[lkosova]

How about a RM 3 to go with AV 123???????

Larry

[HarleyMYK]

Well, the RM1a would be my guess.

The following is from Jim Romeyn in a reply to my post about the RM1 vs. the 626R:

How about approximately 50" x 10" x 19" HWD? On the front from the top down: (2) spirals, (2) Neos, & (1) 5-1/4" WCF midbass. The 10 or 12 goes on one side with the PR on the opposite side (cabinet too narrow to fit a 10" PR at the bottom). The 5-1/4" cone would compensate for the extreme distance between the woofer & the Neo. What do you folks think about that? It could have RM2 dynamics/low bass, better transition range performance, & the 626Rs narrow baffle & nearfield, staging & imaging. Is that not good? -- RibbonSpeakers.net

See also this discussion about the RM1a

Again, just a guess.  

I would suspect that it takes quite a while to gear up production in China.   Also, to me at least, it would make more sense that the Chinese line would be existing products with nicer finishes, not a new product to show at CES right off the bat.  

But what the heck do I know.

[Andrikos]

and smaller than a refridgerator?

OK Brian,

Is it bigger then a bread box??????

Larry

[TheeeChosenOne]

Could you imagine VMPS speakers with the AV123 Birds Eye Maple finish or Cheery flambe..........dreaming away!...........

[Andrikos]

Could you imagine VMPS speakers with the AV123 Birds Eye Maple finish or Cheery flambe..........dreaming away!...........

Drooling a-la Homer Simpson:
"mmmmm, Bird's eye maple...."  

[Dunedain]

Well, with Brian having just proudly stated that 95% of
every VMPS speaker is made right here in the U.S., that seems unlikely...

[TheeeChosenOne]

Well, with Brian having just proudly stated that 95% of
every VMPS speaker is made right here in the U.S., that seems unlikely...

Then that would make Monday's meeting irrelevant.  One of the things they'll discuss is improving the cabinetry options of the VMPS line, which most of us (from a rather recent poll conducted here) would view as a positive.....a tremendous positive from my viewpoint.  

The Shifter/Cheney business model would be a fantastic one.  It would benefit a lot of audiophiles who are looking for maximum quality products at great prices.

[Dunedain]

Well, it wouldn't benefit those of us who like to buy
american made products.  And it certainly wouldn't benefit
those in the U.S. who will no longer have the job of making
those cabinets.

There are cabinet makers in the U.S. that are perfectly
capable of providing an extra high grade of finish, if that
is what you want.  And Brian already offers as an option
whatever kind of wood you want on your VMPS speaker,
just make the request.

He could easily contract with a wood worker of the
sort needed to produce the kind of finish quality being
referred to.  And something as relatively simple as
a speaker cabinet (simple compared to fine intricate
cabinetry work) could be produced quickly and easily by
such a cabinet maker.  And since far less work is involved
in making such simple boxy shapes and VMPS would require
quite a few to made, due to the number of those that
want such a finish, a good price could be negotiated
for such a cabinet option to be made available.

All this could easily be done and still have the cabinets
made here.

[TheeeChosenOne]

Well , the details have to be worked out between Mark and Brian to bring maximum value to the customers while also prospering from the alliance.

I assume the cabinets made overseas will be cheaper than those contracted to an American woodworker for an apple-to-apples finish.

All I know is that AV123's products are spectacular in their finish and workmanship.  And when you're talking WAF, it's a no-brainer.  

This subject has been discussed thoroughly here already so I won't go further into it.

Most likely, Brian will offer both options to appease all fans.

[Tyson]

I have no problem at all with jobs being "shipped off" to other countries, for a good explanation of why this is not only "not bad", but actually benefits us, see Bastiat's book "The Law", a very short, very concise book on this very subject.

Here is a link to it, only $3 and well worth the read:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1572460733/qid=1067624987/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-3516189-7780125?v=glance&n=507846

His other book, Economic Fallacies , is also very enlightening:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1931541027/qid=1067624987/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_3/102-3516189-7780125?v=glance&n=507846

[Dunedain]

I've already heard the arguments from informed people on why such things aren't a problem.

First off, although I'm sure there are exceptions, generally the much lower costs are not
passed on to consumers.  The company merely charges the same, makes as much money
as possible and simply doesn't care what happens to the americans' jobs.  Or the overall
economic future of the country.

In fact, CNN or Fox News just had a big special on this very topic.  It was called, "Exporting America",
I believe.  You might want to watch it if you get the chance.

Look at tennis shoes, for example.  They used to be made here, then they shipped the jobs
overseas so they could pay some guy chump change to make them and the american employees got axed.

Hmm, have you noticed the huge drop in tennis shoe prices to reflect the wonderful savings
realized by having the shoes made in foreign countries?  Me neither.  That's because they
didn't lower the price, they just pocketed all the extra profit.  So much for the big savings.

What ends up happening is that this profit gets funneled into a small number of peoples' hands,
the standard of living for the citizenry drops (because more and more of them no longer
have those good paying jobs), and worst of all we slowly lose our industrial base.

And that's bad, not good, for the economy.  The highest standard of living and the maximum
amount of commerce and economic activity in a nation is realized when as many of your
citizens as possible have good paying jobs and are out there buying goods at a fast pace
to maintain that standard of living.  Which then provides all the orders for those
goods that then are made by people who work at other good paying jobs making these various things.

And so the economy churns, the money flowing through it at a high pace and everyone makes
a bunch of money, and lives well.  Which is a good thing.  Combine that with low taxes
and small government and you have a very wealthy and secure country.  

[Tyson]

Well, at least we can agree on the small government and low taxes point.

[Dunedain]

You said it, man; down with socialism.  

[Ravi]

Dunedain, you make a very important point.  The prices are never "passed down".  Labour costs a fraction of what it does in those countries, but we pay the same, while the manufacturer gets more.

Only import stuff that is not available locally, thats the best way to help the community.

I hope in this case the almighty dollar doesn't win again.

[JoshK]

Dunedain,

You indeed do raise a very interesting point.  I will have to investigate this further and see if what you said is true.  It should be easy enough if I can get my hands on Unit Labor Costs for an industry like shoe manufacturers and compare that to the price deflator for the shoe industry.

[Dunedain]

It's even easier than that.  Just think for a minute, why would the U.S. execs be making them
clear overseas if they didn't think it was going to raise their profit margin and salary bonuses?

As far as the price of tennis shoes, hehe, it would have been blatantly obvious if
they had passed along the lower labor costs to U.S. consumers, considering the pittance
those people over there make.  You would have seen the price plummet in such a way that you
wouldn't need to wonder if it happened.  

And, of course, that doesn't even touch on the fact that the high paying jobs for americans
still went out the window when they shipped the jobs overseas.  Nor does it address the
problem that it is getting harder and harder for an american to even find things to buy that
are made in the U.S.  Which tells you how bad things have gotten.

That's why the fact that VMPS speakers are 95% made right here in the U.S. is so great.
And I think it's one of their best selling points.

[Tyson]

But you miss the fact that profits are the very thing that drive companies and make them good investments.  If a company can increase profits, they are more or less compelled to do so by market forces.  Profit is not bad, it is good.

Remember, prices are set by supply and demand, with cost really only determining how much profit a company can make for the given price.

Also remember (in the case of tennis shoes), that price can be affected by "mystique" and marketing, IE, Nike's cost a lot more that KED's, even though it probably costs Nike less to make them.

Obviously there are lots of points to be made on both sides of the debate, but perhaps the VMPS forum is not the place for it - shall we continue in the Sports Bar or (even better) in Fight Club

[rosconey]

well the quality of my large sub is about a 8 on a 10 scale.
well we got 2500 more jobs going overseas just from syracuse this month-30$ a month for labor in china -30$ a hour here-united tech, carrier.
for me enough is a god dam nough, like a wise man once said- we can keep moving the jobs there but who here will have the fuckin money to buy it?
no one because jobs now pay 7.50 a hour with no benefits,and its hard enough just to eat!!!!
the goverment has failed again-whats new
when i upgrade my speakers they will be as american as possable or even european(they pay a living wage).
i hope big b keeps his stuff 95% AMERICAN
are there any american  cdp makers? if not then i'll have to get a dac (american made)to even things out.

[Dunedain]

I'm all for companies making profits, but it's more important to protect the standard
of living, overall wealth and industrial base of the country as a whole.  Both for long
term economic reasons as well as national security reasons.

The way you accomplish that is by the use of targeted tariffs which will simply make it
uneconomical to make things overseas where people make meager wages, there are no
pollution laws, etc. and then try to import them.  We are the world's biggest economy,
the U.S. is it's own best customer, so we can afford to do that.

The end result is that the jobs will get brought back here, the goods will get made here,
americans will get their good paying jobs back, everyone will  make a lot of money (and
then promptly go out and spend much of it on other mostly U.S-made goods) and the economy
will boom.  And the companies will make more money in the long run, as there will be plenty of
americans who can afford to buy all those goods the companies are producing in large
amounts for many years to come.

It's all about long-term profits, long-term high standards of living, long-term wealth,
long-term economic and national security.

A lot of these execs at these big companies only care about how much they can jam in
their pockets in as short a time as possible, regardless of the consequences it will
have for the country down the road.

Anyhow, enough about economics.  All I can say is that I'm very glad that VMPS speakers
are 95% made here in the U.S. and I look forward to buying a pair.  

[Tim S]

I hate to take the discussion even further from what is important (i.e. getting really cool new speakers ) but some of the posts above on the evils of overseas production need to be corrected.  The notion that trade protectionism improves a nations economy has been historically disproved so many times it is just astounding that people still buy into it. I understand there is a certain common sense seductiveness to the simple arguments, but they just do not hold.

1. Bush while, like all Republicans, advertises himself as a free trader, you may have heard about his imposition of steel tariffs a while back to protect jobs in the domestic steel industry. Did they work? Absolutely not. Not only did they not help the steel industry but they destroyed a few other industries involved in fabricating parts from steel. US manufacturers were made completely unable to compete on price or even to acquire the steel for these purposes and last I heard, those industries were in really bad shape. As usual, well intentioned tariffs cost more jobs than they saved just like they do every single time they are imposed. What people overlook are the ripple effects to other industries.

2. Is the US as a whole worse off if we "send jobs overseas"? Common sense says "yes of course, we just lost jobs." If you look at it carefully though it isn't so obvious. Despite the shoe example above, it does let us get the products cheaper. Even in the shoe example, while prices have not necessarily dropped substantially, neither have they risen. Thus in real purchasing power terms, they may well have become cheaper and in particular cheaper than if produced with more American labor. In general, the tendency is for the products to be cheaper. That means we as consumers get stuff cheaper, but also (usually overlooked as in the steel example) our producers get raw and intermediate materials cheaper allowing them to produce more competitively. If they are not competitive, we will lose even more jobs.

3. Another standard myth is that if we all went out and always bought American, we would be better off. Probably not. For one, we would be able to buy much less stuff as it would be more expensive. Second, one of the reasons "jobs get shipped overseas" is that we don't have the industrial labor force we used to have to fill them. This is because our labor force is by and large more skilled which means they won't settle for the wages or the jobs at low end menial production lines. So some products won't be available.  I'm not arguing that there is anything wrong with buying American, but neither is there anything intrinsically right about it.

The one potential argument for protectionism might be security, i.e. don't import all our oil or machinery because we are the mercy of other countries and should they choose to stop shipping to us, we are in trouble. That is a legitimate concern. My own view though is that if we bombed fewer countries, they would be less likely to get annoyed with us. Also, if we tie their economic well-being to us, then they will become our allies in a sense becasue they will realize their propserity comes from us (see Saudi Arabia). So the more tied to us they are, the less likely they are to cut us off and the more secure we are.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. If someone wishes to cut this entire discussion out of the thread and move it elsewhere I'm all for it. And Dunedain, while yes, this is aimed at responding to your posts, I don't fault you for your beliefs. I merely seek to point out that these issues are astoundingly complex and well intended protectionism as you suggest typically has seriously adverse consequences that most people overlook. Just ask the people in production industries involving steel. . .

Tim