JohnSwenson wrote: > Hi guys, > I want in on this! I have been thinking a lot about it over the last few > months. I am well accomplished at the hardware design part of this. I'm > not sure most of you are aware of this but I do part time consulting for > high end hiFi companies wanting to get into digitaal audio, I have lots > of hardware experience doing just what this project is about and making > it into products for low volume production. > > There seems to be an assumption that you need very high volumes to get > low prices, this is not really the case. You need high volumes to get > REALLY low price, but medium range prices is can be had for fairly low > volumes. For example something along the complexity of the Touch main > board, can be manufactured for around $125 in 25 quantity, thats board, > parts and assembly. That does NOT include the case, full assembly etc, > just the board. At 50 quantity you can get down to $100 a board. > > I have done designs using off the shelf boards and ones that I have done > the whole thing from scratch, my current thinking is that for more than > a couple systems it actually winds up being cheaper to do the whole > thing from scratch, that way you get EXACTLY what you want. When using > an off the shelf board you have to try and shoehorn your design into > sombody elses vision, which rarely matches yours exactly. > > For example, some people around here have mentioned things like IR > remotes, if your chosen existing board doesn't have the capability, you > either live without it or you have to add a board that does it, and > figure out how to connect that into some port on the existing board. > When you do the whole thing yourself it is MUCH easier to add things > like that directly to the main board. > > When doing it yourself you have a wide range of options available for > including in the device, that would be very difficult to add to an > existing board. For example as has been mentioned having FPGA based > filters is something that is easy to add to our own board, and adds very > little cost. I can easily put in a VERY high quality S/PDIF interface > that will be better than just about anything out there, or even a USB > output optimized for audio use. > > I have been doing systems like these for many years now and the biggest > time sinc has always been the UI. Since the SB line already has good > external UI options, I think it makes more sense to design a product to > be a black box (but with a web server for configuration etc so you get > away from the Duet problems). Having a display and interface along the > lines of the Touch seems to me to double or tripple the complexity of > the project. > > I'm a little torn on one aspect of this, my passion is for very high > quality DACs, having done systems similar to this several times I CAN > say that I can do a better job for less money building very good DACs > into the project than you can get by buying external DACs. It doesn't > HAVE to be an either or. I can do a two board system, one board has the > main guts and digital audio interfaces (S/PDIF USB) and another board > that plugs in which has the DACs (it does NOT connect to the S/PDIF or > USB). So if you want to spend the extra $400 you can get audio quality > that will out perform external DACs costing many thousands. It is just > so much easier to do a really good job of a DAC if you can build it into > the architecture of the main system. > > Things I am NOT good at: industrial design, please don't ask me to > design a really good looking case for this! > > John S.
Hello John, This is VERY exciting news. I am not 100% sure where to go with this and the next steps. My overall feeling is that there are many users that want a device.... but still questions if there is a "market" for it. I feel that if we assemble a small group, put together the design and implement a "kickstarter" type project, we will get the interest from this community. I would assume we could easily get over 50 - 100 orders on the first batch if the price was right. This leads to a much larger question of legalities with Logitech, creation of an LLC or other company structure, how we further market, etc. Erland has already created the developers group. I am wondering if we should take this entire discussion to that group and the parties that have real interest can join. Thoughts? Thanks! --Dustin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ dustinsterk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=19649 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97881 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
