[Micah D. Cranman]

Originally Posted by VP Electricity

I certainly can attest to what Micah says. However, I think this is a bit of a red herring. It's not about absolute price, it's about VALUE. Perceived value comes from facts about the product.

Absolutely. We feel we bring excellent value. If you disagree and have the know-how to produce a solution that works for you and you get better value from it, more power to you.

For the record, we are always working to bring pricing down. Right now, it doesn't make sense to do so as we are constantly running out of product -- we can't keep the stuff in stock -- and lowering pricing will only exacerbate the issues. However, we hope to have inventory issues resolved by early next year and intend to bring prices down so you guys get better value.

Wouldn't want to accuse you of being a small shop How I miss that Avincar Performance Guarantee.

We ARE small -- no question about it. But we're not an audio shop. We are manufacturers.

This is also a red herring. Anyone capable of copying your speakers is capable of measuring their eletromechanical characteristics without looking at your spec sheet. No one can copy speakers with a spec sheet.

Totally a reasonable assumption for you to make, but it's inaccurate. Sure, no one can copy electromechanical characteristics from a spec sheet, but people can produce speakers with similar specifications and sell them as "comparable" when they are anything but. It's been our experience that if given the opportunity, people will copy our products.

For example, when we began selling our deck-mounted enclosures we originally gave out dimensions. Lo and behold, copies with those exact dimensions showed up all over eBay, without any regard to bracket design or placement which is what made our products unique. So, we took dimensions down but gave them when people asked. As an experiment, we changed some dimensions when we advised people to see what'd happen, and again copies matching the dimensions we gave showed up.

The point is that the copies don't have to functionally match -- they only have to APPEAR to match to the uneducated customer to part them with their hard earned money for a sub-par product.

Again, I have to disagree. You can choose to keep them secret, but it doesn't follow that no one should want them. It's reasonable to say, this amp has less than 1% THD distortion and the factory amp has +10%, or this amp has 3dB IHF dynamic headroom and the factory amp has zero, etc. With speakers, distortion levels, excursion levels, and assembly specifics are important.

Fair enough. See above for why we don't release the info.

Two things:

One is, if you have the measurement equipment, you can compare the OE speakers to your speakers - ignoring others. The competition for a BSW driver is first and foremost the OE driver. Why not address more where the differences lie? What about distortion? Specific efficiencies? Response matches to the OE amp's output? You address frequency response, but you don't mention a deviation (as you know, FR numbers without a +/-X dB deviation are not useful).

Two, what testing? What equipment? What kind of tests? Don't mention the competitive gear, that's fine, but help us understand what kind of testing you have going on there there in your speaker lab.

20,000? Wow...At what deviation?

Also, how far down is the tweeter at 2500? The F3 can't be 2500, you'd have to have a tweeter with a Fs of 600...? I'm guessing your F3 is 5000 and you are down 6dB at 2500?

Again, much of this is information we aren't willing to release at this time.

That said, we are planning to provide FR response graphs directly comparing OE to BSW Stage 1 speakers in the near future, which should answer a significant portion of your questions. Wish I could give info now and an exact date but unfortunately I can't. Slammed as I'm headed to SEMA and have lots to do before I head out, and tons going on at the company (new products coming down the pipe, working on resolving inventory issues, etc. etc.) that it is just not on the priority list.

They are not low-pass crossover filtered, but they are most decidedly high-pass crossover filtered within the amp, as you mention. Your comments are not clear in this area, but what you seem to be saying is that the L7 metal 4" sounds harsh on the top end (predictable), the HiFi mid less so since it's made of paper, not metal (also predictable), and your driver seems to have more rolloff built into it, eliminating a source of harshness from the sound.

Right -- hence the 150Hz and up comment preceding the "not crossed over" comment. But you're right, it's unclear. They are definitely high passed.

But the equalized signal out of the amp is different in L7 and non-L7 cars. The non-L7 cars have a huge peak in the signal at 1K. I have assumed that this was due to the "dead" nature of the driver at 1K. If your driver is better in an absolute sense at 1K, wouldn't it sound bad in a HiFi system?

It doesn't sound as good as in an L7 car, no, but it doesn't sound bad.

Unfortunately, we have to make compromises -- there's no way we can make different drivers for HiFi and L7 given current sales levels and make any money, and we can't release product if we can't make money from it. No way around that. So we have a solution that isn't as good as it could be, but still a great solution for many people, but not everyone.

However, that's not the whole story. We are also in development on an amplifier replacement that's intended to work with our HiFi Stage 1, so optimizing the HiFi drivers for the OEM amp reduces the performance of the amp upgrade w/o extra hardware, etc., something we don't want to do.