R.I.P Moog

[Aosta]

[Loque]

People make the decisions. If they dont have 80 bucks for a software update, how should they have the money for a 5000 bucks synth?

Beside the money, also professional musicians say "hey, i can have an orchestra in my pocket for composing. No need to hire one for weeks. Maybe only for final recording...maybe...".

Guess the time for expensive gear is over. Iconic gear in the past for easily 20000-150000 bucks can now be bought for 20 bucks as a plugin and less if you can wait, have a bit luck or someone made an OSS version.

Times change...old things are gone and lost. New things will come...

[jfrichards]

Apple stuff is almost entirely made in China, although moves are underway to move some manufacturing to Vietnam and India. Moog is the latest on a long list. Look around any major city in the U.S. where giant factories made everything. They have changed entirely. The U.S. hosts the biggest military by far, with hundreds of basses in the U.S. and hundreds around the world, with the biggest navy, Air Force, and nuclear missile stock. I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest U.S. manufacturing work is for the military. Things are heating up slowly but surely.

[raymondh]

...MODERATED...

Remember when the IBM PC clones started coming out, at a fraction the cost of a genuine IBM PC.
Back then, if you bought one of the clone copy-cat brands, you were seen in a negative light.
IBM of course lost market share to the new competitors, but to IBM's credit, did an amazing job of reinventing themselves (multiple times) to the company they still are today.

More recently, the early adopters of Uber were also chastised for cutting across the regulated taxi industry. Taxi drivers who spend many years learning the roads, it's not fair to use competitors with maps on their phones etc. And Uber drivers apparently are treated so poorly by Uber, we especially should not use them.

I wonder if the people that look down their nose at Behringer customers user Uber or a non-IBM branded PC?

[avasopht]

It's not the consumer's fault that Moog didn't respond to the market effectively.

Business is not charity (especially if it's meant to fall on the consumer).

They had a powerful brand name and could have continued making the same hardware but as a PR tool.

How were Reason Studios able to make Objekt before Moog did? They left too many openings for others to innovate.

They dropped the ball.

Where were they when Reason Studios made Friktion and Algoritm?

Where's their realistic physical modelling synth that utilizes analogue synthesis (or some hybrid)?

Where are their sound libraries built from their $10,000 modular synth units? Where's their production team to create content for use in films and hit records?

Where was their partnership scheme with music studios that allowed them to pay for a modular synth suite over the course of 10 years (or something)?

I've got no crystal ball, but they drank their own cool aid and didn't adapt to the market.

[Jackjackdaw]

I think that take is bit harsh. They were adapting to the market , they have a range of iOS apps , some legacy emulations and some new ideas. Then they legitimised the small hobby synth boom with the Mother 32 and Dfam etc. It’s the same story for all of western manufacturing, it just takes someone to set up a factory in China where the running costs are peanuts, then undercut all of the competition selling something that isn’t quite as good but 10x cheaper.

[integerpoet]

I wonder if the people that look down their nose at Behringer customers (use) Uber or a non-IBM branded PC?

Many totally do. To be fair, though, part of the point of Moog is that (most of) its (flagship) products are analog, and it's possible to do a lot of superstitious romantic cork-sniffing about analog components and hand assembly — with which I do not entirely disagree. Plus the "user experience", if you will, of the average Moog product is noticeably superior to that of the average Behringer product. One can't say the same sorts of things about Uber or Dell, whose essences are much more digital than analog.

[integerpoet]

I think the more interesting part of this story is less about Moog the company and more about the market niche it serves. What other companies are there today which are trying to provide the plush luxury premium tactile mystical experience that Moog wants the world to believe Moog provides? Is this niche simply gone? It would be fine for the Moog company and brand to evolve into some other form, especially if it could retrain its peeps to write code or whatever. But that would be the same company in name only, and commerce is merely a necessary evil. So my question is what this says about synth hardware in general and where Moog fans will go.

[raymondh]

I wonder if the people that look down their nose at Behringer customers (use) Uber or a non-IBM branded PC?

Many totally do. To be fair, though, part of the point of Moog is that (most of) its (flagship) products are analog, and it's possible to do a lot of superstitious romantic cork-sniffing about analog components and hand assembly — with which I do not entirely disagree. Plus the "user experience", if you will, of the average Moog product is noticeably superior to that of the average Behringer product. One can't say the same sorts of things about Uber or Dell, whose essences are much more digital than analog.

Haha nicely said!

[avasopht]

I think that take is bit harsh. They were adapting to the market , they have a range of iOS apps , some legacy emulations and some new ideas. Then they legitimised the small hobby synth boom with the Mother 32 and Dfam etc. It’s the same story for all of western manufacturing, it just takes someone to set up a factory in China where the running costs are peanuts, then undercut all of the competition selling something that isn’t quite as good but 10x cheaper.

In all fairness, it's impossible to know beforehand.

But I'd find it hard to justify £5k on a Model D 2022 unless I was expecting to use it for a signature sound in a hit record.

This video is cool:

10x Mavis synths with a sequencer offer more value than one Model D.

But it's still a difficult sale.

That being said, it's possible to manufacture quality products in China if they want.