AKM fire

pucho812 · Oct 29, 2020

This is not good,

https://www.prosoundnetwork.com/business/akm-factory-fire-shakes-up-pro-audio-industry

Recording Engineer · Oct 29, 2020

John La Grou at Millennia Media expressed his concerns over it. Definitely going to shake up the industry!

Rochey · Oct 29, 2020

I'm pretty well connected with friends at AKM. Here's the bullet points.

it's pretty bad. the fire raged for 3 days
No one was hurt. Best outcome
They'll be down for at least 6 months. That's the public message. My opinion is below

I think delivery on pro audio parts will take longer. If they have brain cells between their ears, they will prioritize key, high revenue customers. (not low revenue, high profit margin customers)

There's also a lot of NASTY chemicals in IC fabs. The environmental impact to the ground water etc may not be insignificant. Hopefully, they have all that under control.

If anyone works at a company impacted by this, it's time to look for second sources. as quickly as possible.

If you need low power codecs - consider dialog semiconductor. (my current employers! )

iomegaman · Oct 30, 2020

pucho812 said:
This is not good,

https://www.prosoundnetwork.com/business/akm-factory-fire-shakes-up-pro-audio-industry

Holy crap that IS bad...had not heard.

living sounds · Oct 30, 2020

I wonder how something like this can even happen. Aren't there regulations in place mandating measures to prevent a fire from getting this bad?

It might not be so bad for the industry, at the end of the article they mention that there's a probability that "AKM will pivot their IC masks to independent fab houses" until they get their facilities up and running again.

pucho812 · Oct 30, 2020

living sounds said:
I wonder how something like this can even happen. Aren't there regulations in place mandating measures to prevent a fire from getting this bad?

I wonder about that too. We had a brand new Amazon sorting, shipping facility open or was about to open in the county next to L.A. it was huge. Brand new everything. Out of nowhere, they had a mysterious fire. no one knows how it broke out and no one knows how it got to be that bad and big. They should have had fire prevention systems in place, the latest in that tech so, it should not have been that bad. But it was. We can say the same about AKM but who knows. They have been around for some time, maybe in older buildings certain fire prevention is not required? it's a guess at best.