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[Robert Lunceford]

And also corporate ownership structures. A&H is now a brand of Audiotonix along with Digico, SSL, Calrec, Sound Devices, Klang, and others.

Tribe now owns many legendary brands, brand names that have been synonymous with quality products. Brands such as Midas, Klark-Teknik, Tannoy, Lake, Lab Gruppen, etc.
Since Tribe has taken ownership, do you think those brand products are equal, lesser, or better in quality than before they were acquired by Tribe?

[Dave Pluke]

Since Tribe has taken ownership, do you think those brand products are equal, lesser, or better in quality than before they were acquired by Tribe?

That's the eternal question with such acquisitions; will this elevate the lower brands or will the premium brands be cheapened?

The Wing might be an example of the former. Not sure I've seen direct evidence of the latter.

It does appear that the Tribe has been hit as hard - if not harder - by the supply chain hiccup and parts & service are lacking. It's been enough to hurt some of their premier labels.

Dave

[Caleb Dueck]

Tribe now owns many legendary brands, brand names that have been synonymous with quality products. Brands such as Midas, Klark-Teknik, Tannoy, Lake, Lab Gruppen, etc.
Since Tribe has taken ownership, do you think those brand products are equal, lesser, or better in quality than before they were acquired by Tribe?

Look at Tannoy - are there more/better products, or fewer/not as good?  The latter. 
Look at Turbosound.  Back in the 'real owner' days, we had Flash/Flood.  Now we get Milan and its sibling, iQ. 
Midas - was Pro 1/2/3/6/9/X.  Now it's near-clones of Behringer (HD96 excepting). 
Lab - I had the first D200:4L in the USA, and it died an hour into its life. 

[Mike Caldwell]

Tribe now owns many legendary brands, brand names that have been synonymous with quality products. Brands such as Midas, Klark-Teknik, Tannoy, Lake, Lab Gruppen, etc.
Since Tribe has taken ownership, do you think those brand products are equal, lesser, or better in quality than before they were acquired by Tribe?

Add to that Turbosound, they introduced a medium/large format line array box, not sure if anyone is really taking it serious.

To answer Dave's question, I'm going to go with "premium brands be cheapened" that would be in many ways including the support network.

[Scott Helmke]

To answer Dave's question, I'm going to go with "premium brands be cheapened" that would be in many ways including the support network.

There's a difference between "quality" and "professional", though traditionally you'd find brands that had both. Even if you make the absolute best bit of gear, it might not be popular for live use simply because the support isn't good.

For those who've grown up with the "create an account, wait for a response, send to Care Center" model, back in the day (and it wasn't that long ago) you could call Midas support and talk somebody who had actual Midas repair experience.   There are still companies that do that level, like Meyer, Yamaha, and Shure.

[Tim McCulloch]

There's a difference between "quality" and "professional", though traditionally you'd find brands that had both. Even if you make the absolute best bit of gear, it might not be popular for live use simply because the support isn't good.

For those who've grown up with the "create an account, wait for a response, send to Care Center" model, back in the day (and it wasn't that long ago) you could call Midas support and talk somebody who had actual Midas repair experience.   There are still companies that do that level, like Meyer, Yamaha, and Shure.

I'd never been a big Midas fan, but I knew it was over when Kyle Chirnside (Sp?) was no longer on the support team.

[Scott Bolt]

With the advent of the X32, it is arguable that its most successful attribute was to move the price expectation for that level of functionality down 4 fold from where it was.

A side effect of that lowering of price (and margin on each product sold) was that you can't get high end support at that price.  The company simply bet on the statistics that more people would buy into a highly functioning good performing digital mixer with lower support than those that would give up on the brand due to lesser support.  I think they made a good bet myself.

In this particular market, such a product had an even more profound impact IMO.  It drove many of the high-end digital mixer OEM's into either an acquisition by a bigger company, or into bankruptcy.  The acquiring companies quickly decided to either play along with the new reality, or to duke it out at the top of the market for supremacy in the highest end market.  If the new products in that company were geared to play along, they became more like Behringer.  If they decided to compete for the shrinking market of people that were willing to pay top dollar for a more powerful and well supported digital mixer, they moved even further into features, functions, and support than they were before to supply that premium customer with that premium product.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect the same level of support for a 3K mixer as one previously expected of a 15K mixer.  It certainly is cost effective for a company to supply it IMO.

[Brian Jojade]

A side effect of that lowering of price (and margin on each product sold) was that you can't get high end support at that price.  The company simply bet on the statistics that more people would buy into a highly functioning good performing digital mixer with lower support than those that would give up on the brand due to lesser support.  I think they made a good bet myself.

Yeah, the lower price may even result in a product equal to the higher priced offering, just lacking in support.  What's funny is that a PAID support model freaks people out because that's hard to write into the budget.  Businesses that were used to forking out $8K for a mixer with free support aren't willing to fork out $3K for a mixer and $1K/year for support, even though the total expenditure would be the same after 5 years of ownership.

[Scott Bolt]

Yeah, the lower price may even result in a product equal to the higher priced offering, just lacking in support.  What's funny is that a PAID support model freaks people out because that's hard to write into the budget.  Businesses that were used to forking out $8K for a mixer with free support aren't willing to fork out $3K for a mixer and $1K/year for support, even though the total expenditure would be the same after 5 years of ownership.

Exactly!

Even if you reduced it to $500.00/yr as an optional add-in purchase, my bet is that you wouldn't get many takers.

Now, in all fairness, the 8K mixer had a more expensive BOM in it than an X32 has both because the components were actually more expensive, and because the components were ordered in much lower volumes, but still, I am sure you are correct that most digital mixer products included enough profit to fund the product support team on continued sales alone (ie, the price added to each mixer sold = (cost of support infrastructure and staff per year)/(# mixers sold per year).

To reach the lower price point demanded by the market, many mid level digital mixer producers have likely trimmed the support costs out.

[Tim McCulloch]

Exactly!

Even if you reduced it to $500.00/yr as an optional add-in purchase, my bet is that you wouldn't get many takers.

Now, in all fairness, the 8K mixer had a more expensive BOM in it than an X32 has both because the components were actually more expensive, and because the components were ordered in much lower volumes, but still, I am sure you are correct that most digital mixer products included enough profit to fund the product support team on continued sales alone (ie, the price added to each mixer sold = (cost of support infrastructure and staff per year)/(# mixers sold per year).

To reach the lower price point demanded by the market, many mid level digital mixer producers have likely trimmed the support costs out.

Behry made a million X32s (rumoured to be closer to 2).  It paid for a nice sized slice of Behringer City at the time.  I think Uli made enough money on it to pay for a functional, automated ticket system and back end support system.  I'm don't expect the level of support I got from Avid when buying flagship products.  I just want to open a warranty ticket or find out where to send out of warranty items for service, and that's far, far away from having a 24/7 technician phone response like Avid, Yamaha, Midas high end, DigiCo, SSL.

[ProSoundWeb Community]