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Peavey's New Sp line


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I see Peavey has a new Sp2 out. Flyware, floor monitor angle,55lbs. I'm guessing this style goes down the sp line. Cut my teeth with peavey sp stuff years ago and its nice to see it take a change in the right direction. Odd not much if anything at their site but its in dealer stores.

 

Dookie

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Okay, I am confused. Lately it seems that Peavey's style is to announce a product that no one wants and maybe ship it two years later. Here we have a product that could actually be useful to me and it seems to be the biggest secret in the universe. This cab, though, reminds me greatly of the EU series. I wonder if Peavey rebadged some or something.

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Nice to see them finally emerging out of the spandex age ;)

 

Hartly Peavey is a pretty conservative fellow (ever since the "Decca" debacle in the 80's he's been a bit gun shy). I notice as of recent times (the last 5 years or so) they have jumped on board with the IPR amplifier line. Even though they had a fairly high tech commercial division (Media Matrix is pretty much an industry standard), I asked one of the engineers (around Y2k) when they were coming out with a digital board. He replied "not in the foreseeable future". Maybe this philosophy is changing.

 

I like Peavey products a lot because most of their design & build quality vs price is outstanding. Comparable with Yamaha (IMO better in speaker design but less so with electronics). I hope this trend continues.

 

An afterthought - being an all American company, the strong dollar must be hurting their export business.

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don't know how new this is but I've been eyeballing this little mixer...Not to sure about that auto tune thingy...but blue tooth would be nice in a pinch and a usb stick reader...

 

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PV10AT?adpos=1o3&creative=55674776881&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=Cj0KEQiA0sq2BRDRt6Scrqj71vQBEiQAg5bj06W2ru8_3MHY0LX9e2LfLlX7hBHT8g3tQ7aOPW1qtPcaApby8P8HAQ

 

 

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Okay' date=' I am confused. Lately it seems that Peavey's style is to announce a product that no one wants and maybe ship it two years later. Here we have a product that could actually be useful to me and it seems to be the biggest secret in the universe. This cab, though, reminds me greatly of the EU series. I wonder if Peavey rebadged some or something. [/quote']

 

I have to agree....Peavey has been late to the game so many times, and missed it entirely a few times as well. I can understand a conservative approach, but that also implies actually going to market with an announced product. And yes, I know about parts sourcing problems that caused some of this, but how is it others manage to put a production model on the market?

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I can address that somewhat without giving away and trade secrets. If you are talking about the IPR amps, I was the original product manager for that project. The problem was that the manufacturer of a chip didn't meet their delivery promises and then when they finally did, the chip didn't perform up to its promises. Other manufacturers did use the chip, but their designs didn't fully optimize the amp's circuits the way Peavey engineers did (a much more efficient design with a much smaller parts count) so they were able to release products before Peavey felt the chip was fully reliable. Even then, they couldn't get enough parts delivered to meet demands.

 

With some digital products (FX mixers and VSX DSP units) ... They were also developed a year and a half before the scheduled Blackfin DSP chip was delivered. When the chip again was delivered late it only ended up with about 80% of the promised horsepower so a lot of planned features had to be pulled out. That takes more development time.

 

New products are frequently shown at NAMM and then never delivered because they didn't receive enough interest that they could be sold in high enough quantities to keep the projected prices. People don't realize that in order to sell a speaker system at say $500 you will likely have to sell 600-1000 per month. If you can only sell 50 a month then that same product may become $12-1500. At that point you have to decide to shoot it in the head.

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I can address that somewhat without giving away and trade secrets. If you are talking about the IPR amps, I was the original product manager for that project. The problem was that the manufacturer of a chip didn't meet their delivery promises and then when they finally did, the chip didn't perform up to its promises. Other manufacturers did use the chip, but their designs didn't fully optimize the amp's circuits the way Peavey engineers did (a much more efficient design with a much smaller parts count) so they were able to release products before Peavey felt the chip was fully reliable. Even then, they couldn't get enough parts delivered to meet demands.

 

With some digital products (FX mixers and VSX DSP units) ... They were also developed a year and a half before the scheduled Blackfin DSP chip was delivered. When the chip again was delivered late it only ended up with about 80% of the promised horsepower so a lot of planned features had to be pulled out. That takes more development time.

 

New products are frequently shown at NAMM and then never delivered because they didn't receive enough interest that they could be sold in high enough quantities to keep the projected prices. People don't realize that in order to sell a speaker system at say $500 you will likely have to sell 600-1000 per month. If you can only sell 50 a month then that same product may become $12-1500. At that point you have to decide to shoot it in the head.

 

 

 

Were you ordered/pressured to go ahead with the project even though all you had were specs?

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Not certain exactly what you are asking. When you are designing a new product you are probably looking over a 6 year+ time period. So if you are designing a project and you don't want the technology to be old before you first roll it out you look to the manufacturer's new offerings. they usually end up furnishing you with partially working chips and they come back ever couple of months with a more fully loaded chip. But you are basing your forecast based on their forecast and if they slip so do you. The problem was the Blackfin chips that they never could make it do what their intended design intended. so you are now a year into engineering and then find out you won't get what you actually planned with.

 

But there is no stop sign until there is a stop sign.

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Not certain exactly what you are asking. When you are designing a new product you are probably looking over a 6 year+ time period. So if you are designing a project and you don't want the technology to be old before you first roll it out you look to the manufacturer's new offerings. they usually end up furnishing you with partially working chips and they come back ever couple of months with a more fully loaded chip. But you are basing your forecast based on their forecast and if they slip so do you. The problem was the Blackfin chips that they never could make it do what their intended design intended. so you are now a year into engineering and then find out you won't get what you actually planned with.

 

But there is no stop sign until there is a stop sign.

 

I'll clarify. One year into a 6-year+ development cycle the vendor can't deliver what they "forecast" (very apt, as it's a bit too much like predicting the weather). At that point, I'd imagine someone had to make the decision to continue, knowing the chip may never materialize, or to halt development until a working chip could be produced. I was asking whether the decision to continue was yours or made for you by your bosses. I'd imagine this would have been Hartley's "buck stops here" choice, but curious whether he delegated such authority.

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Just to clarify, the 6year cycle breaks down to 2 years of development and 4 years of sales cycle before end of life (in most cases).

 

On these projects it would have been my decision. But in these cases you never get a clear message that the manufacturer cannot deliver. More likely you get a message that they will be late on their delivery by say 3 months. Then after those three months pass you hear it will be 60 more days. Then after 60 days they deliver something that mostly works but doesn't completely work. It likely will improve years into production and you may be able to improve your product with time, especially if all that is required are software revisions.

 

The actual decision process goes something like this ... You start a project assuming you are designing a product that will sell for a certain price that will return a certain profit. And that product must do say 10 things and might do 10 more things when it is delivered at rev 1.0. So if some of the items on the maybe list fall off you still go ahead with the project but if any of the 10 items from the must list cannot be provided or the cost to provide them changes (much) you then either make the decision to delay delivery or kill the project.

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I do have to give Kudos to Peavey for leading the way on lower priced lightweight power amps. Just today I replaced a couple of early production IPR1600's that have always worked great - I needed to free up some space so swapped in a four channel NU4-6000. Crazy deal - a refurb straight from Behringer's Las Vegas repair facility for $244 shipped w/full warranty. Too bad Peavey doesn't make a four channel :( .

 

Anybody want an IPR1600 or two cheap? I should probably sell my IPR3000 too...

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The alternative to this process is to use established and proven technology in more unique and creative ways. There is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat...

 

You mean ride a horse? ;)

 

The new chip reduced the parts count by over 300 pieces and the BOM cost by half. Also it's the best sounding amp they ever built.

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What I mean is to wait until there is better data on new parts. The risk of being the first adopter s very high. I find that usually stepping back and keeping an eye on the progression of such promises is a better strategy because you have a better gauge between real product and well intentilned but empty promises. Doesn't matter how good the technology is if it's nothing but vapor ware. There are several notable companies in our industry that seem to consistently introduce products that either take forever to come to market, of die on the vine. When this becomes a pattern, customers can be expected to question the development process.

 

Often, there are multiple ways to accomplish these designs, a good engineer will avoid unproven, or undeliverable parts in order to meet introduction deadlines. They will also tend to skip over unproven technology that has shown performance or reliability issues during the development stages.

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The rewards of being an early adopter are likewise very high and can be game changing. Maybe you don't work with a lot of DSP, but if you base your designs on tested devices your new product will be outdated before it comes to market and your competitors will eat your lunch.

 

In the case of IPR amps, the FCS was almost 6 years after the first beta tests and I don't think there were any introductions until there were (mostly) working samples. Unfortunately in this case the manufacturer went back on their promise to deliver production quantities. That's a chance you always take to be on the cutting edge.

 

I've never worked where these decisions were made by the engineers however.

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Hopefully this discussion shines some light on the risks and problems faced by manufacturers today. It's a shame we have to deal with technology that changes too fast to even make a reasonable decision on how to design the products that use it. "Designed to fail" takes on an entirely new meaning, as no matter how well meaning you are, you're at the whim of someone else's ability to deliver.

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I have worked with DSPs, and I made my decisions based on actual deliverable products that fit the design goals (including user interface) established and formulated knowing the potential of actual deliverable platforms. I specifically avoided the promises of a really nice looking device by Crystal Semi because there were enough warning signs present to scare the s*%t out of me, but it was a really slick looking part. Ultimately, it was essentially vaporware though they did deliver to a few customers after they hiked the cost by a factor of two. I've only been burned once looking seriously at a product like that, learned my lesson big time. My only other scare was when Alesis went bankrupt, but the part was very real and we had secured adequate working quantities because of a good working relationship with engineers (not marketing folks) within the company and got good information about what was happening rather than marketing spin, which would have been disastrous.

 

Regarding the early IR chipsets, as those came from their PWM motor drive control division, I was familiar enough with the delivery challenges to be very wary of promises that were being made as they weren't being kept in the industrial products side, and the other promising supplier of class D parts at the time (Tripath), was so mired in debt and financial instability that it would have been irresponsible to recommend these parts for any commercial design. Turns out they went ti&&ies up and got reformulated, though some products are shipping, many promised solutions never made it to hardware.

 

Being a GOOD engineer means investigating the companies behind the technology being specified, investigating their financials, their track record of deliveries, reliability metrics, and making a more "big picture" choice. Ultimately, for our needs, IcePower was so far and away the clear cut winner by all accounts that the decision was easy for me on class D. I had also had years of successful experiences with them designing pro audio based products so I knew they were not blowing smoke up my butt. It's easy for a vendor to talk the talk but walking the walk is harder than it seems.

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The alternative to this process is to use established and proven technology in more unique and creative ways. There is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat...

This!!

 

I prohibit the use of any chip that is not in the market in volume and has good availability from multiple sources. I discourage the use of any chip that hasn't had at least one revision ;)

 

Sure, faster and more feature rich hardware is an easy way to have your product out-perform your competitions products; however, it has been my experience that you can be creative in the use of the hardware and accomplish amazing things.

 

.... note, I refrained from stating that you can always do just as good with clever ideas as you can with more competent hardware. This isn't always the case.

 

Still, Don's correct in that sometimes new chips allow you to reduce your BOM and assembly cost substantially. When you are talking about high volume products, unit cost is a HUGE consideration.

 

Unit cost on the products I design is ..... less important than them being 100% reliable ..... and the product being delivered on time. Note, it isn't "unimportant" either.

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This!!

 

I prohibit the use of any chip that is not in the market in volume and has good availability from multiple sources. I discourage the use of any chip that hasn't had at least one revision ;)

 

I know where you can get a bunch of Intel 486 chips ;)

 

The bet is on the manufacturer's side. Consumers can't possible lose a thing. Companies shoot projects in the head before their release all the time for one setback or another. But if you want to be revolutionary you have to take chances. Although a company tends to split the risk across their entire offerings.

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I know where you can get a bunch of Intel 486 chips ;)

 

The bet is on the manufacturer's side. Consumers can't possible lose a thing. Companies shoot projects in the head before their release all the time for one setback or another. But if you want to be revolutionary you have to take chances. Although a company tends to split the risk across their entire offerings.

 

Consumer lose when a product is planned and partially developed and then "shot in the head". They lose by having to pay more for whatever does make it to market, as those products have to make up the losses incurred by the failed project. No dollar goes unaccounted for, and consumers ultimately pay for everything...unless you go out of business.

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So they would win by getting a product that doesn't work? ;)

 

I would like a Star Trek transporter but they shot it in the head and so I'll just have to drive my car for now. You start out with big plans. But sometimes the truth is, you can't get there from here.

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So they would win by getting a product that doesn't work? ;)

 

I would like a Star Trek transporter but they shot it in the head and so I'll just have to drive my car for now. You start out with big plans. But sometimes the truth is, you can't get there from here.

 

That's not what I said at all. You said, "consumers can't possibly lose a thing" if a project goes tits-up. I pointed out the financial loss of a doomed project increases the price of whatever the company does sell. That's a loss.

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