15" or 18" Which would you prefer ?

[Darrel]

Hey Guys,
We are getting far enough along with these beta test to strongly consider pulling the trigger on our first order..
This is a huge leap of faith for us because of the minimum quantities we would have to order..
Bottom line, I need to chose between the 15" and the 18" to go first.....

I would welcome questions, comments, concerns and especially your vote on which size you would rather see us deliver first.

Here is the "unofficial" pricing to help make this easier...
15" 350.00 usd per pair
15" 600.00 usd per quad


18" 425.00 usd per pair
18" 800.00 usd per quad

All pricing is + shipping.

Thanks for your responses
Darrel

[Darren]

Oh sure, you had to go and price the 18's so I could afford them.

Dang you!

[Darrel]

Hey Darren,
So then.......Can I put you down for one vote for the 18's ;D


My hope was that these prices would work for you guys.
Certainly not the least expensive but hopefully viewed as a very good value..
Darrel

[Darren]

He he, you'll have to take that up with my wife...

I'm having trouble deciding which way my vote would go personally... I think I might vote for 18" though but I'm still in the decision phase and this throws a monkey wrench in my current situation So, putting others in front of my own interests I'd probably vote for 18".

[coldie]

What's the price per liter of displacement? I'll take whichever driver (15" or 18") is cheaper

(I presume the 18") It may be time to convince the wife...

[Darren]

How many liters are we talking here per driver? It's gotta be in the neighborhood of 4 or more but I'm having trouble finding the calculation to verify...

[Darrel]

Hey Guys

15" = 2.5 P-P displacement (liters)
18" = 3.4 P-P displacement (liters)

Darrel

[Darrel]

hummmmmmmmm,
Not as much interest in these drivers as I was hoping to see??
Price ? performance? Everybody away for the holiday weekend?

Darrel

[ThomasW]

darrel said:

hummmmmmmmm,
Not as much interest in these drivers as I was hoping to see??
Price ? performance? Everybody away for the holiday weekend?

Darrel

Both, the weekend and not very many people building at this time.

As with OB drivers, the IB sub demographic is pretty small.

And at this point it's not like there are bunches of people sitting around waiting for drivers. We tend to have a lot of protracted conversations with people who are window shopping. Then out of the blue someone starts building.

[Darrel]

Hey Thomas,
Thanks for the reply.
I know you try and stay neutral, but what's your take on these? Good deal or back to the drawing board ? I personal am leaning towards the 18" first..

If I do order these and start making them available... How many satisfied customers are we looking at before they would be considered for entry into your recommended list?
I certainly would expect to have to earn that distention, I am just curious how you go about the selection process...

Thanks for all the forum time/exposure, via this beta testing....
Darrel

[ryans]

Consider that the Soundsplinter RL-p is probably the king-of-the-hill right now in high quality IB woofers.

RL-p: $500/pair gets us 7.93L (3.97L each) ... that's $63/L

Your 18": $425/pair gets us 6.8L ... that's $62.5/L
$800/quad gets us 13.6L ... that's $59/L

This is the first bit of math that I'd do if I was in the market. And since the prices are so similar it would come down to which woofer I believe represents a higher build quality.

This seems like a fairly common approach to woofer selection. So my advice would be to take a hard look at the RL-p and decide if you think your woofer would at least be competitive in this regard.

I personally would not risk competing against an established competitor unless I had a superior product. This is a common theme at work. Virtually every new product we introduce must have some sort of "est" on the datasheet - fastest, smallest, highest performance, lowest power consumption, etc. If there's not an "est" then it had better be the first product of its type.

[Darrel]

Hey Ryan,
Thanks for your insights.
Increasing xmax is not really a good option for this design .
I was hoping to see a major difference in sound quality but this isn't proving to be a major issue .
I guess it is more a simple matter of ultimate displacement and $$ per liter when selecting drivers for IB.

I could look at lowering prices but someone will always be able to undercut us by going oversees to have their drivers made. Ok, more work to do...
Thanks for your honest assessment.
Darrel

[Darrel]

Hey Guys,
I slept on this and have been working the numbers.
Ryans is right, I am not going to be able to go toe to toe with some of these high xmax boys.

The name of the game for these guys is maximun displacement. If I increase the Xmax of this design, it would only be a matter of time before someone comes out with an ever greater xmax driver..

My original intent was to produce a driver with very high sound quality and respectable sound quantity. I think we have proven this to be accomplished .
My second goal was to make these a great value. This is possible if I can sell more at a lower markup. The way to do this will be to increase my customer base. I think that for purely
home theatre use it makes sense to judge a drivers value by this cost/ liters of displacement figure. In this case we would give advantage to the high xmax drivers. For a combination of music and HT I think sound quality will enter more into the evaluation of a drivers perceived value.

If we were to market these to music lovers and audiophiles I then think price /liter is all but useless. If it doesn't perform well when considering sound quality than it doesn't matter how low it can go.... I would like to see more audiophiles using these systems. They have such wonderful potential... unfortunately they are all but dismissed by audiophiles because of the emphasis on max SPL and extreme low end potential... I would like to change this misconception and bring IB sub systems into the 2 channel world. I know many guys that run dual purpose systems that split their time 50/50 between music and movies.. For many of them a good performing IB system with a design goal of very high sound quality would be a very welcome addition .

I also took a look at pure value. Say for example I shaved my profit margin down to a minimum and went for the frugalphile market. Say for example I lowered the price on a Quad of 18's to 700.00..... This would get you 4/18 IB system and a good pro amp + EQ for around 1200.00 .......not bad.
Now for many a pair would be plenty.. This would be a 2/18 IB system + amp + EQ for around 750.00... Now we are looking pretty competitive !!!
I would have to sell more this way to make it worth my while, but more people could afford this package and hopefully realize a higher quality sound.....

Thought? comments?
Darrel

[chrisbee]

Let's simplify matters: Imagine you need to borrow the money from the bank to get your drivers built.

You will be told:

The world is full of failed businessmen who tried to undercut the existing competition.

You can never win because "they" have built up reserves over the years of steady trading offering reliable products with a good reputation.

They can quickly undercut you with a time-limited special offer if they perceive any real danger from your product. Not that they are likely to see you as serious competition unless you offer twice as much for half the price.

Are you made of true Ron & Tom SVS material?

You are an unknown quantity with no previous track record. Who is going to trust you that your drivers offer better sound quality? Us? Because you say so?

What is unique about your product? What is its unique selling point?

Competing on price alone in the hope of increased sales to a small group of enthusiasts requires a level of perfomance worthy of risk-taking by potential buyers. At a price that only the impoverished will sink to. Are you feeling lucky?

Can you afford to sit on a garage full of your product until an ebay auction finally beckons to try and recoup some of your losses?

To make any money you need a very large number of potential buyers. Only a few of whom will actually buy your product in the end after you spend man-weeks answering pointless enquiry emails from spotty wannabe teenagers with no pocket money.

Trying to build a new market is extraordinarily difficult unless you have an exciting new "must buy" product with very wide appeal.

It is heartbraking to have a product you have spent time and money developing and then can't sell except at garage sale give-away prices.

The Chinese are coming with their own labels. They are masters at copying products and technologies and no slouches at inventing their own at a push. They have billions in free loans available and very low manufacturing costs with almost no environmental limitations on their factories.

The number of qualified Chinese engineers coming off the end of university conveyor belts makes the rest of the world look positively shabby.

Are you still feeling lucky?

[ThomasW]

darrel said:

Thought? comments?
Darrel

Over the years we've heard from 2 basic types of buyers, those where the primary factor was cost, and those that were performance driven, so cost wasn't an object. Now there maybe a 3 group somewhere in the middle, if they exist they aren't as vocal as the others.

So it's a catch-22, try and win the low buck buyers and compete with PE or go big and compete against the likes of TC-Sounds. Adire used to cover the entire spectrum, but their products haven't available for so long they're an after thought..

The hole in the market is 18"s, but there you end up competing with the TC-Sounds 15"s. And TC has stated they going to be players in the high excursion 18" market in the next few months..

I imagine that you could move some of your OB driver buyers into IB's making the tie-in to having the same branded drivers. Just sort of depends on how long your willing to sit on inventory dedicated to a single purpose.

I haven't kept track of total IB stalls, my guess is in the 6yrs since the forum started there have been a couple hundred builders. Obviously there are people that have never heard of the forum that build IB's.

So the answer is I don't have a recommendation....

[Darrel]

Hey Guys ,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
I can look at this from several perspectives and yes I had fully understood that I may have to sit on these. I also know that the "Chinese are coming" ....

I really believe in the potential of IB in general and look forward to telling the world about how good they can be. I would like to see that "couple hundred" install figure go up substantially
and the idea of helping to "create" this market is exciting to me......
I have no passion for creating conventional "EST" products. Biggest, smallest , highest xmax. lightest , cheapest..., Yawn.... anybody can do that. And the next day someone else with little imagination can out do the last est title holder....

Finding the perfect balance of price Vs performance is what I find rewarding... The perfect balance of simplicity and complexity.
I like developing new ways of solving problems ... new ways of answering old questions and I see this as a fascinating addition to our ever growing line of products....

I never underestimated how difficult turning the world on to OB speakers would have been..... but I must say that the end result has been well worth the effort. We have made many music lovers very happy.
The letters of appreciation I receive is my driving force behind all this. Hearing Darren describe his enjoyment with something I had a hand in creating is very rewarding on a personal level. I look forward to hearing many similar responses to these drivers in the future.
It's not always about the bottom line....
I have several pro sound applications for these drivers so not all my eggs are in the same basket so to speak.
Darrel

[ryans]

"Finding the perfect balance of price Vs performance is what I find rewarding"

That qualifies as a legitimate "est" in my book So long as your definition of "perfect" includes "better than the competition".

I'll admit that I'm not the adventurous type when it comes to making this sort of leap of faith. I'm glad you're open to even (constructive) negative feedback because I'd like to see you succeed in this. And to do that, its important to keep an unbiased perspective.

It sounds like the real advantage you're trying to offer is in terms of sound quality rather than quantity. And while the RL-p woofer initially might seem like an Xmax machine - a one trick pony - I think it's actually well respected for sound quality.

Your 15" woofers would be competing directly with the Parts Express RS (Reference Series) woofers that were recently introduced. The 12" version is highly regarded for sound quality and there's no reason to think the 15 won't be great also.

Do you believe your woofers have an advantage over these competitors (sound quality or otherwise)? Can you also convince your customers that this is the case? Then go for it!

[chrisbee]

I wonder whether Thomas can confirm that many of the IBs he mentions were built with Stryke/Acoustic Elegance AE IB15s?

John certainly made an impact on price competitive products.

If he ever re-emerges at the other end of his reorganisation he will probably be competitive again.

[Darrel]

Hey Guys,
Thanks for the support. This is encouraging and much appreciated. I know all the reason why this will be hard and I am willing to confront the challenges.

Prior to shipping these drivers out for Beta testing we spent considerable time evaluating them for sound quality. This is the area we spend most of our time in and I have the help of many audiophiles with very well trained ears. We looked for many key qualities and attributes that would insure these could be very well received by the audiophile community if I could ever get them to try them out...

Sound quality.. what exactly do we mean by this? and why is it worthy of being the #1 design consideration?
In the world of high end 2 channel, it's all about the ability to accurately reproduce in our homes the illusion that there is actually a performer in our room .The goal of making this illusion so powerful and convincing that we temporarily suspend our disbeliefs and allow ourselves to fooled into thinking that they are actually in this space and "real".

In order for this to happen, certain clues must be present...... omit anyone and the illusion falls apart..
In contrast... Home theatre has the aid of the visual and in most cases little else is needed to engage us. Sound is for the most part an enhancement to what we are seeing.
A very important enhancement and a key player in the overall illusion but less critical or demanding than the needs of the 2 channel audio only example.

So who would you want designing your audio playback systems? Could the average non-audiophile home theatre hobbyist even tell the difference? I think they can and as an example of this I quote this from one of the Beta testers: ( Tazman, Tom)

For two channel music things got a lot more interesting and I had to do more switching back and forth to try and give a fair comparison. The beta drivers still lack a little on the low end for my rap music at high volumes. They do have great detail though. I had some problem telling much of a difference between the two difference set of drivers so I set the crossover from my receiver from 80hz up to 200hz so my mains which have a 12" woofer in them would be taken out of the equation. This proved to me how much more detail the beta drivers have over the SS. At this point I have to apologize for my lack of knowledge and try to explain what I want to say. I was listening to some Jazz and I was surprised that with the beta drives I could hear the different notes of the bass and the actual plucking of the strings where as with the SS it was just more like a note being played. I hope that makes sense as that is the best way I could find to say it.

This is why I think our drivers sound better... and perhaps why I think it's important to have this as a design goal if we ever hope to get this IB configuration in more peoples homes..
I am seeing an ever growing trend of dual system rooms that try and accommodate both high end audio only and Home Theatre. It is going to take a very special driver to fill the needs of this very demanding group.
I believe in Eminence and especially in my buddy McJ.... If anybody can create such multi purpose driver , my money is on him....
Eminence makes 10,000 drivers each day...... Let that fact sink in a bit.....
Can we do this? I don't know.......Should we try? Should we surrender to the difficulty of the task and let the 2 channel boys continue to listen to their box sub?....Should we all get on board the louder is better train and abandon fidelity? I wish I had the answers to these and many of the other questions you guys brought up so far in this thread. Fact is..... I don't.
I simply have the dream.....


Darrel

[ThomasW]

chrisbee said:

I wonder whether Thomas can confirm that many of the IBs he mentions were built with Stryke/Acoustic Elegance AE IB15s?

John claimed to have sold some 400-500 drivers. If that's accurate, most went into alignments other than IB's, unless there's a large group of people that built IB's and never said a word about them anywhere on the net.