Quick stop by the Onkyo/Pioneer booth at CES

[Cos]

I was busy at CES for work, but did run into the Onkyo/Pioneer/Klipsch/Jamo/Tech...are they all under the same ownership now? Not too impressed they had one Integra 5.4 and an Pioneer VSX-LX505 Elite receiver and misc other items like soundbars. At least the receivers are both using DIREC room correction now.

Hoping not to catch covid at this event LOL. I will say the show floor was about 20% of previous years attendance for obvious reasons.

Funny story of the show, I got in line to spin a wheel to win a prize, not paying attention, they were giving away free vibrators. LOL wrong part of show.

 

[TLS Guy]

I was busy at CES for work, but did run into the Onkyo/Pioneer/Klipsch/Jamo/Tech...are they all under the same ownership now? Not too impressed they had one Integra 5.4 and an Pioneer VSX-LX505 Elite receiver and misc other items like soundbars. At least the receivers are both using DIREC room correction now.

Hoping not to catch covid at this event LOL. I will say the show floor was about 20% of previous years attendance for obvious reasons.

Funny story of the show, I got in line to spin a wheel to win a prize, not paying attention, they were giving away free vibrators. LOL wrong part of show.

The real question is: - will they keep working? That outfit went into decline, because of short half lives. This is an area that needs improvement across the board in my view, but those brands created a whole new low for reliability. If their units start showing up with excess failures going forward, they will be done for good, and pronto.

 

[j_garcia]

Surprised they had anything to show. Kind of sad.

 

[Cos]

CES is depressing in general. I have been here several times for work, this year is about 20% of the total attendance of previous years, I am sure the vendors who came, that didn't cancel out, can't be very happy. In-person events are going back into the dark ages of covid.

 

[EpsilonZer0]

They are all under Voxx International based out of Orlando. Nothing new does not surprise me, it took Onkyo/Pioneer 8 months to get out the products they announced in January last year. I am hoping they might announce a new preamp sometime this year though. The last Onkyo preamp was in 2016 and its a solid piece of equipment. They just need to refresh it to 8k, Dirac, 15.2 channels, and add web setup to be a solid flagship again.

 

[TLS Guy]

They are all under Voxx International based out of Orlando. Nothing new does not surprise me, it took Onkyo/Pioneer 8 months to get out the products they announced in January last year. I am hoping they might announce a new preamp sometime this year though. The last Onkyo preamp was in 2016 and its a solid piece of equipment. They just need to refresh it to 8k, Dirac, 15.2 channels, and add web setup to be a solid flagship again.

What they need to do is produce good AND reliable products, or they are a shipwreck and not a flagship.

Poor reliability is a drag on this hobby. That does not need to happen. Car audio systems hardly ever fail these days. That is because they are integral with many of the cars vital systems and are almost impossible to replace or repair. So all these premature failures do not have to happen.

The failure rate of AV electronics is not acceptable. It is totally avoidable.

 

[lovinthehd]

What they need to do is produce good AND reliable products, or they are a shipwreck and not a flagship.

Poor reliability is a drag on this hobby. That does not need to happen. Car audio systems hardly ever fail these days. That is because they are integral with many of the cars vital systems and are almost impossible to replace or repair. So all these premature failures do not have to happen.

The failure rate of AV electronics is not acceptable. It is totally avoidable.

Another drag is the audiophoolery in audio. I've had issues with modern car audio as often as I've had issues with my home av, tho.....which is to say hardly anything. Cheap drives a lot of things as do pricepoints, marketing, distribution schemes....and the consumer in the end. We reap what we sow for the most part.....disposability is a big problem in consumer goods overall....

 

[slipperybidness]

What they need to do is produce good AND reliable products, or they are a shipwreck and not a flagship.

Poor reliability is a drag on this hobby. That does not need to happen. Car audio systems hardly ever fail these days. That is because they are integral with many of the cars vital systems and are almost impossible to replace or repair. So all these premature failures do not have to happen.

The failure rate of AV electronics is not acceptable. It is totally avoidable.

You are absolutely correct!

The demands of the automotive industry are absolutely driving the Quality Metrics across the semi-conductor industry. The most recent standards that the semi-con industry follow are indeed published by the auto industry.

Historically, semi-con failures were counted in the Parts Per Million (or even PPB) range, and that was the metric.

However, today EACH INDIVIDUAL CHIP FAILURE becomes a quality blip on the silicon manufacturer, each individual failure will come back as a customer quality incident and will be investigated fully.

ZERO DEFECTS is absolutely the goal and expectation at this point.

To be clear, it isn't specific to the infotainment chips either. Every single chip in every single car is held to the same standard.