Your manager is an idiot. Ask him to explain the process if they spent >$10,000 designing a CROSSOVER. If this were truly the case btw I would run like hell from anything Hertz as it basically would mean they are ridiculously incompetent.

Very curious on your manager's answer though. Ought to be "insightful".

it would not surprise me if it cost more than 10K to R and D a set of speakers, there xover points, ect. given the amount of complexity you have iterated lays with in the proper setup of a 3 way speaker platform it seems quite logical to me that thousands might be spent designing everything to function together properly.  ?

it would not surprise me if it cost more than 10K to R and D a set of speakers, there xover points, ect. given the amount of complexity you have iterated lays with in the proper setup of a 3 way speaker platform it seems quite logical to me that thousands might be spent designing everything to function together properly.  ?

You didn't say R&D on the speakers, you said 10's of thousands of dollars developing the crossovers. $10k would be on the bottom of 10's of thousands.

For instance:

http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/xover-design

Not saying that the guys at Hertz don't spend more time than the crew at Madisound, but it isn't so much more. Guys at madisound get to do it with drivers that are way better though.

well i suppose we never clarified in the conversation exactly where that money was going.  i took it as [they spent thousands making sure the entire speaker system they are selling works with in certian specs].  in that context perhaps it makes more sence but ill have a more indepth conversation with im tomorrow.

 

edit: i would like to learn how to create, measure, and build from those design graphs.

 

second edit:  what brand in your eyes is the pinical of mid-high range car audio speakers?  working at this shop i am hearing of brands that i have never heard of before and the sheer amount of variety is a bit much to take in.

Edited November 30, 201311 yr by ncc74656

Good thing to learn.

First lesson. There is no pinnacle without application. Everything is tied to goals and 1000% reliant on installation. Bolting some components in your doors with screws is NOT a good installation.

Even beyond that. Alpine has more engineering resources than Hertz. Not so long ago they had a stellar set of car components, the F1's. They were so great that Alpine didn't even design the drivers but sourced them from something that was already designed. Pretty much defacto standard in the industry. Bet in the skarbage case he got the design for free for ordering 100 woofers from some overstock parts some factory in asia had laying around.

A $200 set of comps has nearly no design time into them. They really can't afford it. Do the math. How many pairs does your store sell? How many stores sell them in Minneapolis? Consider that Mpls is more than 1/100th of the population of the US multiply your number by 100. There is your approximate yearly sales of that set of Hertz components. Multiply by $30 of profit and see how much they could have spent on "engineering" before they'd even get a return.

ive been going over the install side of things over the past few days. to date ive done gps installs, wire runs, learned how to terminate wires all over again, and various soldering tecniques. also got a good list of tools that make everything soooo much easier.

 

ive been learning how sound deadening, inner space with in doors and lids, and general speaker stats play into installs.  had a guy come in with a JL amp and sub today that i installed, we turned it on and discovered his sealed box was ported... at every seam.  it was an all in one from ebay and the box appeared to be from bestbuy when they had those boxes shipped as peices of wood held together with carpet that you had to fold and glue together for the customers. this paticular box had no glue...

 

so we had a discussion on the ported boxes that we sold and the vast majority of boxes that our stores sell (made by a box distro) are tuned between 40-85hz. my manager laid out on paper all teh box specs and formulas that showed what hte box was tuned at. it was the first time i had seen that done outside of a comp program like torres.

 

come spring ill be spending a bit more time at another store that is larger and has fabrication bays to learn fiberglassing and mouting/rack construction.   i have seen a few installs that our shops did come in for diags and they look amazing. most common issue is the customer running maxed gains and damaging the subs, ive seen quite a few where the cone was seperated from the surround.  some of our installers silicone the gain and bass boost knobs so they can tell if the customer screwed with them.

 

 

edit: we have some 1300.00 focals that we actually sell... they are a 2 way component set and ive seen a set sell in just the past few weeks that ive been there. I honestly can not hear a 1,000.00 difference between the hertz and focal but i most certianly can hear a 70.00 difference from the rockfords to the hertz.

Edited November 30, 201311 yr by ncc74656

I am dumbfounded. Most of your boxes are pre-fab and you sell $1300 components? *pukes*

Sort of fits the bill. I have yet to be in any car audio store in the twin cities where anyone knows anything. Rather pathetic Surprised you do glass builds considering the above. Milk your time there though and learn all you can, just be sure to question everything and feel free to post the questioning up here as I am 1000% positive you will be misled a lot.

I myself am more sure than Sean that you'll be misled a lot.  The absolute worst place I've ever gone and heard tips, information, etc. related to car audio is a shop (next to the internet).  The defining difference between them though is the difference between the shops whose personnel are stuck up, won't listen and think they're 100% right all the time and the shops with personnel who (whether they believe or do anything with the insight) can listen, comment & communicate, and are humble enough to admit they don't know it all.  It's VERY apparent which places these are within a few minutes of walking into the shop and talking with someone.  I have two such shops that I thoroughly enjoy visiting when I have the opportunity and they have the time to chat.  We get into some great discussions and debates which have lasted hours on a few occasions, lol.  In the end though it's all about making a profit and that is the driving force behind a lot of the less than stellar decisions that are made.  Shops could take the time and knowledge to custom design and build every installation they do but in reality there's one customer to the hundreds or thousands that come in who would be interested in such an install AND has the money to pay for it.  I don't condone the continuing of the bolt it in the factory location, use of cheap equipment and pre-fabbed enclosures, and "installation" that is typical of almost every shop but they would have a hard time staying in business if they didn't.  I mean lets face it, most people are completely clueless to what really sounds and works good.

the profit margins are where most things are at so the point that shops need to sell basic things is a very solid one. We do not get people in the shop that want to drop loads of cash, i have a hard time even trying to sell a 30.00 door kit of dynomat let alone custom anything.  most of our sales right now are remote starts but spring time is when more steros come into play. We sell CCA cable, sony amps, renegade subs, kenwood decks, .5 farad caps, 1/2" mdf prefab 80hz tuned boxes.  However we also have OFC cable, 2500.1 rockfords, JLW7's, saws and tools to build 3/4" MDF boxes, fabrication supervisors who move between stores to setup installs, ect.  We sell these focals: http://www.amazon.com/Focal-Power-6-5-Inch-Component-Speaker/dp/B001Q9EKZA

 

bottom line is we have the capability of installing some killer setups but not at the store im primary at and not as a primary busniess model. we charge 95 an hour for such work.