This post was first published in April 2014 at projectstudiohandbook.com/PSHforum
In recent years, many established audio hardware manufactures have moved their manufacturing operations to the East, and in particular, emerging industrial nations such as China. For the most part they have not established their own factories, but instead sub-contract manufacturing to existing indigenous companies.
Such arrangements have become an economic imperative for many of these companies, without which they would become uncompetitive, or their products would become prohibitively expensive.
At the same time, a few new eastern designer/manufactures have emerged, the most notable being SE Electronics with their range of mic's. Incidentally none-other than Rupert Neve has been designing products with SE.
A common opinion among audio forum cork-sniffers is that Eastern manufacturers, and in particular those in China, produce inferior products. They maintain that audio hardware hand-made in the West is superior in both audio and build quality.
Like many who have been working in the audio sectors for many years, we have had experience of a wide range of equipment both cost effective and hi-end, Western and Eastern manufactured. For what it's worth, here's a round-up of our, admittedly anecdotal, experiences ..
Value of hand-made products:
There is no question that hand-made products encapsulate a romantic notion of authenticity and craftsmanship. But build quality is entirely dependent on the skills, care and attention of the people building them. We've had a fair amount of experience building gear by hand, it's tough and requires prolonged periods of concentration. Most hand-made gear is made by skilled but relatively low paid workers churning our component after component on a production line. The quality of the build is entirely dependant on the physical and mental state of that worker, and the quality control of the manufacturer.
Of the last 10 western hand-made product we have bought, 4 had to be returned for repair within the first 4 years, 2 of which developed faults in the first year. We refused delivery of one item, components had worked loose in the case and several components were missing. All of these were hi-end products from renowned manufacturers each costing between $1500 and $3500.
Of the last 10 eastern manufactured products we have bought, 1 has been returned for repair, 6 years after purchase. The input transformer had failed.
Of the last 10 Japanese products we have bought, precisely none have failed. All our 1908's Roland, Korg, and Yamaha gear continues to work beautifully and parts are readily available for their repair. Our Sequential Circuits and Oberheim synths stopped working years ago and cannot be repaired because they require proprietary IC's which are no longer available.
Sound quality:
Eastern manufacturers source components, assemble and build products to the exact specification of the designers. All off the shelf components (such as resistors and diodes) have variations in their operation tolerances which can make two identical product sound different, but for most solid state and digital designs, these differences are all but inaudible. It's true that components such as transformers must be built carefully but providing quality quality is strict, there should be no problems. We have compared a UK built Focusrite ISA430Mk2 and a Chinese one. They sound identical to us.
To say that the audio quality of Eastern manufactured product are inferior to western ones is at best questionable, and at worst plain racist.
We attended SE Electronic's launch of their SE4400 mic at Air Lyndhurst studio in London some years ago. In a shoot-out with a wide range of modern, classic and vintage mic's, no one thought the SE mic was inferior. It was immensely impressive.
Let's be clear. There are many terrific hand made and production line manufactured western products which sound great, are reliable and can be maintained and repaired. But our experience suggests they western manufactured products are not intrinsically superior in build and sound quality to those built in the east.
But hey, that's our experience, what's yours?
Thanks for reading.
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