As you get more and more technical the object moves further and further away from you. We are dealing in the conceptual now and have been. This is maybe where I should have started. We are taking all the components inside the 3805 and using them to make a multi-zone/source receiver. You have an incredible amount of money being spent in switching all those inputs to all those output regardless of them being tape out, audio portion of the video out, video ins and outs, zone out, S-VHS in and out, composite ins and outs, component ins and outs, multi-channel audio in - I admit some are passive. So totals those all up and divide by 2 - you have the pairs of possible ins and out. Now divide that number by 2 again - you have the number of possible in and outs that are switched but way over the 6x6 for the CAV6.6. You do have remote level control (IR) over all the 7.1 channels the protocol is immaterial it could be what ever Denon wanted to program it with. Now you have a lot of money in DSP that we no longer need because we're using all this STUFF to make a multi-zone/source receiver so this gets applies to the switching for the matrix.

Does this help?

All my point is is that custom stuff (controllers) are more expensive than they could be for the same qualtiy. If the price came down (margins stay the same) we would sell more. And the increase in volume would more than make up for the drop in the price of the control pre-amp because we would be selling the difference in speakers and labor not switches.

Marc

Oh, yes that does help (blush)

As the late Gilda Radner’s SNL character Rosannadanna would say……………………”oh, that’s very different – Nevermind!”


Sorry my bad. As far as the conceptual I totally understand. Your premise seems to be logical and to many people it is not as obvious as to why products cost the way they do. I will try to explain a little and maybe it can shed some light on this topic.

In the Cedia market a manufacture such as Niles sells around 320 ZR-4630 multi zone receivers a month, or just shy of 4000 units a year. Niles sells more of these multi-zone units per year than Russound (CAV6.6) and Sonance (Harbor) combined. Crestron now sells just over 2500 Pad8’s a year.
In the Cedia Market these are the big hitters, they have more than 80% of the total market share for distributed audio systems.

However now look at the Denon receiver. Denon would discontinue any product that only sold 4000 units. The quantities in the custom market are a little small and the ROI for large AV companies make it not as attractive. Add in the fact that there is more technical support involved with multi-room and you can see why they are not really interested.

Inside these receivers they use SOC solutions. These “systems on Chip” are very specific. This is how Denon can build a 3805 and retail it for only $1100.00. In other words you can not change what the silicon does. You may ask why the distributed audio companies don’t use SOC solutions for the matrix switchers. The answer goes back to the first point. The market is not large enough yet for the ROI to make sense. It takes about 12 months and $100,000.00 to $200,000.00 to produce the silicon.

The other problem is time and requirements. 12 months may not seem like a long time but today in an Ethernet world that is a very long time and while company A is working on the SOC, investing a lot of money, company B has already changed the requirements and potentially moved the bar higher than company A’s SOC can produce, so the risk is very high. Companies like Denon mitigate these risks by cross population. They use parts in many different models and try to re use many items such as power supplies and amplifier designs.

The way companies can change this is by either bringing to the table something totally new and or a completely different way of accomplishing the same job. A good example of this is what Netstreams has done with distributed audio. In this system they do not use any muxing so unlike the Russound, Niles, Sonance, or Crestron they do not distribute analog signals through matrix switchers.

You have companies such as Oxmoor who took the old CEDIA THETA approach. In the Zon system they still use a matrix switcher, but instead of routing analog audio through the matrix they have used the 1802 ADC (24 bit Analog to Digital Converter) to first convert the analog audio to digital and then route the digital signal around and through the matrix switch. While this approach is not really new to most long time CEDIA dealers it is much better than the all analog methods used by Niles, Russound, Sonance, and Crestron.

So inside the Denon you have very specific parts that can only do very specific things. If Denon were to not look at the ROI (doubtful) and create a matrix switcher to compete with Niles and crew, they would run into the same cost problems. The reason Denon won’t do this is because of the new way to distribute audio and video signals via IP would make any analog method or even the plan for an analog or digital matrix switcher method obsolete before it was even completed.

Yes I know somebody will reply but, but what about Onkyo and Yamaha’s systems. What I would say is spec one in and try it. Yamaha’s new wall mounted controller is much better than the original but the processing weak components and the lack of external control and or controlling other system will prevent this system to be sold only by the Tweeter/Ultimate type dealers and for the DIY crowd. Onkyo has been out the longest and they use a proprietary method for the transmissions. Onkyo has struggled to gain market share, if you talk with Mark Weisenberg he will tell you they have struggled to make a real impact with the system.

Enjoy the Expo guys!

I'm glad we're on the same page and what your describing - the economy of scale - is what is hurting us and preventing us from reaching the masses. And the masses is what make your rich up until it becomes a commodity. When this stuff gets IP addressable we will begin IMHO to enter the commodity stage.

Good Post Cresnut. Like the economics of it.

Mike