Most of my day today has been like most other days. Other than a few minor frustrations that have absolutely nothing to do with speakers it’s a pretty fine day in Iowa today.

Alex has been enjoy string cheese periodically this week and sharing his satisfaction with everyone else.

If I’ll take anything from this week its the following 2 things.

1. Alex declared “the only bad thing about string cheese is there is never enough of it”. I would agree.

2. Having more people on the production staff than in the sales office certainly gets stuff built faster.

3. Prototyping still takes time

It seems odd to say this but there isn’t a whole of new stuff to report.

We’re shipping product you guys are purchasing.

We’re building product you guys are purchasing.

Enough of the boring blog. There’s a whole bunch going on so I’m going to throw this out there in sections so that you get a little more information on what is going on. This is going to be a long one. Get comfortable.

New HT subwoofers.

A3-300 and A5-350’s have been taken off the web site for quite some time to get updated. We’re wrapping up all the updates. All good news.

Here’s very generically what they’ll look like without grills and without paint

I urge you to take into account a few things

A3-300

• Interior volume has gone up.
• It will only be sold with one significantly upgraded speaker. Displacement is up 30% (more down low)
• New speaker is unique to say the least. Neo / Ferrite hybrid. 25MM one way xmax.
• More output.
• New amplifier designed to filter some input clipping.
• More overall SPL
• More extension. Noticeable under 25hz Vs. older A3-300
• Price & Ship Date TBA with some more information.
• Improved bracing. Bracing is now recessed in each part of the cabinet. Nothing can “swim”. 100% inset bracing. Very cool.
• Front firing by popular demand.
• 100% EFS construction. Better materials than the competition.
• Proprietary driver engineering. We think the best
• Standard matte finish at no upcharge.
• Only available in a no holds barred upgrade over the old A3-300. Very similar in size.
• Will ship same day on release. Part of stocking inventory production.
• Made in Iowa.

A5-350

• More output below 20hz. Noticeable extension difference.
• More efficient than old design. Extension is pretty solid in room to 17Hz @-3dB This is just the larger enclosure.
• Front firing by popular demand.
• Slightly modified driver. More displacement.
• Average SPL vs. old A5-350 has gone up.
• New 500w Amplifier platform.
• 100% EFS construction. Better materials than the competition.
• Proprietary driver engineering. We think the best
• Standard matte finish at no upcharge.
• Only available in a no holds barred upgrade over the old A5-350.
• Will ship same day on release. Part of stocking inventory production.
• Physically larger than the old A5-350.
• Made in Iowa.

Bottom line. We’re using drivers we designed, cabinets we designed, we’re using better materials, and we’re offering free shipping on everything. Did I mention the shipping same day thing? You might find cheaper good elsewhere and we’re ok with that. We’re not China and we’re not driving our product to the lowest common bidder. We’re continueing to lower the number of products we sell and bring as much as possible in house.

There is a great thread going on here about them thus far :

http://forum.edesignaudio.com/showthread.php?t=70600

I mentioned in there “Part of stocking inventory production”. This is a huge shift that starts for us on Monday of next week. <– We have schedules now!

Over the past 2 years there has been a lot of debate about when we stop building here or when we start buying more elsewhere and how to catch up to production. The end descision here was remove some parts from the web site as updated and change the entire production schedule.

eD’s production schedules are changing from what is ordered to averages based on past history of orders over the past 2 years. Becuase our production turnover rate simply can’t be much faster than it is on built to order items this transition will move items to backorder when they are sold out and in stock after production runs. These production runs bring predictable ship dates (for each model run) and allow us to concentrate more time on production rather than tracking orders.

A great example here is status updates. There won’t be a single update for each order anymore after this is done. There will be a backorder with a ship date for the entire lot if the item is on back order. We’ll be producing for our own needed inventory rather than for each individual order. You’ll get more reliable dates and we’ll spend less time running around like mad trying to get thing straight between 500-1000 status changes. With each production run if there is a backorder of the item it also means everyone item ships the same day. This is going to be great for us and our clients. We know guys on the boards watch and wait.

Woodshop and paint production has well over double the staff currently the first FULL production runs will be of these 2 products with the new electronics. The A2-300 has already been updated (we just didn’t post anything) and has more internal volume and more extension. Those have already been shipping for a week or so.

If it works customers get product almost instantly made with better materials right here in Iowa and supported right here in Iowa. If it doesn’t I guess we go the other direction?

Amp shipping?

We’re back to the 50-100 QC’d a day.

Which is another interesting part of eD. Our QC/QA. We do it at the factory if we don’t make it here. We do it when it comes in and we do it again before it leaves.

HT amps for example. Done at factory with confirmation sheet. QC’d before going to the cabinet. QC’d again after in the cabinet before shipping. That’s a lot of QC

Speaker building ?

The run of 13K’s is pretty much all done and things moved over to the 15″ drivers for A7-350’s this week. I’ve been seeing lots of this the past few days :

Custom products :

As part of the stocking production schedule. Custom products are now a Thursday thing :

And Dear UPS. We loved the lunch :

And lastly. Custom speaker stands hasn’t been a problem for quite some time. However we had one client in particular who wanted one that was about 60″ tall and was worried about the base being heavy enough. A few chunks of metal I think it worked out ok

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 4:51 PM and is filed under eD Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.