Warm Audio

Anyone know who started Warm Audio? I figure its probably someone from here. I really like the business model. Really fair prices. They took the DIY model, put commercial promotion and quantity buying power behind it.
Just went to they're web site, seems like they are blowing up.
Small business in America making good products for great prices! Kudos!

Looks like clones of old gear...

JR

I'm surprised they're not known here. Well, some may know them.

Yup, the classic designs and with quality parts like Cinemag trannies.
American brand, but assembled in China to keep the cost down.
Low profit percentage per unit, but with the aim to sell many.
Sofar, they seem successful.

No doubt DIY can be even less expensive, but some members here may stop bothering building these units themselves now.
Or they might get them for modding/finetuning.

Of course, those who are here for the mere fun of building would even do so if it actually cost a little more.
And I don't blame them. 

micaddict said:

Of course, those who are here for the mere fun of building would even do so if it actually cost a little more.
And I don't blame them. 

Click to expand...

You get the required spec of choice, ie your spec , and well worth the extra cost !

Ahh, assembled in china, well that's not as cool. I wonder how many boutique company's outsource assembly? I suppose kids don't even work for under $10/hr here. The audio gear company I worked for outsourced circuit board population to a small company here in California. I remember the cost being pretty good. We gave them the BOM and the circuit boards and they would take care of the parts ordering and populating. Including shielded wires, stripped where necessary. We would just install the boards in the units.

Cool never paid the bills, seems to only work if you have a trust fund already. 

HA! or a day job ;D

outsourcing is nothing new,  I know many companies who outsource populating pcb's, especially when doing SMT stuff.  I know of a few companies that actually outsource  local to so cal, I know a few more that outsource over seas. You can easily see a difference  in things, something as simple as a 3 pin connection on the correct side of the circuit board can easily be missed over seas no matter  how much  the docs say it goes on the top or bottom side of the PCB.  Even the u.s. factories can make a mistake but it's less often.

pucho812 said:

outsourcing is nothing new,  I know many companies who outsource populating pcb's, especially when doing SMT stuff.  I know of a few companies that actually outsource  local to so cal, I know a few more that outsource over seas. You can easily see a difference  in things, something as simple as a 3 pin connection on the correct side of the circuit board can easily be missed over seas no matter  how much  the docs say it goes on the top or bottom side of the PCB.  Even the u.s. factories can make a mistake but it's less often.

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This is a very old topic. Small companies with poor process documentation often encounter problems when they send production to distant factories with undefined assembly steps.  A local CM may pick up the telephone (or email these days) to get an answer. On the other side of the world the factory manager generally takes their best guess.

JR

PS: China is no longer the cheapest factory.. These days China is losing business to Viet Nam and cheaper countries.

 

true, at my old gig did  many a skype call to the cm over seas and was met with a no problem we will do that only to not have it done. 

I own a couple of Warm pieces; the wa12 (312 clone) and the wa76 1176 clone.  I like and use them both all the time. I have another eight various channels of 312 type preamps and the warm stands with them. Same goes for the 1176 clone of which i also have several others to compare it to and it operates just as well.

JohnRoberts said:

pucho812 said:

outsourcing is nothing new,  I know many companies who outsource populating pcb's, especially when doing SMT stuff.  I know of a few companies that actually outsource  local to so cal, I know a few more that outsource over seas. You can easily see a difference  in things, something as simple as a 3 pin connection on the correct side of the circuit board can easily be missed over seas no matter  how much  the docs say it goes on the top or bottom side of the PCB.  Even the u.s. factories can make a mistake but it's less often.

Click to expand...

This is a very old topic. Small companies with poor process documentation often encounter problems when they send production to distant factories with undefined assembly steps.  A local CM may pick up the telephone (or email these days) to get an answer. On the other side of the world the factory manager generally takes their best guess.

JR

PS: China is no longer the cheapest factory.. These days China is losing business to Viet Nam and cheaper countries.

Click to expand...

I remenber I have ordered a stock of PCB's to a Chinese company, quality was very  high but the price too.
Considering the high S&H costs and the custom fees, courier rights for custom clearance, VAT ..etc... these PCB's costed to me only 15-20% of a good italian PCB's manufacturer, so you buy in China what you pay for it. 
However I was not happy for the price but I was very happy for the quality.
 

I suspect that the main selling point of the Warm Audio gears are the Cinemag transformers so the american job is however the most important element in these ones.
Cinemag transformers are made directly in the Cinemag facility in USA.

As John said in other words, is very important following the entire production of each piece and Cinemag does it for high quality.

Bryce Young owns Warm Audio. He's from Austin. Nice guy. Smart too.

Yup.

Next time you meet him, invite him over. 

Off topic, but to give a little bit of credit to China, I've seen just as stupid as mistakes coming out of "reputable" board houses here in the USA.

Here's a stupid story though with regards to outsourcing to China.  EV sent their wireless products to Zhuhai (if I recall, their facilities are incredibly state of the art and make a lot of ours here in the states look generations out of date) to be assembled.

What we were finding was that while they could assemble, they couldn't tune them worth a shit, so here came all the wireless units back to the states to be unpackaged, have a tech go through them, and repackaged. Whereas this was all previously done on the assembly line with a production tech at the end. Seems they created more problems than solved with that one, but someday China will figure it out and we'll be singing a different tune.

i've always said it like this.

say you want a pint glass and need to make a mass quantity for inexpensive. You can go to china with a sample and they will be able to reproduce the sample for inexpensive and for all purposes will be a pint glass. However if you do not tell them to make it out of glass, or do not keep an eye on them, who knows what you will be getting.

"The eye of the boss fattens the horse " , it's an italian proverb

"You get what you inspect, not what you expect"

then why do the warm audio inspections have line noise like their wa76....