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Unplanned obsolescence

Unplanned obsolescence

A few years ago, at least one set of conspiracy theorists were proved right. After the reunification of Germany, historians were sifting through the archives of the Osram factory in the former East Germany, and there in the records was the proof that a cartel of manufacturers deliberately stopped making light bulbs with a 2,500 hours lifespan in order to provide one that burned brighter, but only lasted 1,000 hours. This was the first recorded exercise in planned obsolescence. It wasn’t the last.

Manufacturers of all kinds struggled to create product demand that came with a quick replacement cycle. Most notably, American car manufacturers of the 1950s used incremental annual styling changes to inspire buyers to change their car on a yearly basis. It worked… for a while. Eventually financial downturns and the oil crisis in the 1970s made an annual replacement car impractical.

However, it is the telecommunications and computer industry that truly perfected planned obsolescence. We have become the willing agents of this, too, by happily buying minor variations on the theme of ‘tablet’, ‘smartphone’, or ‘laptop’, fuelled in part by regular downloaded free upgrades. When the time comes for the launch of a new smartphone, customers will happily buy the new model just in case the next round of software upgrades skip the previous model, and you are left with a dinosaur from the distant past of last year in your pocket.

This constant spiral of upgrades and new models used to have nothing whatsoever to do with good audio. We have products immune to planned obsolescence; the SME Series V tonearm, for example, has remained essentially unchanged since the mid 1980s, and the Klipschorn is only a couple of summers away from 70 years in continuous production. Even those brands with a reputation for changing product lines fast operate at glacial speeds compared with the telecoms and computer industries; brands like Audio Research and Musical Fidelity might have a new product or two every year, but in most cases hose products will stay in the catalogue for five years or more. And loudspeaker brands – even high-tech, electronics-filled loudspeaker brands like MartinLogan – don’t refresh the range with every season.

, Unplanned obsolescence

That’s changing. With the increased importance of the computer industry in all things consumer electronic, and the use of the smartphone and tablet computer in domestic music replay in the mainstream, audio now moves at a faster pace. This begins, naturally, with computer-side audio products (such as USB DACs), which change at a rate far faster than ever before. ‘Change’ here being a polite euphemism for “having a product life cycle about as long as it takes for milk to spoil”. But the infectious nature of such a rapidly churning sector of audio has meant shorter times between product changes have begun across the board. Where a product might have remained in the catalogue for eight years or more, now it’s five or six. This is still largely a function of the digital side of audio, but the ‘what have you done for me lately?’ effect of such radical changes in one side of audio has influence on the entire marketplace.

 

I’m not convinced these ever-shorter product life-cycles are a good thing. On the surface, it means that a buyer can always stay ahead of the curve, buying the latest model with the most current format support. But with this comes a significant hit on the resale values of older equipment; anyone trying to sell a ‘preloved’ DAC from a few years ago knows this all too well. Your state-of-the-art high-end converter from three years ago may well sound remarkable, and could even out-perform today’s best DSD-ready converters, but it’s hard to make it realise anything like a reasonable resale value, simply because it doesn’t support DSD. It doesn’t matter whether either you, or the prospective buyer own no DSD material, or have any intention of ever owning DSD material, it doesn’t do DSD and that makes it an almost worthless relic of a bygone age.

, Unplanned obsolescence

Conspiracy theorists believe DAC manufacturers trying to hoodwink the public into owning a new converter every few years, drive this demand for change. But I think the truth is more complex than it first seems. There are many manufacturers (including supposedly those scheming digital Black Hats) who are struggling to keep pace with the endless demand for the latest spec, which results in a lot of unsold products with the wrong set of tick boxes being left out in the cold. I suspect we have adopted the endless-upgrade mindset of the computer world.

Aside from streaming, audio is a small and mature market. We put on a good show, but what audio demonstrates is a team of a handful of people can make excellent products, but they are products for the long-haul. Although products generally improve from generation to generation, those generations involve often a number of man-years of an iterative process of designing, prototyping, listening, and modifying. If you are Apple developing a new audio chip in partnership with a manufacturer, you might have dozens, even hundreds of designers working together, so a product design process that might involve ten man-years of work might be complete in a few months. If, on the other hand, the same one man completed those ten man-years of work, you’d be lucky to see one product per decade. And if, 18 months into the life-span of that product, the world demands Version 2.0, the company might look forward to years without sales while the new model gets developed, even though the first version is still excellent.

If we seriously expect our tube power amps to be less than a few years old, we have to either expect there to be a whole bunch of new brands every few years, or learn that good things come to those who wait. Unfortunately, that statement seems not to have any meaning now.

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