Think this is accurate or just hype?

zybar · « **on:** 30 May 2008, 07:23 pm »

Here is part of a press release from Boulder Amplifiers Inc:

May 08 - Boulder server: After 2 years and $1,000,000 of R&D, Boulder Amplifiers announces the release of the 1021 Disc Player [$24,000] which plays traditional 16/44.1 CDs and files encoded with FLAC, AIFF, WAV (PCM), OGG Vorbis and MP3 files at data rates up to 32bits and 192kHz.

$1,000,000 in R&D costs for a disc player??? OUCH!!!

Man, they are going to have to sell a lot of this $24k player to even recoup those costs (if they indeed spent $1,000,000in R&D).

George

Kevin Haskins · « **Reply #1 on:** 30 May 2008, 07:30 pm »

Ha! They must have some money to throw out the door. A million bucks in CNC programming time it looks like.

TRADERXFAN · « **Reply #2 on:** 30 May 2008, 07:32 pm »

Hey, its not so preposterous.... I could see a company spending a mil in R&D and end up right about where they started!

pbrstreetgang · « **Reply #3 on:** 30 May 2008, 07:33 pm »

42 to make a profit on the R&D and at least double that to make an actual profit. I bet they are puckering for at least 100 units

sbrtoy · « **Reply #4 on:** 30 May 2008, 07:38 pm »

Maybe the designer values his time at $10,000 an hour??

ted_b · « **Reply #5 on:** 30 May 2008, 07:55 pm »

Can't believe they use the term "MP3" in this press release! Guess they figure they'll get all-Boulder customers to ante up, but not sure their percentage of the market for $24k cd (and MP3) players is in the range to sell hundreds beyond that.

ajzepp · « **Reply #6 on:** 30 May 2008, 09:47 pm »

My local DeVore dealer has gear well in excess of 100k, and his preamp is a Boulder model. I was shocked when I picked up the damn remote...it's like picking up a stone. The build quality of this gear is astonishing, and it sounds pretty damn good, too

some young guy · « **Reply #7 on:** 30 May 2008, 09:50 pm »

Quote from: sbrtoy on 30 May 2008, 07:38 pm

Maybe the designer values his time at $10,000 an hour??

That was my first thought too.

SET Man · « **Reply #8 on:** 30 May 2008, 10:01 pm »

Quote from: ted_b on 30 May 2008, 07:55 pm

Can't believe they use the term "MP3" in this press release! Guess they figure they'll get all-Boulder customers to ante up, but not sure their percentage of the market for $24k cd (and MP3) players is in the hundreds beyond that.

Hey!

Yeah, spending $24K to play shitty MP3 music files.

As for $1M R&D... I bet those researchers open a few bottles of Cristal champagne and a few cans of Beluga caviar everyday for their lunch. Than put on a MP3 encoded music CD while having lunch

Take care,
Buddy

dogorman · « **Reply #9 on:** 31 May 2008, 12:10 am »

How good can a CD-player possibly be? Maybe that's a loaded (or neophytic) question, but you know, I recently had my Arcam FMJ-CD23 plugged in, side-by-side, against a Naim CD-5 -- and not the piddly-ass CD-5i, either, but the real, grown-up CD5.

Wanna know which CD player won? Wanna know which CD player so thoroughly kicked the other one's ass that my buddy and I stopped the test in the middle because we couldn't stand to listen to the other one any more? I'll give you a hint: the winner wasn't black, it didn't come with its own "puck" for holding down the CDs, and, best of all, it DIDN'T cost three thousand freaking dollars, when it was new.

Jon L · « **Reply #10 on:** 31 May 2008, 12:20 am »

Quote from: zybar on 30 May 2008, 07:23 pm

$1,000,000 in R&D costs for a disc player??? OUCH!!!

Perhaps they are talking about the R&D costs spent by the likes of Microsoft, Asus, Western Digital, and Intel?

TheChairGuy · « **Reply #11 on:** 31 May 2008, 02:55 am »

They're FOS

To actually spend $500K in R & D they'd have to sell vastly more gear than that to cover the nut....the audiophile market is small...not many amp makers even doing $2 million in sales yearly I bet.

Totally FOS in so many ways I figure.

John

TONEPUB · « **Reply #12 on:** 31 May 2008, 04:04 am »

Im getting one for review, I"ll keep you posted.

1M seems pretty high. The folks at Naim told me they sold
a little over 300 CD555's last year and Meridian said they
sold about a thousand 808/808i/800 players, so there is
definitely a market for megabuck CD players.

Just curious, how would you define the Arcam "thoroughly kicked the other players ass"

I'm always looking for new methodology.

The Computer Audiophile · « **Reply #13 on:** 31 May 2008, 05:59 am »

Jeff - You're going to run out of kidneys to sell if you keep reviewing megabuck CD players!

I'll certainly take the Naim CD555 off your hands if the Boulder unit tops it

Big Red Machine · « **Reply #14 on:** 31 May 2008, 01:11 pm »

Doesn't take much to spend $1M. 6 or 7 engineering personnel is about right.

PhilNYC · « **Reply #15 on:** 31 May 2008, 01:16 pm »

I'm sure that they included the retail pricing on their reference system in that $1mil. Boulder sells monoblock amps for $60K (each)...use those to bi-amp a pair of Rockport Hyperions ($90K/pair) and the dollar amounts start to get pretty high...

Dan Driscoll · « **Reply #16 on:** 31 May 2008, 04:12 pm »

I have no idea how good the build and sound quality of this thing are, but I don't have any problem believing the $1M R&D cost. I'm the engineering services manager for a large analytical instrumentation company and we routinely budget $1M+ for new board designs.

TheChairGuy · « **Reply #17 on:** 31 May 2008, 04:43 pm »

Quote from: Dan Driscoll on 31 May 2008, 04:12 pm

I have no idea how good the build and sound quality of this thing are, but I don't have any problem believing the $1M R&D cost. I'm the engineering services manager for a large analytical instrumentation company and we routinely budget $1M+ for new board designs.

Dan,

Upsized font for proper effect.....you work for a LARGE company where $1 million R & D budget is standard fare.

My company is $10+ million in size, likely quite a bit larger than Boulder (I sincerely doubt these guys sell 2000 pcs x $5000 amps per year...there is no viable market for it and plenty of competition from bigger names) and $1 million would wipe out all profits for a year. If we were half that size, the profit would be wiped out for years.

Unless there is private equity money behind them to burn - a $1 million R & D investment is likely fanciful hogwash.

John

DaveC113 · « **Reply #18 on:** 31 May 2008, 04:50 pm »

Quote from: TheChairGuy on 31 May 2008, 04:43 pm

My company is $10+ million in size, likely quite a bit larger than Boulder (I sincerely doubt these guys sell 2000 pcs x $5000 amps per year...there is no viable market for it and plenty of competition from bigger names) and $1 million would wipe out all profits for a year. If we were half that size, the profit would be wiped out for years.

Unless there is private equity money behind them to burn - a $1 million R & D investment is likely fanciful hogwash.

John

I they are more like $50k amps, and I bet they sell 200 units a year or more. There's lot more people with this kind of disposable income that you might suppose, (unfortunately, I'm not one of them

).

1M for R&D on a complicated product like a music server does not seem like a lot of money.

Dave

TheChairGuy · « **Reply #19 on:** 31 May 2008, 05:11 pm »

WOW- $50K amps!

Okay, well, with those kinda' eye-poppin' margins maybe $1 million R & D could happen

Tho, the numbers don't seem to suggest that high of a per piece cost figure (http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampstran&1217103216).

With only 3 items for sale on Audiogon, the largest hi-end audio marketplace in North America (and Boulder is a US-built product) and that they've been in business more than 10 years....I sincerely doubt there would only be 3 for sale at any one time if they were selling 200 amps per year. The numbers just don't fit.

Nonetheless, there is no way in hell I'm gonna' be helping them amortize that cost by buying something from them.

Nothing personal and I wish no ill to Boulder, but no amp should cost more than $10K (and I'm being overly liberal at that figure)

John