Originally Posted by
geolemon
Actually your comment is perfect for expressing some of the reasons that I started this thread, while others might dismiss the thread with a sense of incredulity - and their incredulity makes sense in today's USA, at least. If you don't mind my indulging for that sake as opposed to "directly responding to you":
About 15 years ago (and true story - because of a relationship I had in the car audio industry with the owner of Pro Tech, who also was a head sales agent for a local contract manufacturing assembler for aerospace and military) I was one of three founding members of an SMT contract manufacturing business - pick-and-place automated circuit board manufacturing. I programmed and occasionally ran the lines, once the facility was set up. This was true high-end manufacturing, of devices that were manufactured to highest specifications far exceeding consumer-grade electronics, and subject to substantial post-manufacturing inspection and testing, as you'd expect of electronics that keep people alive or are running a satellite in space that can't be serviced or replaced. This is the kind of manufacturing that remains in the USA, and there's many valid reasons for that.
The reality is, equipment and manufacturing don't work differently in China than anywhere else in the world. There's truly an unjustified "Made in America is better" perception that really comes from pride and propaganda. Part of my perception of reality comes from a painful awareness of "you can't generalize". They have the same SMT equipment as we had in our much-smaller facility - plus a much larger capacity. And they are nearly ALL contract-manufacturing facilities.
More importantly - most of these Asian countries (China included) have done a FAR better job embracing Deming's Lean Manufacturing methodologies than the US has. It's what led Toyota (closely followed by Honda) to be a global leader in quality while simultaneously reducing expenses and waste in the 1980's - and in the '00's allowed Hyundai and Kia to leapfrog from "laughing stock" to "global leaders" in quality and competitiveness. It's no different in China. Yes, "they" (again - you can't generalize, hence the quotes) have some history of laughable shameless faux-clones of products - but so did Hyundai in the early '00s. Look at their quality ranking today... even look at it 10 years ago. Quality CAN improve quickly!
The truth is - China does a FAR better job of investing in manufacturing BECAUSE they have a socialized capitalist system. (but despite the con-man ineptitude and awareness-masking propaganda of 4 years of Trump - don't blame any iteration of the US government either - the reality is China is also physically positioned ideally in the world for global trade - including access to precious metals and materials that we inherently incur import difficulties and expenses on. There's no "just open manufacturing plants in the USA" argument, as many Malaise-era factory-worker former middle-class families unfortunately ignorantly lament today - and that ignorant lamenting is a huge part of the problem causing our middle class to continue to decline in income) By contrast, the USA has a purely privatized capitalized system - and one that's currently inarguably skewed to afford incumbent too-big-to-fail companies all the advantages and benefits, and smaller start-up attempts (not to mention mom-and-pop size businesses) all the penalties. And yet all the conservative marketing efforts today are aimed at divisiveness that's required to hold power, rather than make the USA globally competitive. That's a serious problem, when the conservative parties are supposed to be the ones MOST focused on our economic health. Starting a trade war is flat-out arrogant denial of reality, and that's strengthened China further, while weakening the USA further. It's even weakened high-end contract manufacturing like that company I cofounded.
Sure, any given USA-based car audio manufacturer could "step up" and build according to any set of standards they want - at great expense to them - including reduced customer base - especially in today's world, where middle class incomes continue to fall, and awareness of these global manufacturing realities continues to be whitewashed. But here's the rub: So can any Chinese company. They are, in fact, in a better position to do that. Those laughable Chinese copies of products are the result of having SO many factories that you don't want any sitting idle. Even many of THOSE factories are inherently geared up, laid out, and staffed to support Deming's Lean Manufacturing principles. Or not. Selectively, based on product needs.
...meanwhile, in the USA - our government is bailing out GM and Ford for the reduced sales that naturally resulted from them simply failing to produce competitive products - and ironically, the "I buy American" bumper sticker crowd gave those companies management a sense of arrogance that "we can do anything we want, and people will buy our stuff anyway!" It's ironic because the crux of the unregulated capitalist free-market economy is supposed to be that "natural market forces" will eliminate the need for regulations and government interventions. And that might be true, if it weren't for the depth of American consumer and American economic propaganda that causes people with the best patriotic intentions to actually be the forces stopping the progress that's needed to be competitive and actually create jobs in the USA.
The TL;DR version - Don't believe the hype. China is better prepared to implement Lean Manufacturing workflows and produce higher quality products than the USA is, even though they are also better prepared to produce better-quality low-cost products than the USA is.
Consistency is actually an advantage that the Chinese have. Sure, they are manufacturing consumer-grade electronics. No, they aren't making $5000 circuit boards that are X-ray inspected and pre-tested so they can be shot into space - neither are any American consumer electronics companies. But everything from their often-newer equipment, to the processes used to manage larger manufacturing facilities using Lean Manufacturing principles, is an advantage that Chinese manufacturing can embrace.
The reasons that cheaper Chinese products are often lower grade has nothing to do with consistency - if you engineer something sub-par, and spec it with a minimal bill-of-materials using not only the cheapest available, but giving the manufacturer free-reign to substitute any parts they find that can increase profit margin further - they can just as consistently manufacture crap as they could manufacture anything else. Including quality products.
The USA's "natural market forces" actually encourage "higher profit margin" over "higher quality". Especially for consumer grade products... which ALL of car audio is - without exception.
It follows that "cheap" and "not bad" literally ARE Deming's Lean Manufacturing principles. In fact "inexpensive", "low waste/high efficiency" and "highest quality" are Lean Manufacturing principles.
It also follows that today's "high end" and "crap" are often differences in the engineering of the boards, with some (but less!) dependency also on the actual parts specified on the bill of materials, and freedom for substitutions given to the contract manufacturer. It's not black magic.
Even today's mid-grade boards are often "crap" boards that have been cost-effectively re-engineered and optimized with minor updates made to Chinese-engineered salad-bar contract-manufacturing offerings that are available in the Chinese open market. Honestly, I don't hate that approach - take something sub-par and make it better by engineering away the flaws. Why not? Well - one "why not" is because the minimums required to modify core components goes up substantially, so it is only a strategy that LARGER mid-grade companies can do.
Back when I was coordinating engineering and manufacturing of subwoofers in the car audio industry for small brands, those minimums were real limitations that were (to me) fun to process-engineer around. We built a high-excursion subwoofer that we could have engineered for over 30mm of one-way, flat-BL excursion - but there were no open-market baskets available with enough spacing between the spider landing and cone, much less sufficiently sized spider landing to even facilitate a flat-CMS spider to go with the flat-BL motor. To create our own custom baskets would have cost about $20,000 per basket size. Since our manufacturing runs were on the order of 25 or 50 subwoofers per-size - there's no way to distribute $60,000 in tooling expense across 150 subwoofers. The baskets alone would cost more than $400 each. Actual "cost" per sub would be over $500 each, after manufacturing, before ingestion shipping. We'd have to sell for over $1000 direct to make significantly less than 50% profit margin - or support a dealer network with an MSRP of $2000 to give ourselves the same sub-par margin, and a product the dealer wasn't discouraged from selling (why sell a less-profitable expensive sub, over a more-profitable easier-to-sell inexpensive sub that you could sell multiples of with less effort?).
Now, on the other hand, if you are a JL or a Kicker, and will be manufacturing tens of thousands - who cares about $60K in tooling expenses? Hey, why not also make molds for some plastic or rubber covers that make our magnets look bigger? It'll only cost another buck or two and all the kids will go "Oooh!" [emoji106] It's all about scale and that's what the Chinese ALSO do best.
So I'm open minded about companies like DS18, who appear to have the business mass that would generate the income needed to have the engineering staff capable of utilizing that strategy. The downside is that I don't know IF they do that - or even want to do that. So you start to look for clues... in their marketing materials... do they list full specs or do they appear to be hiding some... or maybe even are marketing exclusively to people who say "What are specs?"... do they print bogus wattage numbers (especially if on their heatsinks, for no necessarily valid reason other than going back to that who-are-they-marketing-to approach)... etc.
There's still some larger manufacturers who do engineer their own boards (RF, Kicker, JL) as well as smaller SQ brands who are enjoying success in today's car audio market. Lots of those manufacture in China as well. And by manufacture, I mean "the circuit board", even though by law they are allowed to stick that circuit board in a heatsink and screw a bottom panel down and say "Made in the USA" on the box they stick it in.
So basically - that's the background. I really still know nothing of DS18... seems not many people do, despite the HUGE catalog of product they offer!
But at any rate I ended up going neither this route NOR the RF T-series route...
Perhaps somewhat lamenting the DLS Ultimate A3 and A6 that I didn't ever use and have been sitting in my (climate controlled!) storage for a decade now, I picked up one DLS-CC1000 and two DLS-CCi44 and figured out a way to make three fairly-compact amps fit where I was planning to fit two super-compact amps. Since I do know DLS's history and target customer, I have better confidence buying blind - something that I hate to do, as any of us do.
So for my needs at this point this is a moot thread, although I'd still love to learn if these are crap or not.
