Have your views of Asian manufacturing changed over time?

Yes.  

I started working for a company that owns Asian manufacturing sites.  They can be as good or better than anything done here.  Much like anywhere else, you hire the right people and put good practices in place and the product can be very good quality.

They're nice people, work hard and are appreciative to have jobs.  I'm glad they don't know some of the ridiculous notions people have created about their cultures and work.  

One thing you're absolutely right about is that they'll make anything to the specs you give.  There's no room for error because if you make a mistake, there's little chance they'll catch it unless you've done a lot of similar work with the same groups.  Over time, they catch on and will report problems back if they think something is wrong, but there's a big catch to this..

One thing about the overall chinese culture is an absolute fear to stand up to bosses.  Chinese culture is one of obedience to one's superior, so most worker bees will just watch the problems roll on by even if they know it's a problem.  We have to instill a system of trust and understanding that they can report problems without fear of reprisal. 

The problem is it's simply not that much cheaper to make many small run products in China now. The mass manufacturing infrastructure and quality has improved but the product designers (both non-Chinese and Chinese), constantly cost reduce, value engineer, and just plain old muntz good designs into terrible mediocrity. You can hear this happen with Focusrite products and Warm and Behringer clones.

It depends on the gear, what country, the oem manufacturer, and the scale of production. Many Asian countries like the PRC have problems with pirated electrical parts and contaminated supply chains. The small scale manufacturers can't economically purchase the parts from the uncontaminated suppliers. They would have to check every IC and transistor. That isn't economical for cranking out cheap crap in a warehouse somewhere. You will see bad caps in so many pieces but it all ends up being on the level of other mass produced cheap crap. Alesis, ART, Presonus, and Behringer were no better when they were made in other countries.

Some of the boutique Chinese (and Vietnamese, Thai, etc) pro and hifi gear is absolutely fantastic but it is not cheap and not the gear being hyped up on beginner forums. Some of the mass produced in China gear is decent but the quality varies even among manufacturer's own product lines. The UAD Apollo Xes are solid but some of the made in China pres should be avoided. Focusrite has all the solid Dante gear but their normal interfaces have a lot of driver issues, the Scarletts die, and the Chinese ISA are wtf.

Yes

Well things will likely get lean from that part of the world as supply chains dry up. If they aren't already that is.

At this point that could be just about any region, the biggest problem we face right now is that for many things Asia is the only source!

My opinion hasn't changed. If a company orders something from China you have to be overly concerned and vigilant.. it might very well use counterfeit or otherwise inferior components, everything from the insulation on the wire to the wire itself is suspect, if it can possibly be screwed up assume it will be, you'd have to constantly prove that it isn't. Then as a company you have to keep very close inspections and hand holding to verify you aren't being 'ripped off', even though at the low prices out there who's ripping off who? Companies have figured out you need to fly out there constantly, manage your business hands-on, and if possible own the company out there with your own employees living there. This is why quality has improved in many areas.

To me china was even good 40 years ago - in some fields.
They are getting better and better in many fields.

My Behringer Modell D Moog clone is a good example, the thing just runs and runs and sounds great.
Same is true for the ADA 8000 which is not top of the line specs wise, but a workhorse.

In the guitar producing field I know a few product managers.
I hear similar stories like the one form svart.

China production has a downside - environmental pollution.

For me yes. I think synopsis above applies in the sense that it depends.

The skill and knowledge are both there, it comes down to application and my sense that , it (quality) depends on what you pay for in the literal and figurative sense. Figurative meaning, have you done your due diligence to build high quality into the whole process.

Not to be argumentative but I disagree with disparaging comment above characterizing all behringer and Warm products. Mr Holmes’s comment above applies and my personal experience with Warm products has been very good and my sense is its quality has steadily improved while at the same time made to a price point.

I have the new warm bus compressor and have also owned 2 other ssl comps (Stam and Audioscape). While quality can be intangible, I would say they are all highly equivalent and of high quality. While, Audioscape and Warm are US based, as far as I know, other than legitimate nos USA made parts and components, now many recording gear parts are actually chinese.

But at a $6-700 usd retail price point, these 3 units are of very comparable quality, but yes some sonic differences due to some different build components but I wouldn’t characterize these as good and bad, just different textures and all highly usable.

Currently, I kept the Audioscape and Warm and am supposed to be demoing the new Stam mkii with the Brit mod sometime soon which I am looking forward to, having had the mki, very curious about the sonics of the Brit transformers and other changes.

So good quality is there in a good QC managed supply process, either in builds or for specific components.

I've had a few things made in China that were fantastic. A couple guitars; Gretsch and Wechter are among my favorites and hold up against anything. I had a Northfield mandolin. They are made by a small team in China and are great. I've also noticed absolutely a ton of guitar pedals coming out of China that are clones. I know even the boutique makers are all cloning each other to some extent, but many make it publicly known. That comes down to intellectual rights. I don't think the Chinese government has any problem sanctioning cloning of others designs. I do have a bit of a problem with that. If I had endless amounts of money, I'd always buy the original. But, it's a hard sell when you can get an equivalent for less than a third the cost of the original. Still, there are some Chinese makers of pedals that are doing a great job with innovation. Joyo (who does have a lot of clones) has also created some very interesting and useful audio tools. The price is a huge draw. Is it that the Chinese have undercut the competition or is it that the competition has become complacent and are charging too much? Good question I think. Either way, a lot of great items have been mass produced in China. The quality "can" be there.

Hey McIrish, I agree that plenty of stuff, like guitars, can be amazing as long as they care to make it great.. Strangely it’s the Joyo pedals that made me realize something isn’t all the way right. Joyo are clones, pedal components are cheap, so it’s only cheap because of labor, right? Well I compared them to all the boutique clones, and the joyo’s sounded noticeably flat and lifeless. We opened them up and it’s same dirt cheap parts. So how can it sound so... I don’t want to say bad, because they sound impressive .. just not all the way there. And it stumped us. So few cheap parts, what’s the deal? Only thing we could figure.. either the parts are fake/ or rejects... or the solder or metal or wire. This was for sure not imagination. The owner of the store wanted to sell them for boutique prices before anyone knew about them, they just weren’t in the same league unfortunately. And honestly many many things from China has that flat signature. Now if you source your own parts and send them there to your workers you trust, then it’s just a human to build it, it will turn out as good as anywhere on earth I’m sure.

Chinese quality has definitely improved a lot over the last decade or so - but they had a very low starting point. And a lot of the name gear produced in China is being made in plants owned by the parent, non-Chinese, company.