I don't know anything about this particular case.
I've seen some pretty nasty stuff done in order to maximize profit... I don't want to be negative but there is a reason why these jobs attract a certain... profile... or if you can't "adapt" quickly, you're done.
Of course some small shops still exist when it comes to synths, especially in Europe where one manufacturer can make direct deals with European retailers, that's why the Eurorack module format is a thing. But these aren't "maximizing their profit". It's a scene that has loyal customers that are ready to pay a bit more for ethical purposes.
It's also a scene that has been using crowdfunding forever, before Kickstarter even existed.
Does the market tend to find "inefficient" areas and someone comes in and "maximize efficiency"? I think Behringer is trying to vacuum all revenue in that space...
Yes. Behringer, from the start, was always about copying other brands and offer products to a larger audience through low prices. They used to do so with results of questionable quality... but not anymore. Their output in the synthesizers department has been excellent: low prices, good quality, good sound. They still rip off other brands for 95% of their stuff though... there is absolutely no imagination there. They see what works well in the market, come with a much cheaper version with a different (or not so much) design and it's done. Latest release, a Moog rip-off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LADPPcaN0
I kind of wonder if this was an intentional decision for Behringer or if Moog trademarked their interface and thus forced Behringer to do something different?
Some of the very old synths that Behringer has been cloning were probably protected by utility patents that covered the electrical circuits, but those have long expired, and I think trademarks become unenforceable if your aren't actively selling a product that uses it anymore. I don't have any moral objection to cloning the old synths either -- our laws have mechanisms to grant inventors exclusive use of their ideas for a limited time, but when that expires it's part of the commons. That's a good thing. I do think it's gross though to clone a popular recent synth just because you can and because the original designer didn't file the right paperwork to stop other people from doing that.
There's a continuous flamewar on /r/synthesizers between the people who think Behringer is a detestable parasite and the people who think they're making high-quality analog synthesizers available to the masses in a way that they never have before. I think both camps are right to a degree. I will defend Behringer's right to use the stuff that's clearly in the public domain, but I also think they have no class. They do things that damage their reputation even when it wouldn't have required much effort not to.
(I'm not an IP lawyer, so don't take this as expert commentary.)
Right -- same as 7Artisans / TTArtisan lenses. Genuinely impressive, affordable products, combined with a notable and surprising lack of self-respect where external design is concerned. At some level a lens barrel is a lens barrel, and the "big" brands are converging in their design language anyway as is normal, but the sooner these cheaper brands develop a consistent design language, the better.
I’m glad Behringer made them look completely different from the originals, though I’m still not quite sure how I feel about them cloning synths that have been on the market less than a decade (as opposed to their typical cloning of 30+ year-old synths). The compact format and addition of MIDI are meaningful changes, at least, and there is something to be said for making the entire trio accessible for about the price of one of the Moogs.
moog is selling very generic circuits, there's no intellectual property at stake, so rip off is I think is quite an exaggeration. The original moog pioneered the space, in less than two decades lost popularity in the face of newer ideas from competitors, and sold out to a big company that milked the brand name for awhile and also wanted to shut it down. The original founder got the rights back and basically pulled a Harley Davidson, made a nostalgic brand with premium pricing, "made in USA", employee ownership, etc.
There's a huge industry of competing synths, and moog's strategy of sitting on big fat brand margins gave them a cushion to old school, but also kept their nice sounding products out of the hands of young musicians. Young musicians getting started are the quintessential "starving artists". Behringer said "hey, these are generic circuits (not much more complicated than logic gates) and tons of people who can't afford them would like to use them. Modern scaled factory manufacture can bring them to the masses" and as a result they are very popular.
laying out the knobs in similar order? I mean, it's File-Edit-View and Cut-Copy-Paste, and laid out like the 6 strings of a guitar...
moog invented the ladder filter, it was amazing and unique, they patented it and enforced the patent. That was 50 years ago, the patent has expired.
This is a bit condescending. There’s much more nuance, variation, experimentation in synthesizer interfaces then what your comment suggests.
We are basically talking about the user interface, not the underlying synthesis engine/implementation. There is quite a bit of variety among synth interfaces that otherwise follow the standard subtractive synth mechanism of producing sound.
For a trivial example, is it a problem if a silverware company is selling spoons, forks and knives that look like all other spoons, forks and knives? With the intellectual property rights gone, many companies create a business around being efficient at production, distribution and marketing, which are not easy things to be good at!
Another example... We don't need a social media crypto cloud document editor, we need great, inexpensive, fast, polished, standard document editors.
Let's end this idea that everybody needs to be always imagining new things. Innovation is obviously good, but excelling at building things that leverage humanity's collective, public-domain intellectual property is also great.
Behringer are hit and miss on this. They killed it with their Minimoog clones - very, very close to the real hardware - but not so much with some of their later efforts.
I have their Pro-One and their K2 and both lack the character and warmth of the originals. They sound like clones.
The P800, Solina and Kat all seem very good though.
People who accuse Behringer of cloning are missing the point.
They used to literally copy circuit traces and component BOMs. That's just outright theft. But they don't do that now.
The recent synths are clones in name only. They keep the panel graphics and functions but reimplement updates of the original circuits with SMD parts on new board layouts using a new industrial supply chain.
They have a deliberate policy of building reusable platforms so the development costs can be spread across multiple products.
All of that is innovative, and there's a lot more involved than copying an old circuit.
There is a psychopathic edge - like cloning MI's Plaits, which many suspect helped push Émilie out of the business, to everyone's loss. But it's not necessarily more psychopathic than (say) Roland's approach, which is to keep reselling versions of the same technology - often with the same samples - over and over at cash-grab prices for a couple of decades.
No they're not... at least on the clones I have, they nailed it. And yes I have the originals.
It's like people who say that Arturia's VSTs are exactly like the real thing - to which I can only say "Huh???"
Thats quite some... BS. Gillet intented to exit the audio hardware industry in search of different, greener pastures already way before Brains was released. Also MI code is public, so 'cloning' is a stretch. MI designs were and are being produced by multiple shops.
Btw: i hope not just a handful people know the story about Dave Smith fucking over Dave Rossum by one-sidedly deciding to stop payments for E-MUs licensed poly keybed tech:
"But then Sequential Circuits had decided they were no longer going to pay us royalties for the Prophet 5. We called our lawyers, and though we would probably win a lawsuit against them, it would be expensive. The Audity would take several years to produce the kind of revenue we needed for that – could we come up with another product quickly? The Emulator was about to be born."
EMU designed and patented a digitally scanned polyphonic keyboard that was licensed by both Oberheim for the Oberheim 4-Voice and 8-Voice synthesizers and by Sequential Circuits for the Prophet 5.
Source: https://www.amazona.de/interview-dave-rossum-e-mu-part-two-e...
Another thing is that Boog Moog didn't "invent the Theremin or so", he got a foothold by selling (dare to say 'unlicensed'?) kits based on another dudes' invention. Has he ever knowingly paid tribute to Lew Thermen?
I know the designs are open source and produced elsewhere, but it's not unreasonable to wonder if Brains was what finally pushed her over the edge.
https://www.gearnews.com/mutable-instruments-no-new-modules-...
Yes, Gillet has a history announcing ceasing development and production. Just read 'Have we been here before?', and also the last comment.
I bet people already asked Gillet directly if B's announcement contributed. I don't know, a) i don't care about vendor / personality cults, and b) their forums are gone.
Peter Van Hoesen has a really good review on YT about one of their Moog clones. He knows his shit and concludes it's overall pretty great.
I wonder who at Behringer was behind this crazy pivot. Can't recall seeing anything like it in any other industry.
The one I heard (and love because it's true) is that business is the art of ripping someone off without pissing them off.
And for the ones still naive to not really understand what I mean: "Costs of labor", "handling fees", and similar line items in an invoice are merely an inverse reflection of how generous the guy billing you feels at that moment.
That’s a favorite of mine. Written right after the attacks. But I wonder why he delisted it while still hosting the essay to make it hard to find but still accessible
https://www.paulgraham.com/hijack.html
Paul Graham compares the hijacking of an airplane to a buffer overflow attack.
He doesn't claim that tools for writing more secure computer programs could prevent terrorists from hijacking a plane.
He proposes the idea that some similar reasoning can be applied to preventing hijackings. It's not enough to monitor who gets on the airplane carrying what, but to separate the cockpit space from the passenger space.
I don't think his point is very good because array overruns in a heap can be exploitable. Lisps (and other kinds of run-times) don't necessarily separate code from data in their heaps.
The best kind of mean for todays environment seems to be Machiavellian coated in a superficial gloss of magnanimity via stuff like effective altruism, longtermism, or wokewashing.
My thesis is that malicious behavior by executives is in some large percentage of cases not intentional but uncontrolled profit-seeking behavior by the ant-heap that is their organization.
Otherwise you have the "Just following orders" excuse.
This isn't an academic issue. Corporate harms are pervasive, very real, and hugely destructive to the economy and to the well-being of (at least) hundreds of millions.
> Jessica and I have always worked hard to teach our kids not to be mean.
I teach my son to be friendly.
The startup delivered the products and met the goals -just in time for Gibson to go bankrupt.
Inside Gibson there was endless corporate infighting. - an executive that was championing the acquisition of the startup was fired - the support was basically nonexistant afterwards (no marketing, nothing)
The best thing that Gibson has done recently has been to unify the Epiphone (their budget brand) line up with their lineup, and Epiphone’s quality has been a lot better since then in my experience. Now you can buy a relatively cheap Epiphone, slap some good aftermarket pickups in it, and have a really great Gibson-style guitar for a lot less than a Gibson.
This seems extremely straight forward to sue against? Basically the claim is either never paid for specific sales (very easy to win) or stated number of sales is lower than expected (requires lots of disclosure).
OR, maybe he did win in court and they simply ignored the court order?
"the Tolkien estate sued New Line, claiming that their contract entitled them to 7.5% of the gross receipts of the $6 billion hit.[23] According to New Line's accounts, the trilogy made "horrendous losses" and no profit at all."
I think most people would find it surprising that both Return of the Jedi and the Lord of the Rings movies failed to make a profit?
The fact that the trilogy was supposedly unprofitable shouldn't be relevant.
"maybe he did win in court and they simply ignored the court order" No, that doesn't happen in countries with solid legal systems, if it's a corporate defendant with easily identifiable assets.
This is just the nature of capitalism. The more capital you have, the more leverage you have.
The people who actually create the product are always at a disadvantage compared to those who own the means of that production.
You can try pooling resources together to negotiate collectively (unions), but without government intervention to put a thumb on the scale to try to even the playing field for unions vs corporations, even that would usually end poorly for the people who produce the actual product (see: union busting, the Pinkertons, etc.). Historically, they may actually even straight up just kill you for trying.
Capital also equals political power (even moreso since Citizens United), and corporations use that power to do everything they can to prevent that balance from tipping any direction but theirs.
right, so "extremely straight forward". You seem to think that "giving up a lot of money" somehow invalidates it being "straight forward".
Also, I didn't didn't say it was easy (hence the "requires lots of disclosure" actually i mean discovery so thanks on that correction) - it is definitely not. But it is straight forward and very well defined. Royalty law is similar to family law in that there are a LOT of cases with lots of lawyers specializing in this. If you believe his case is special, I assure it, it is not.
Straight forward and easy are not the same things.
Perhaps we're using different terminology. I concede you are consistently writing it as two words, so maybe you don't actually mean the English word "straightforward."
Have a nice day.
A lot of companies start small by people who like what they do. It’s the business leader or visionary who sees the future and how to apply it on the larger scale usually leaving the loyalty and honor behind and doing what’s best for them and their company.
[1]: Interview with Jim Basille: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_VDXLJA8dA
[2]: ex-blackberry employee reviews film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yuqdr_1iRg
> Roger Linn, who made many ground-breaking drum machines in the '80s before creating the MPC 60 for Akai, has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews.
Is it absolutely necessary to fuck people over to get to the top? Would love to get some counterexamples.