Stam Audio SA4000?

I noticed an ad in my Facebook feed for an SSL buss comp clone at a pretty cheap price. I happened to take a look at the PCB and noticed it looked very familiar.  Well, there are a few tweaks to it.

How do you guys feel about stuff like this hitting the market?

http://stamaudio.com/page/sa4000-stereo-buss-compressor/

I feel like this topic has been done to death. Let's not go through it all again since it achieves nothing. It's boring imo.

There are plenty of threads on this forum to read through if you want to hear people's opinions on the subject, peppered liberally with the standard disagreements and drama.

I feel like this topic has been done to death. Let's not go through it all again since it achieves nothing. It's boring imo.

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Yet we don't have a solution, or a way to approach it.

The central problem is that this sort of behavior could have massive negative impact on the idea of openly sharing DIY-projects.

Which is bad for what we are around here.

Jakob E.

gyraf said:

I feel like this topic has been done to death. Let's not go through it all again since it achieves nothing. It's boring imo.

Click to expand...

Yet we don't have a solution, or a way to approach it.

The central problem is that this sort of behavior could have massive negative impact on the idea of openly sharing DIY-projects.

Which is bad for what we are around here.

Jakob E.

Click to expand...

I appreciate what you're saying Jakob, and  of course you're much more entitled to have an opinion on this than me given how much you've contributed to this scene and this forum.

However the poster didn't ask about what we could do about DIY projects being ripped off so that someone could turn a profit on someone else's work; he asked how people on here felt about it.  That's a topic that, imho of course, has been done to death on GroupDIY.  I'm not sure what value going through the motions has every time someone discovers a new SSL clone on eBay.

I've never managed to stumble across any of the other threads and didn't know how to search for it. Hope I didn't add to the drama!

I also didn't know if the person making these paid royalties on the PCB design or not.

critterkllr said:

I also didn't know if the person making these paid royalties on the PCB design or not.

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HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

that's funny.

Lets see... the all discrete audio path using THAT corp "INTEGRATED CIRCUIT" VCAs... 

Can't even spell bus correctly, is that one of their improvements or did they copy the incorrect spelling too?

This all seems like much ado about little, and more of a "fool and his money" story.

JR

There will be increasing amounts of this, given worldwide accessibility via web, and locales where one can source parts more cheaply, or have a lower income requirement than some 1st world countries. 

If you want a 'how do you feel' part, let's address the trend of these things tending to be pre-orders for short runs, with 6 month to 1 year delivery times, paid in full up front.  People seem to be willing to go for that, with no consumer protection aspect whatsoever. 

critterkllr said:

I've never managed to stumble across any of the other threads and didn't know how to search for it. Hope I didn't add to the drama!

I also didn't know if the person making these paid royalties on the PCB design or not.

Click to expand...

this was in the lab, here you go my boy....
http://groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=61781.0

OH and BTW,

There is a ebay posting for this , the price of buy it now is 100.00 dollars.  But it  also says to contact them first. The 100.00 is for a deposit. I found that  out when some of the slutz  corrected me,  after I made a some choice words about hell I can't build one that cheap  I would buy it for 100.00 if I needed more then the ones I built.  Slutz all over seems approve of such things but fail to se humor in a persons mistake on pricing.  the actual price is some 500.00 dollars which the 100.00 bring a deposit. It goes against ebay rules but no one seems to mind. I guess all the IC's are discrete if you think about it hard enough.

pucho812 said:

I guess all the IC's are discrete if you think about it hard enough.

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And what would be the opposite of discrete?  Indiscrete? 

JR

Indescrete ICs distort your music in unscrupulous ways!

I lamented this before but I think it's very telling that even here, the group buys
disappeared as people used them to springboard into their own businesses to profit off of each other
and use the group as customer service for the products
that's not quite sharing

gyraf said:

I feel like this topic has been done to death. Let's not go through it all again since it achieves nothing. It's boring imo.

Click to expand...

Yet we don't have a solution, or a way to approach it.

The central problem is that this sort of behavior could have massive negative impact on the idea of openly sharing DIY-projects.

Which is bad for what we are around here.

Click to expand...

In the "Mixers/Monitoring Systems" subforum, I mention a monitor controller I'm working on. Someone asked if I'd release it here.

I am leaning toward "no."

imho if there is no involving of law / copyright / patent issues, then one has the right to copy . period

then we can talk about the ethical point of view

personally i don't see as a bad thing that in this world dominated by big companies and big money making the profit gets distributed more evenly

in this particular case, i don't believe stam audio will become rich and universal audio or ssl will go bankrupt

also i don't think this should stop any diy-er to put out open projects. there will always be someone that can copy your products, even if you market them. you just have to do what you feel it's right, without caring about the others too much. the mother of idiots will always be pregnant anyway

I don't know  what you consider big or what but even the big companies in audio are not making nearly as much as people think they are.

you want protection, file a patent  8)

MicDaddy said:

you want protection, file a patent  8)

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Does not compute. You can't patent electronics in Europe - and the US "patent" is really only a "right to sue"

Jakob E.

tongue in cheek 

Maybe take a page of Manley's book and fling ™ around a bit.

As for "how I feel" about this stuff, copies have been going on for a long time.

Ethically, I will go to the original copiers, not those who continue to copy copies.

It's always easier to do something after someone else has done it.

The gssl is a nice piece of kit but it's not an ssl clone and there are plenty of examples of why not. 

As for stam his other offering is an la2a clone. It has cinemags but I can fathom he is earning any money with it, import duties in the transformers alone would be brutal.