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V O L U M E
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I S S U E
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M A Y
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IN THIS ISSUE
Asian Speaker Manufacturing
Outside of China
Spotlight
1
SPOTLIGHT
By Mike Klasco
Asian Speaker Manufacturing
Outside of China
Back from the Shadows, Future
Contenders, and Non-Starters
By Mike Klasco (Menlo Scientific, Ltd.)
Loudspeaker Enclosure Materials (Part 2):
New and Improved Enclosure Materials
By Mike Klasco
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FOCUS
T
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ACOUSTIC PATENTS
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TEST BENCH
By James Croft
Two New 1” Compression Drivers:
Celestion’s CDX1-1732 and
SB Audience’s 44CD-K
By Vance Dickason
28
INDUSTRY WATCH
By Vance Dickason
he Silk Road of loudspeaker manufacturing has evolved over
the years. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Asian speaker
industry consisted primarily of Japanese companies with giants
such as Onkyo, Pioneer, Foster, Panasonic (Matsushita), and
a few long-forgotten others, variously providing branded, and
OEM and ODM services. In the early 1960s, “cottage industries”
were common in Japan—workers built sub-assemblies at home
(and were paid by the piece) and carted their work over to the
“factory” on weekends where they worked on the production
lines to do the final assembly. This “JVC” format evolved into
a large assembly campus surrounded by just-in-time vendors
supplying component parts (e.g., voice coils, frames, cones, and
more).
Progressively during the 1980s, the component suppliers
started to shift to Taiwan and eventually also moved finished
product assembly to Taiwan. Other speaker production, initially
for buzzers, commodity speakers for radios and record players,
and paging horns expanded to Korea, later joined by the
Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. As factories
developed more sophisticated engineering teams, their products
and in-house capabilities grew.
China had its own state-run speaker industry since the
inception of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1950,
which included companies such as Guoguang Electric, which
you may know now as GGEC. Even older is Feile (now Shanghai
Feile Acoustics), which I visited 30 years ago when the factory
VOICE COIL
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PRESIDENT:
CONTROLLER:
EDITOR:
KC Prescott
Chuck Fellows
Vance Dickason
INTERNATIONAL EDITOR:
EDITORIAL COORDINATOR:
GRAPHICS:
ADVERTISING COORDINATOR:
João Martins
Shannon Becker
Grace Chen
Nathaniel Black
S
UPPORTING
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OMPANIES
Advanced System Integration
ALMA International 2019
BMS Speakers GmbH
FaitalPRO
FerroTec (USA) Corp.
Fountek Electronics Co., Ltd.
FSK (Thailand) Co., Ltd.
InfoComm 2019
LaVoce Co., Ltd.
LOUDSOFT, Ltd.
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25
17
32
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Menlo Scientific, Ltd.
Morel
PanaSound, Ltd.
Radian Audio Engineering
SB Acoustics
Solen Electronique, Inc.
Vance Dickason Consulting
Wavecor, Ltd.
YuonYunn Membrance Co., Ltd.
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Contact Peter Wostrel (voicecoil@smmarketing.us, Phone: 978-281-7708, Fax: 978-281-7706)
to reserve space in the next issue of
Voice Coil.
May 2019
ISSN 1521-091X
Voice Coil, (ISSN 1521-091X), The Periodical for the Loudspeaker Industry, is published
monthly by KCK Media Corp., PO Box 417, Chase City, VA 23924 US,
(434) 533-0246, FAX (888) 980-1303.
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VOICE COIL
occupied what originally was an old European embassy
building in the Shanghai bund area. These state-run factories
supplied public address, siren, electronic test gear, and
other necessary equipment, as well as Feile’s movie theater
and PA sound systems. In the 1990s, China’s momentum
rapidly grew until it became what can only be characterized
as the black hole of manufacturing—consuming much of the
global speaker industry. Taiwan shifted its speaker parts and
assembly industry to south China, at the expense of the
Korean and Malaysian speaker industry.
The Asian financial crisis was a period that gripped much
of Asia beginning in 1997. Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia,
and Thailand were the countries most affected. The financial
crisis put most of the struggling Asian speaker industry
outside of China into a coma. With China pricing cheap, the
quality progressively improving, and the parts infrastructure
supply chain running smoothly, manufacturing atrophied
everywhere else.
While today there still are speaker companies in Korea,
its manufacturing has moved predominately outside of the
country. Malaysia has seen Eastech, Foremost, YKS, Dai-ichi
(not connected to the Philippine Dai-ichi, which is doing fine)
and much of the local speaker component parts infrastructure
move elsewhere, close or become dormant.
China’s ascent to the king of speaker production has grown
at steady pace for the last two decades. So have salaries and
while China’s minimum wage varies by region—from less
Asian Financial Crisis
than $2,000 per year in rural “fly-over” regions to more than
$5,000 in Shanghai. White collar workers salaries have risen
year-after-year only going flat to about $10,000 this year at
the onset of the trade war. China appeared unstoppable but
the tariffs have revealed the country’s Achilles heel. From
the US side, the tariffs in the short term have been painful
for the supply chain sourcing parts and finished goods from
China. On the other hand, there is no shortage of Asian
contenders hungry for a chunk of China’s business, which
is the topic at hand. There is no magic alternative, not with
China’s population of 1.4 billion with more than 400 million
people just on the east coast where the loudspeaker industry
had flourished.
In one direction we have Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, and
Korea that are, at the least, as sophisticated as China. For
low cost labor, there are the emerging economies in Asia
(e.g., Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar). While
the Philippines has never enjoyed a golden age, it appears
poised for one. Still other competitively priced speaker
suppliers are located in Vietnam and Indonesia. For the more
adventurous, there is Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and India.
Of course, there are many factors that comprise viable
manufacturing—from adequate supply of labor, to the cost
of shipping, the supply chain infrastructure, stability, and
tax and corruption issues. Another issue is whether there
is a compatible business “style”—most of us are used to
the “leave an honorable legacy” mentality of many Chinese
and Taiwanese—the owner and his key guys want to get
customers, develop long-term relationships of trust, and
MAY 2019
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