I appreciate the spirited discussion here, and I thought that as the owner of Sonicweld and designer of the Diverter perhaps my perspective might be of interest. This is my first post here, and I apologize that it is so lengthy. My intent isn’t to use this as free ad copy, but to offer my sincere thoughts about some of the issues raised.
Every product is by definition the incarnation of a designer’s philosophy and values. I occasionally encounter suspicion or even derision of my designs because they have a certain look and style - clearly, I place a high value on the product’s design and aesthetics. There are some here who seem to feel this is something to be ashamed of, apparently because it represents some sort of industry-wide conspiracy to defraud ignorant and gullible customers. I confess to taking umbrage at this, at least in the case of my own products. I can’t understand how high design - even art - somehow precludes the functional core of the device from being meticulously and innovatively engineered. To me, it does not follow that something made to look terrific necessarily means that I haphazardly stuffed the interior with $20 worth of garden-variety, “random” parts and am laughing all the way to the bank. Performance of my products is first and foremost in my mind, but I can’t conceive of how it makes me a lesser (or dishonest) designer to care enough and have the skill to enrobe what I design in what I hope is a striking and functional piece of industrial art.
In my experience, the criticism of beautifully-made tech is unique to high-end audio, and I find it rather odd. It’s not that I can’t see any reasons for it, which I discuss below, just that the core assumption is completely counterintuitive to me. For instance, I’ve never seen anyone at a car enthusiast forum speculate that the engine in a Bugatti Veyron must be a piece of trash simply because the exterior of the vehicle looks cool. To me, it seems far more likely that a designer who took the time and care to come up with an innovative and well-made outer package would also exercise similar judgment and skill in executing whatever is found on the inside.
The chassis of the Diverter took over a dozen attempts and several weeks to perfect. It required specialized tooling, toolholders, and fixtures, all at significant expense. Each chassis requires six set-ups in the CNC machine, and I had to write and perfect twelve programs for the whole procedure. Why would I take the time and care to make something as involved as this, and not give at least equal weight to what goes into it? I find the idea to be truly bizarre. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to puzzle through where people might be coming from.
Perhaps this community belief can be attributed in part to a legitimate societal mistrust of the beautiful, because beauty often masks some kind of deception. Or rather, beauty is frequently exploited by those with some nefarious or selfish agenda. We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the attractive but vacuous person; the handsome sociopath; the suave but ultimately self-aggrandizing salesman.
I am aware that there have been a number of forum exposés of certain “high-end” audio products which feature a seductively attractive chassis or enclosure, but are revealed to contain cheap, low-grade, off-the-shelf electronics. Occasionally the parts or assemblies even seem to have been harvested from some consumer-grade mass market product! I’ve seen more than a few of these myself, and if anything I surmise I react with more anger than most of you do, because it cheapens the overall high-end audio brand and violates the collective trust in enthusiast-produced products. I can assure you that there’s nothing like this going on in the Diverter, but of course many of you might not take that assertion at face value. After all, I
am a manufacturer, so I have an inherent agenda: to generate a profit. That should be obvious, but my driving force is passion about my product, not simply a desire to profit from it. I think this is descriptive of most people in this business. If I simply wanted to make money, I would have pursued a different profession. Believe me, there are easier ways to make a living. There are certainly shysters in the industry whose MO seems to be to build some dingus from prosaic and inexpensive ingredients, make wild and fantastic claims about it, and charge an inordinate amount for it. I’m not that guy.
Perhaps the suspicion of pretty boxes comes from the understanding that most designers work under tight budget constraints, and if the exterior is
rad... well then, they must have blown all their budget on the package and left nothing for the guts, right? Maybe that’s true in the world of big corporate design, but I don’t operate under such limitations. I’m the industrial designer, engineer, CNC programmer/operator, assembler, inspector, and so forth. Of course I don’t have unlimited financial resources to design whatever I want (just received notice that I won the UK lottery, so hoping this will change soon
), but when I approach a new project, I map out what I’m aiming to accomplish, design it, and set the price afterwards. Naturally I have at least a vague price target or idea of where I see the product being positioned in the market, but I own the business and am ultimately free to create whatever I like. I can spend just as much (in the case of the Diverter, more!) on the electronics as I can on the housing - where’s the exclusivity clause that mandates
either the chassis
or the electronics inside can be great, but not both?
So what are you paying for when you buy the Diverter? Aside from obvious, pat answers like sound quality, pride of ownership, build integrity, reliability, or performance, I think I’d say “implementation.” I don’t claim any quantum tunneling effects or other sorcery are going on in the Diverter. There’s very little new under the sun. What is of value there is the way I’ve done it, the care with which it is executed, the attention to the details. The details are expensive to address and require many design cycles. If you're happy with the jittery, non-isolated, incorrect voltage S/PDIF output from the impedance-mismatched connector on your motherboard, by all means use that. Yes, it works, and it's free. It might even sound okay. The Diverter isn't about merely working; its about giving the best performance possible, and that is generally an expensive proposition.
In reflecting on what has influenced me as a designer, I can think of several things: the wonderment of wandering about art galleries, the feel of a well-made tool in my hands, the amazement I felt when I saw an oscilloscope for the first time as a child. But probably more than anything else, I would say I was influenced by the moon shot space program and the remarkable engineering that came as a result of it. Can any card-carrying tech geek claim that the F1 booster engine used on the Saturn V isn’t a gorgeous and awe-inspiring example of the form-follows-function design philosophy? It would be inconceivable to claim that the designers of such a machine were engaged in some kind of ruse, that the engineering was less than genuine and first-class, simply because the result ended up looking trick. Granted, I’m not making rocket parts, but that same kind of authenticity is what I strive for in my designs. I want anyone who sees or picks up something I made to feel reassured that the interior received as much attention as the exterior. I concede that modern cynicism might make this a rather utopian and perhaps naive ideal, but it’s my abiding hope.
I freely admit - with pride, in fact - that I often add some external design features that have no audio-specific function. They simply appeal to the senses. I do not apologize for this or feel any shame in it, nor would I expect that any designer who sincerely practices their art would. This being said, the design of the Diverter, both electronically and mechanically, was all about function first. In the scheme of product development, the aesthetic icing on the cake is a blip compared to the overall engineering. But if you’re absolutely averse to paying for such features - and yes, of course they cost something to produce! - vive la différence; there is a veritable cornucopia of alternative products that espouse a utilitarian design philosophy. Or, you can throw together your own design on a piece of perfboard and forget the chassis altogether. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’ve done the same myself scores of times when prototyping, but you can’t logically hold a commercial product to that same standard and claim it is outrageously priced just because it costs more than the arithmetic sum of its constituent parts. I’m endeavoring to offer very refined products that extract the Nth degree of performance, not prototype-grade ones. For me, to encase the electronics I worked so hard on in anything less than the coolest housing I can think of is anathema to me, from both a functional as well as artistic standpoint. Of course I recognize that many will not share this particular set of values.
In the absence of details like internal pictures and schematics, many of you will continue to remain suspicious of this product, and that perfectly okay. I’m under no delusions of trying to sway more than a tiny slice of audiophile world to my way of thinking. Why am I not more forthcoming? Well, for three reasons. Firstly, why relinquish what I consider to be valuable competitive advantage? I’m sure my competitors read the forums, just as I occasionally do. Secondly, I rather suspect that those who call most loudly for more openness and transparency in design details are precisely those who would be least satisfied or convinced by it. During my years in this business, I have never had a single customer specify the intimate discussion of circuit details or parts choice as a condition for a successful sale. None of my customers seem to care if I’m using Black Gates or some other part du jour. Generally, they meet me, feel some resonance with my philosophy as a designer, appreciate the design and quality of my products, and most importantly are satisfied with their performance. Whether they like how it looks, how it sounds, how it makes them feel, or some combination of the all of these, they ultimately find it has compelling value. Thirdly, the high-end suffers from acute product verbiage inflation. So many manufacturers claim to feature “military” grade parts, “aircraft” grade aluminum, “proprietary” design, and so forth ad nauseam. It seems any more that unless one engages in the most egregious hyperbole, it’s hard to make any claims stand out from the background noise. I’d rather not play that game, so I choose to say less than engage in marketing-speak logorrhea.
I’ve gone on for quite a bit here, so I’ll quit. If there is a desire for me to discuss more about the design itself, I’d be happy to do so, with some limits.
Happy listening to all!
