waste product was to be expected: Waste was enormous by the way. The accepted stuff is checked and rechecked over and over, and over and again at assembly. The machines have servos for every little control you could imagine, as soon as the tubing leaves the hot crosshead, it would start to cool in a bath set to a specific temp with low variance. Exiting the tank it had rollers like capstans and worked like a take-up reel on a tape deck: Tension controls the pull on the tube, which means while it's hot it will stretch and sets the inner and outer diameters. Tension recipes are programmed at first for each product, but variances in product makeup, or machine thermals, or whatever other random thing would make pre-programming nearly impossible. Only by checking diameters on microscopes and adjusting tension by using your brain could we get the diameters to spec, which requires predetermined tight tolerances of course. I learned to dismantle the machines, clean the extruders and select different crossheads, everything I could learn to try and find a solution that was overlooked. But it's so much like a tape machine, you are constantly trying to keep it from drifting. I just sort of felt like.. tape machines are as far as it gets. Lol
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Post by mrholmes on Sept 4, 2018 4:14:36 GMT -6
Good example depending on who is running the line even acoustics get better. The Sigma Guitar brand bought by Germans. Even the cheapest OM sounds good. Solid spruce top forward shifted x bracing.... I guess it's a matter of how high your standards are. Sigma was Martin's mass produced beginner's brand. Not bad at all, but not up to the standards of the original pre- '70s Martins or pre '62 Gibsons.
My reference instruments are a 1959 J-200 and a 1964 Guild D-40. No Sigma ever made can come within a hundred miles of either one. Neither can any recent mass produced Gibson.
I am not saying they replace well build guitars I am saying they are to good for waht they cost and taht is waht one Martin representative told me in my face. In other words they regret the selling of the Sigma brand and they think waht the Germans made out of it is too good for China Guitars. Do yourself the favour and grab any Sigma OMM ST. Play it and try to imagine how the spruce top will sound in a year. Myself I play a modificated Cort OM special for tracking. Its one of the best guitars for tracking and I dont know why....but it sounds great. BTW. I am not a big fan of the orginal old Martins. Had few inmy hands and every time it was not my cup of tea. I like modern ones, or other Brands form Canada or Germany. OFF TOPIC OFF its about studio gear.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 15,019
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Post by ericn on Sept 4, 2018 6:38:03 GMT -6
I'd like to hear more about the heart valve machine stuff, though perhaps via PM (unless others are also interested). I'm actually going to need one of those valves myself sometime in the next few years. Ok here's my all the nerdy stuff in one post so people can skip it if they want;) Well my perspective was limited: From my point of view, I only experienced the pieces before assembly which are just thousands of different tubes that we would extrude the tubing to spec. The business has been doing this for decades so there's tons of tubing. We would get a little training on what the final product looks like and how it works, so we could appreciate what we were doing. Most of the business is in heart stints, as they are quick procedures and don't require extensive hospital stay. Relatively Easy+Relatively 'cheap' procedure=they sell a lot of them! When stints are needed they save lives. It's basically like a hollow fishing line that is fed through a vein all the way to the heart, then the stint is on another tube inside and popped open where they want it, all while they watch with whatever live X-ray scanner thing they use. The tube will often have curves and bends that match to the artery shape and distance, they make them for all kinds of arteries and entry points, as we might need it in different places. It's statistically a good thing with no down sides, still my close friend's mom died from a stint that failed within a week so I have some reservations. And I'm always skeptical whenever money is a motivator, lol. I wanted the job partly to see if maybe I could offer any ideas to help the tech improve. But that's where I concluded we are just at the limits of automated production, for now anyway. The machines melt the plastic, then continuously try to apply a perfectly controlled force to drive the melted plastic through a crosshead, to generate a small tubing with specific inner and outer diameters. We then would check the stuff with microscopes and always measure with lasers to .0001.. The engineers were great there and understood that machines aren't perfect and that you can only do the best you can, and that waste product was to be expected: Waste was enormous by the way. The accepted stuff is checked and rechecked over and over, and over and again at assembly. The machines have servos for every little control you could imagine, as soon as the tubing leaves the hot crosshead, it would start to cool in a bath set to a specific temp with low variance. Exiting the tank it had rollers like capstans and worked like a take-up reel on a tape deck: Tension controls the pull on the tube, which means while it's hot it will stretch and sets the inner and outer diameters. Tension recipes are programmed at first for each product, but variances in product makeup, or machine thermals, or whatever other random thing would make pre-programming nearly impossible. Only by checking diameters on microscopes and adjusting tension by using your brain could we get the diameters to spec, which requires predetermined tight tolerances of course. I leaned to dismantle the machines, clean the extruders and select different crossheads, everything I could learn to try and find a solution that was overlooked. But it's so much like a tape machine, you are constantly trying to keep it from drifting. I just sort of felt like.. tape machines are as far as it gets. Lol Great example, but the question is would the reject rate vs cost and time be better if it was done by hand ? That’s the big question in any manufacturer, and with medical devices you also have to add in is the product going to be sterile. People wonder why healthcare costs so much, a lot of it is the f#%king little things, I was just explaining the other day why even a video monitor connected to a machine that sometimes goes into an OR has to medical grade because it can’t produce any sparks or poof you could cause an OR fire which are already to damn common!
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Post by christopher on Sept 4, 2018 11:07:26 GMT -6
No question the machines win in this department, even with lots of waste we could crank out hundreds of thousands of spec'd parts every shift, we had like 20 stations. At first I was wondering why we needed so many, but I found out that the product might need up to 10-20 different tubes put together to make one. Its crazy when I think about it, because the machines only had to be in spec for a couple hours and you could extrude tens of thousands in that time, which were all we often needed per job order. You'd spend all shift just trying to get to that point, pass it off to the next guy if you couldn't.
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Post by christopher on Sept 4, 2018 12:01:58 GMT -6
I tried to find an old video I once saw of a guy making a mic by hand on a lathe. I thought it was Brauner? But I only see CNC things by them now, so maybe it was someone else?
Rode always has videos
I'm still curious if there was ever a video on how Neumann was making their mics in the 50's-70's
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 4, 2018 13:08:41 GMT -6
I guess it's a matter of how high your standards are. Sigma was Martin's mass produced beginner's brand. Not bad at all, but not up to the standards of the original pre- '70s Martins or pre '62 Gibsons.
My reference instruments are a 1959 J-200 and a 1964 Guild D-40. No Sigma ever made can come within a hundred miles of either one. Neither can any recent mass produced Gibson.
I am not saying they replace well build guitars I am saying they are to good for waht they cost and taht is waht one Martin representative told me in my face. In other words they regret the selling of the Sigma brand and they think waht the Germans made out of it is too good for China Guitars. Do yourself the favour and grab any Sigma OMM ST. Play it and try to imagine how the spruce top will sound in a year. Myself I play a modificated Cort OM special for tracking. Its one of the best guitars for tracking and I dont know why....but it sounds great. BTW. I am not a big fan of the orginal old Martins. Had few inmy hands and every time it was not my cup of tea. I like modern ones, or other Brands form Canada or Germany. OFF TOPIC OFF its about studio gear. It's related. The crafsmanship that goes into a fine acoustic guitar is no different than the craftsmanship that goes into a fine hand tuned mic capsule. And fine guitars ARE studio gear. So are pianos.
And yes, Asian guitars are far better than entry level guitars were in my youth. There's always plenty of room for improvement on the low end of the market. That doesn't mean that the high end gets affected. Fine craftsmanship will ALWAYS result in a better product - at a higher cost because highly skilled labor is expensive. I really don't understand why anybody would even argue the point. Germany has always produced fine instruments - the American guitar industry was founded largely by German luthiers. Who build instruments by hand.
That's not to say that there aren't some areas of the studio gear market that are less susceptible to this - products that are the result of simple electronic design and assembly inherently have far less craftsmanship involved for the most part. You have to get into the really high high end before you start to see much difference - like the SR71 Blackbird mastering compressor* that was discontinued after only a couple years of production because it cost more to build than the price the market would bear, or Jonte Knif's hand built mastering gear.
Tell you what - why don't you go try and tell Shannon that the hand work he puts into his mics doesn't make any difference, that the same results can be had from a mass production machine in China? Or tell Bob O that he wasted the $25,000 investment (IIRC) in his hand built mastering monitors because the same results can be had from an assembly line in Asia?
* - You'll probably never see one, but imagine a Fairchild 670 using the finest modern components and hand selected NOS tubes that was hand built to the most exacting, no compromise standards.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 4, 2018 13:12:08 GMT -6
I tried to find an old video I once saw of a guy making a mic by hand on a lathe. I thought it was Brauner? But I only see CNC things by them now, so maybe it was someone else? Rode always has videos I'm still curious if there was ever a video on how Neumann was making their mics in the 50's-70's The thing about those videos is that they almost never show the really fine work and the never show anything proprietary. I'd be really surprised if there were any videos from Neumann in the '50s that showed much.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 4, 2018 13:30:03 GMT -6
Ok here's my all the nerdy stuff in one post so people can skip it if they want;) Well my perspective was limited: From my point of view, I only experienced the pieces before assembly which are just thousands of different tubes that we would extrude the tubing to spec. The business has been doing this for decades so there's tons of tubing. We would get a little training on what the final product looks like and how it works, so we could appreciate what we were doing. Most of the business is in heart stints, as they are quick procedures and don't require extensive hospital stay. Relatively Easy+Relatively 'cheap' procedure=they sell a lot of them! When stints are needed they save lives. It's basically like a hollow fishing line that is fed through a vein all the way to the heart, then the stint is on another tube inside and popped open where they want it, all while they watch with whatever live X-ray scanner thing they use. The tube will often have curves and bends that match to the artery shape and distance, they make them for all kinds of arteries and entry points, as we might need it in different places. It's statistically a good thing with no down sides, still my close friend's mom died from a stint that failed within a week so I have some reservations. And I'm always skeptical whenever money is a motivator, lol. I wanted the job partly to see if maybe I could offer any ideas to help the tech improve. But that's where I concluded we are just at the limits of automated production, for now anyway. The machines melt the plastic, then continuously try to apply a perfectly controlled force to drive the melted plastic through a crosshead, to generate a small tubing with specific inner and outer diameters. We then would check the stuff with microscopes and always measure with lasers to .0001.. The engineers were great there and understood that machines aren't perfect and that you can only do the best you can, and that waste product was to be expected: Waste was enormous by the way. The accepted stuff is checked and rechecked over and over, and over and again at assembly. The machines have servos for every little control you could imagine, as soon as the tubing leaves the hot crosshead, it would start to cool in a bath set to a specific temp with low variance. Exiting the tank it had rollers like capstans and worked like a take-up reel on a tape deck: Tension controls the pull on the tube, which means while it's hot it will stretch and sets the inner and outer diameters. Tension recipes are programmed at first for each product, but variances in product makeup, or machine thermals, or whatever other random thing would make pre-programming nearly impossible. Only by checking diameters on microscopes and adjusting tension by using your brain could we get the diameters to spec, which requires predetermined tight tolerances of course. I leaned to dismantle the machines, clean the extruders and select different crossheads, everything I could learn to try and find a solution that was overlooked. But it's so much like a tape machine, you are constantly trying to keep it from drifting. I just sort of felt like.. tape machines are as far as it gets. Lol Great example, but the question is would the reject rate vs cost and time be better if it was done by hand ? That’s the big question in any manufacturer, and with medical devices you also have to add in is the product going to be sterile. People wonder why healthcare costs so much, a lot of it is the f#%king little things, I was just explaining the other day why even a video monitor connected to a machine that sometimes goes into an OR has to medical grade because it can’t produce any sparks or poof you could cause an OR fire which are already to damn common! The thing is that precision hand work is always much slower and therefore more expensive. A lot more expensive.
And manufacturing something like heart stents (not "stints", gotta watch the autocorrect in technical stuff), as high precision as it may be, doesn't come close to matching the tuning of top quality mic capsules. And even so, as Christopher noted, the rejection rate is huge. And requires a lot of human intervention. Fortunately, extruded plastic is cheap and probably the material itself doesn't need to be quite as homogeneous as the mylar or pvc in mic diaphragms.
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Post by notneeson on Sept 4, 2018 15:11:56 GMT -6
Hey guys! Ive started to notice a disappointing trend with my studio gear. Many of the 'hand made', boutique type pieces (which usually means not inexpensive) have had problems, often in the middle of sessions. Meanwhile the made in China (expensive or not) or 'prosumer' pieces chug along with no issues. Its kind of discouraging- I almost always try to support the little guys making and doing cool stuff with care and integrity - Some of these are made in China too, of course. Its making it difficult to feel confident in continuing to make purchases from boutique type or smaller brands, when they are the ones that seem to give me the most problems. Hopefully I have just been hitting a year long run of bad luck... And Im choosing to not call out any of these manufacturers/builders because I know they have much at stake. Yep. In my world it has been Soundelux, Chandler, Lucas, TubeTech, Phoenix... it's a bummer when the pricey stuff has higher failure rates, but it happens.
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Post by christopher on Sept 4, 2018 18:20:51 GMT -6
re: spelling. Thanks! That is so embarrassing and so wrong looking.. I had to fix it. Ironic that it took a human to catch my bonehead mistake.
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Post by matt@IAA on Sept 4, 2018 18:47:28 GMT -6
Automation is always and everywhere a supply and demand issue. You can build a machine, or series of machines, to what a human can do and then some. Whether that has been done or not is only related to the cost benefit of doing so.
Anything one human can do, another human can program a machine to do. Ain’t no such thing as magic.
Also, capitalism always provides the optimized (lowest) cost at the lowest acceptable quality to the market. If there aren’t more higher quality goods available in a sector, it’s because the market collectively has commoditized that sector. In other words, when you can’t find a better x, it’s because the market has decided a better x and a worse x are about the same.
You’ll always find those willing to pay more for a non-commodity item, but even then that doesn’t necessarily imply higher quality. Just a higher valued item.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 15,019
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Post by ericn on Sept 4, 2018 20:46:31 GMT -6
Great example, but the question is would the reject rate vs cost and time be better if it was done by hand ? That’s the big question in any manufacturer, and with medical devices you also have to add in is the product going to be sterile. People wonder why healthcare costs so much, a lot of it is the f#%king little things, I was just explaining the other day why even a video monitor connected to a machine that sometimes goes into an OR has to medical grade because it can’t produce any sparks or poof you could cause an OR fire which are already to damn common! The thing is that precision hand work is always much slower and therefore more expensive. A lot more expensive.
And manufacturing something like heart stents (not "stints", gotta watch the autocorrect in technical stuff), as high precision as it may be, doesn't come close to matching the tuning of top quality mic capsules. And even so, as Christopher noted, the rejection rate is huge. And requires a lot of human intervention. Fortunately, extruded plastic is cheap and probably the material itself doesn't need to be quite as homogeneous as the mylar or pvc in mic diaphragms.
I think when we talk quality we need to specify what particular quality we are trying to quantify for instance; I’ll hazard a guess that Neumann would tell us the machine tightened capsule is farm more uniform in tension, but I’ll bet the old hand tensioning was far better at compensating for imperfections in the diaphragm material. I’ll also bet If the old Neumann guys could take a CNC machine back in time for milling back plates they would! The key here isn’t is automation better than handmade, it’s like oh so many things the right tool for that application.
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Post by bowie on Sept 5, 2018 1:08:31 GMT -6
There's this "expensive vs cheap" war that people seem to take a side on but it's not that simple. You really have to take it on a case by case basis. I've had more cheap gear fail but it's much easier to forget about those than it is the unit you paid $3,000 for.
I've been shocked at some of the things I've found in some high end gear and it's sometimes being made by guys with highly regarded names in this biz. People you'd never think to question. Not just cheap parts here or there or sloppy work, but I've actually found mistakes in wiring where they got one channel correct and miswired something in the other. A $10,000 pair of custom mics where they didn't bother to even use the same brand of capacitors in the audio path of both mics. But, those are exceptions and I generally see not only smarter designs, but much better components used in high end gear.
Most of the Chinese stuff I see is built quickly with the cheapest materials. Some rise above that though. And, others rise above it for a time, then slip in some area. Just like some of the high end builders do.
I haven't noticed enough of a difference in reliability for it to influence my purchase the way that the sound quality will. I'll always buy for the sound, regardless of price, unless there's a serious issue going on with the company.
Side note; a lot of people buy used high end gear (me included) and notice a higher instance of issues. Keep in mind that many people sell their gear rather than get it fixed or even looked at to see if there's a reason it's sounding bad. I unfortunately see this happen a lot. A LOT.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 5, 2018 12:53:03 GMT -6
Automation is always and everywhere a supply and demand issue. You can build a machine, or series of machines, to what a human can do and then some. Whether that has been done or not is only related to the cost benefit of doing so. Anything one human can do, another human can program a machine to do. Ain’t no such thing as magic. Also, capitalism always provides the optimized (lowest) cost at the lowest acceptable quality to the market. If there aren’t more higher quality goods available in a sector, it’s because the market collectively has commoditized that sector. In other words, when you can’t find a better x, it’s because the market has decided a better x and a worse x are about the same. You’ll always find those willing to pay more for a non-commodity item, but even then that doesn’t necessarily imply higher quality. Just a higher valued item. I disagree, on a somewhat qualified basis. As long as your basic materials arew homogeneous you're pretty much correct, but when they're not a machine lacks the cognitive ability and flexibility to cope - as in tap tuning hand carved jazz guitar and violin tops, hand tuned bracing, or, I suspect, microphone diaphragms (since although the mylar or pvc may start out as homogeneous, I seriously doubt that the gold (platinum, etc .) sputtering is, as there has to be some randomization of the coating inherent in the sputtering process.)
You can get close with automation, but you can't get that last little 5-10%. At that point it all comes down to how picky you are and the degree of your ear training.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 5, 2018 12:58:35 GMT -6
There's this "expensive vs cheap" war that people seem to take a side on but it's not that simple. You really have to take it on a case by case basis. I've had more cheap gear fail but it's much easier to forget about those than it is the unit you paid $3,000 for. I've been shocked at some of the things I've found in some high end gear and it's sometimes being made by guys with highly regarded names in this biz. People you'd never think to question. Not just cheap parts here or there or sloppy work, but I've actually found mistakes in wiring where they got one channel correct and miswired something in the other. A $10,000 pair of custom mics where they didn't bother to even use the same brand of capacitors in the audio path of both mics. But, those are exceptions and I generally see not only smarter designs, but much better components used in high end gear. Most of the Chinese stuff I see is built quickly with the cheapest materials. Some rise above that though. And, others rise above it for a time, then slip in some area. Just like some of the high end builders do. I haven't noticed enough of a difference in reliability for it to influence my purchase the way that the sound quality will. I'll always buy for the sound, regardless of price, unless there's a serious issue going on with the company. Side note; a lot of people buy used high end gear (me included) and notice a higher instance of issues. Keep in mind that many people sell their gear rather than get it fixed or even looked at to see if there's a reason it's sounding bad. I unfortunately see this happen a lot. A LOT. I agree with all of that except for the eighth word from the end. Speaking as a person who is always looking for great deals on used gear and is somewhat technical, I think that you included a spurious "Un" on the word "Fortunately"...
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 5, 2018 13:05:27 GMT -6
re: spelling. Thanks! That is so embarrassing and so wrong looking.. I had to fix it. Ironic that it took a human to catch my bonehead mistake. Hey, no problem. You would not believe the number of typos I have to deal with in my posts - it's not uncommon for me to spend as much time proofreading as I did writing the post, if not more. And they still sneak through. I'm an horrible typist!
(Six in this post... No, seven.)
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