Modular Technology

Modular Technology

The first thing you'll notice about our products is that they all look the same!  This isn't an accident, it's because we have developed a set of modular building blocks to process and control audio with.  As a small manufacturer this offers both you and us great benefits, and you get a wide range of products as a result.

This modular design goes from the front panels, the processing racks and the processing cards, all the way to our internal cabling.  Every factor saves us and you money, and increases your choice.

There are 5 main benefits of our technology: economy, choice, consistency, expandability and reliability.

Economy

It costs a frightening large amount of money to design, set up and produce a product. So as well as the actual cost of the product, you the customer, have to pay a margin to cover the setup costs.   These could be mechanical design, electronic design, artwork, marketing materials and so on.  For a large manufacturer, the $100K or so it costs to setup a product can be agregated into the thousands of products they sell a year, so the cost isn't too large. However for a boutique type manufacturer, this setup cost is a large part of the actual sale price of the product.

By designing this modular set of building blocks, we have spread our development costs across all of our products, so we can offer you great technology at a reasonable price. Affordable innovation!

Choice

Most manufacturers have to re-invent the wheel for each new product they bring out.  They can have some template parts, but putting a product together isn't as simple as "cut and pasting".  This means that they have to design a product for a majority audience: it's not economic to design for a small market. And making a new product takes a lot of time.

With our building blocks, we can configure a "new" product in a very short time, with the right set of features for a small market.  This means you have much more choice from us, as we have a wide range of products for you to choose your ideal mix of features from.

Consistency

To get this to work, we had to concentrate on the interfaces that each building block has with each other, and the real world.  It took a bit of time, but the end result is that whether you have one processing card or 20 cards, the performance is the same. And because the physical layout and circuitry has been refined for each card, there are no performance penalties to be paid if you choose one of our smaller products, or our largest: they will use the exact same processor cards, with the exact same circuits, laid out the same.

This consistency allows us to make new products or variants confident in their performance and quality.

Expandability

Because the control panels are also modular, and the equipment racks, it makes it really easy to expand any product.  This means you don't have to throw gear away as you outgrow it's needs, and you can always update it with the latest features.  This saves you money and time.

Reliability

With all the parts being modular, you can easily replace a faulty part with just a screwdriver.  Indeed one failed processor card, usually doesn't interfere with the other cards, so you can keep working.

Spreading the power supply out throughout the design, and keeping the heat low also helps make all of our products reliable, with some products still in daily use 17 years later!

Conclusions

We thought hard about the design of our products, and we hope you can see the benefits.  There is nothing quite like it on the market!