I have no doubt that Paul and his team will release the AirLens when they know that is will set the performance bar higher, not match it or miss it completely.
And that’s if they can acquire the parts they need, these are trying times when it comes to continuous flow manufacturing.
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I am afraid you missed the point. But this is OK, it is not significant, merely an analogy.
Marketing is usually the responsibility of regional distributors and occasionally dealers. They will not spend money on marketing a product that they cannot deliver.
One reason why new products are often not pre-announced is because it deceases the value/sales of existing products. Here in the UK the price of the DSD DAC fell from about £6,000 to £3,800 after the Mk2 DAC was announced, and Mk2 then took about 2 years to arrive.
PS Audio sometimes market products from the drawing board stage, like their speakers, which were scrapped several times. I was in the market for a server and speakers when PS Audio were developing and marketing them. I bought those products in February 2019 and December 2020.
The worst is to announce something and completely drop it. Paul was saying PSA would develop a Roon-killer and at one point that he was using the Octave music software in his music room, and then the project was abandoned.
Fortunately PSA is a small business and the reputational damage is very limited, but as a former and potential customer my confidence is severely eroded. The FR20 would have been on my radar, they metallic grey is exactly what we wanted, but they have arrived 2 years too late.
Thanks for the understanding. These are trying times indeed. We have enough parts for close to 100 AirLens but decided not to release it until we can assure our customers of a reasonably steady supply. This parts shortage issue isn’t going away any time soon.,
For products that we have released, like the MK2, we did so only after having captured and hoarded enough parts to guarantee we can fill orders. That’s really hard on a company’s cash reserves but it’s what today’s marketplace demands. We are struggling through it.
Again, thank you for your patience and understanding.
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A massive understatement, certainly.
The “Coming Soon” teasers you see these days usually don’t tell you what the product is. The idea is to generate interest and expectation. The product has to be deliverable before doing that.
With the AirLens, PSA have done the opposite, tell you what the product is but not been able to deliver it.
I can’t think of any specific products that were pre-announced well ahead of time. One of the bigger mess-ups has been the Innuos Pulse range, they were launched at Munich in mid-2022 as finished demonstrable products and have since have production issues. Only the Pulse Mini is available. I was interested in the Pulsar, but have now lost interest and spent my money elsewhere.
This may be a cultural thing.
There are many products which are specifically marketed and known in the States before the product is available for purchase. It builds interest and demand for the product, be it an automobile, a television, even a house.
(It is common in the States for a house sale to start with a teaser on the Multiple Listing Service with a picture of the front of the house and a basic description under the caption “Coming Soon”. This generates interest and anticipation for when the house actually is available on the market, replete with dozens of pictures inside and out, open house showings, etc.)
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Makes sense, there’s no other choice now.
Housebuilding is not dissimilar in the UK. I’ve worked in the field over the years and have an interest in a US housebuilding business. If you can get your customers to pay for a third of the development cost, it makes a big difference.
The parts issue is apparently much worse for importers compared to those able to purchase parts domestically in the Far East, and at volume, which is much of the audio industry.
I’ve mentioned before the example of Devialet, who manufacture in France, and use components with minimum order quantities sometimes of 50,000 or more. Their business plan developed to produce high-volume units (Phantom) to give them parts availability for low-volume units (Expert). The other common approach is modular design, so different products are using the same components and sub-assemblies.
This is not exactly new. One of the main design criteria of QUAD solid state amplifiers in the 1970s onwards was to get high quality from cheap and readily available parts, which has worked for 50 years.
QUAD developed streaming software, I went to a demo, and they then scrapped it, so PS Audio are not alone!
I know of two audio tech companies that are smaller than PS Audio ( I will not give out their names ). Both have built prototypes and have thoroughly tested the prototypes to validate their designs. Neither company can launch their new designs because of parts supply issues. Both are holding inventory of the parts they can obtain now at great financial risk to these small companies. Anyone who thinks the parts supply chain problems are not significant is simply not in touch with the reality of this situation.
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As an FYI, “coming soon” house sale listings are for existing homes sold by the current homeowner; that is, nothing to do with construction.
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Apple does this on almost everything.
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COMING SOON: Intelligent, well-informed PSA Forum member speculation on PSA AirLens, et al.
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Indeed they do, but when they announce a new product line, as they did two weeks ago, they give a full specification, pricing and availability date for each territory.
In this case, it was 1 week (USA) or 2 weeks (elsewhere) after the announcement.
Well, that will be a nice change of pace.
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No sure how private sales are relevant how businesses trail products. “Coming soon” pre-sales off plan is common in residential development around the world, often as vital to financing as key components are to making an audio product. This happens in the USA as I’m involved in one!
The main audio product in my house was a new product launched following blanket secrecy. It had been in development for 5 years and absolutely nothing leaked. My son had been working for the company for over a year and I had no idea what he was doing or even that he was working on an audio product. They did a launch and press blitz, with the product available to buy from day 1.
I’ve worked on other product launches, not dissimilar, recently one in cosmetics where the product has to be marketed to distributors (department stores etc.), but done in complete secrecy.
Of course it’s common in audio to launch at trade shows as you get maximum coverage at lowest cost. The big UK show is in a few weeks and there are plenty of announcements, some of specific products, some like REL who are launching 10 new products (but no more details).
https://www.bristolshow.co.uk/news/
Of course things appear at shows that never get produced, or get delayed.
It was simply an answer to your query:
I assume you understand at this point.
With enough to deliver 100 units, it would be interesting to release 50 or so for beta testing.
Unless:
- That’s already happened, and I wasn’t selected
. - A redesign is underway using parts more readily available.
- A redesign is underway that includes an SPF module for either RJ45 and Fiber, and USB output along with I²S. <— My personal hope.
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I’m thinking it’s choice #2, Vince, as I was asked if I’d like to be a beta tester for the AL during a phone call with PSA in December. So far no AL beta. Of course they may have forgotten about me…
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I agree fibre should be far more prevalent. I’ve used it for years. Mine is powered by a SotM battery device, unfortunately after 5 years I had to get replacement rechargeable batteries shipped from S Korea.
Melco use SFP, unfortunately their UK division decided to package $100 of converters and SFP dongles with a cable and SMPS as an audiophile package for $500+.
I have a Zyxel switch for my AV that cost $40 and apparently has the same insides as the EE8/Silent Angel/etc. $600 unit.
Don’t get me started on audiophile ethernet cables. There seems to be a lot of fooey with ethernet data.