Timoteus Ruotsalainen wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 10:15 |
I was reading a Mackie advertisement and couldn't believe they would actually use such terms to market their product. "Use of passive element achieves bigger sound" this is on an ad for a active (studio monitor) speaker.I'm pretty sure that most speaker elements are in fact passive.
Next they advertise a 1604 VLZ PRO "Need a preamp? save 2000Euro -get a free mixer" "16 channel preamp with built in 'all-around' mixer" "XDR preamp is non sensitive to RF interference"
While i haven't seen these products I feel that the advertising complete bogus. No wonder musicians keep buying this stuff. And get this, the 1604 is MORE expensive in someplace's compared to a Mixwiz.
I seriously hope I don't have to buy anything from a company that is printing this kind of ads. And I'm not talking mackie specifically. The Finnish company who's ad this was had more of these "German jokes" in their advertisements
-- Timoteus Ruotsalainen
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Without getting into a deep philosophical debate about the value of advertising, Mackie was (IMO) the first to bring consumer style advertising to the US M.I. market. While it may turn off a few customers, Mackie quickly gained tens of millions worth of market share from established companies who were slow to react.
The reality is that many products in those segments are more similar than different. Advertisers now must yell louder and louder to be heard above the din created.
FWIW "XDR preamp is non sensitive to RF interference" is code for "we fixed the RF problems that plagued our early mixers". The "buy a preamp and get a free mixer" sounds a little like an ad campaign I did years ago, selling "SOTA mic preamps in groups of 8, 12, 16, etc with mixers attached...."
While no amount of advertising will make customers accept that more than 2 mic preamps in a common chassis, could ever be any good, adverting loud and often that you think so will get (some) customers to believe maybe your preamps are better than others. In fact the main difference is typically in the dollars spent on advertising.
JR