Politics of Setting prices for Sound systems

aka selecting the right speakers for yourself without paying a heavy price guide


I recently thought of buying a good set of speakers for my home. Initially, I had thought of buying something within the budget of Rs 3,000. After being recommended by Techtree, I thought of buying the Altec Lansing VS 2621 (http://www.techtree.com/India/Guides/Multimedia_Speaker_Comparison/551-112662-558-10.html). Then after reading other articles on Techtree, I thought of increasing my budget and compared between the similar priced  A L MX 5021 and Logitech Z2300. I decided to buy the 5021, only to realize that the product has been stopped and replaced by MX 6021, not as good as the original 5021. I also read about Audioengine being mentioned and the name somehow stuck. But the Audioengines were about Rs 10,000. So the second time, I increased my budget to about Rs 10k. Many more options became available to me, and I thought of researching and going out to listen. Here, I would like to particularly talk about my experience with products of a famous company so well known in India, that when anybody thinks about good quality sound, their name invariably comes up. Yes, I am talking about Bose.

Bose is premium brand in speakers, something which people aspire for - particularly because they are expensive and have a mystery about them. Nothing to say about the excellent marketing that Bose does.

So I set out to the familiar Bose store in Forum mall (Bangalore) and asked for a pair of desktop speakers. The first set I listened to were the Companion 2 Series II Multimedia Speaker System (India price - Rs 8100). Sounded decent, but techtree called them expensive for the quality of sound. The salesman made me hear another pair (Companion 3 Series II Multimedia Speaker System, Rs 17,888) and I was absolutely stunned - not because of the sound, but because I noted no notable difference between the 2 pairs, and these ones cost more than double!! The salesman made his sales pitch to me saying that I should buy the Companion 3 for they would be the ultimate investment for me, but I mumbled something about them being out of my budget and hastily exited from there.

I searched for reviews on the Audioengine A2s and was fascinated by the hoopla that surrounded them. If you want proof just google it. I decided on buying them. But unlucky for me, Audioengine products were not available in India and had to wait for a good 2 months. Meanwhile, I also thought of buying the M-Audio Studiophile AV-40 (Rs 10,000), the direct competitor to the A2s. The AV40s are much bigger and heavier for the same quality of sound, though have heavier bass. I finally got lucky and came across an ad for a person who wanted to get rid of his A2s and thus got them really cheap for Rs 6,000. Boy, was I glad. Since then, I have really loved my A2s, they come in a small package, and yet they deliver high volumes with subtle and beautiful bass. For a price of about Rs 9,000, they are a steal.

All this researching and looking for information regarding desktop speakers was an eye-opening experience for me. I realized that Bose products were highly expensive for the quality they promise. In fact, their insistence of not giving any specs and the 'Bose sound' speaking for itself looks like a complete farce, for when I listened to their products, I found nothing special about their sound (Maybe its just me).

Or just listen to what the experts say:

1. Techtree calls Bose expensive for the quality they give 
2. productwiki.com says that Bose is all about marketing and that cheaper and better sounding products are available
3. If you read expert reviews, you will find Audioengine A2s ($200) better than Bose products within $400-500.

I also want to show a price chart to indicate some things through statistics:

• Companion 2 Series II Multimedia Speaker System (India price - Rs 8100, US price - $100 = Rs 4500)
• Companion 3 Series II Multimedia Speaker System (India price - Rs 17,888, US price - $250 = Rs 11,250)
• A2 price (India price - Rs 9,000, US price - $200 = Rs 9000)
• M-Audio Studiophile AV40 20W + 20W (India price - Rs 10,000, US price - $150 = Rs 6750)

It seems like the Bose sells its already expensive products at much higher prices in India, than in US. Maybe its the import duties, but then how did Audioengine do it?

One reason I can think of this price discrimination is that US is a much mature market where people are more aware of the sound quality and real value that Bose has to offer. Stiffer competition also means that Bose products are cheaper there. In India, Bose is basically pulling wool over everyone's eyes.

So the most important lesson here is - when unsure, just ask the experts.
Do research on the net to find out the best deals. And don't get carried away by marketing gimmicks.

Here are a bunch of websites I absolutely recommed for you to do your research, and they are not just for speakers, but for any kind of electronic goods:

http://alatest.co.uk - wonderful site which gives you an alaScore, something that can be used to compare 2 similar products. They also collect expert reviews and user reviews from various sources and is a must for all your researching needs.

http://www.productwiki.com/ - The wikipedia of products and their reviews, this site also gives something called the proscore, which can compare 2 similar products. Very nice site, with clear listing of Pros and cons and a must for all your researching needs on any kind of electronic goods.

Why I go for trekking

During one of my older posts, I was curious about my addiction to mountain climbing. As I have reflected more and more on this, things have started to become clearer and I have started to form opinions as to explain my addiction.

Himalayan treks generally require a good level of physical fitness and we start training to run for about 4km in 30 minutes. Preparations start at least one month before trek and entails hard work and running everyday. Being physically fit definitely increases confidence and promotes good health, which I realize is an important side-effect of trekking.

Once the trek starts, we go into nature and explore beautiful places that are still untouched and not pillaged by human beings, breathing in the pure air of the mountains and drinking natural water of the streams, rather than breathing the polluted air and drinking polluted water of the cities. Simon, in Touching the Void, says that he climbs mountains to get away from the clutter of civilization. We are all trying to put back the risk in our lives and deliberately come out of our comfort zones, just to feel alive and make our heart pumping again.

'A good traveler is not intent upon arriving' - Lao Tze's famous quote is true for trekking. If a person only longs to get to the final destination or the mountain peak, then the trek itself becomes a chore and he won't enjoy it at all. A trek almost forces the person to be conscious of his journey and go in a sort of meditative state, admiring the beauty of the place. The person ends at the camp, quite tired, and sleep descends upon him, after a long day's work. No need to attempt to sleep. I have very good quality sleep when I am on treks. And my digestion is very good. Seeing people go for their morning ablutions with a bottle (lota) in hand and returning after sometime with a smile on their faces is easily noticable.

Many people go for ego climbing where they want to finish the trek first or climb the mountain very quickly. Acute mountain sickness and dehydration, nausea generally result either from not being physically fit, or doing an ego climb and not being in control. From experience, a trekker will know that ego climbing is not the way to do things. So, on treks, I generally meet people who are not ego-climbers and who generally have a bit of wisdom. No wonder, that meeting people on treks is a special kind of social event and enjoying a trek with like minded people does have a different feeling than trekking all alone or in a small group.

The satisfaction of completion gives confidence and acts as a motivator to go for another journey. Even the dissatisfaction of leaving a trek incomplete, acts like a challenge, leaving a feeling of incompleteness inside the person which calls for another trek to be completed. Such is the power of this beautiful sport. Since I had left my first trek incomplete, I was very much motivated to finish the second and I did finish it.

Trekking is indeed a special kind of sport, a kind of a non-zero-sum game where everybody can win by reaching the final destination. To me, this explains why trekking is so addictive.

Confessions of a mountain climber

I have a confession to make - I am addicted to mountain climbing. My addiction is a chronic one, but under my control (at least i think so), as I only go for an 8-10 day trek once an year, of course with a small number of 1 day treks that are dispersed unevenly between the big ones.

I have done 2 long treks till now, that is, i am at the beginning of the addiction process, and I still have a lot of hope. Both times I went for trekking, I was so tired and exhausted by it all, that at the end of it, I was glad to be back in civilization. This may seem like a good sign to people, since it means that I don't actually enjoy mountain climbing that much and I am susceptible to giving up my addiction.

Particularly, on my last trek, I went to cross the Rupin pass and we got real bad weather and lot of rains, much more than i expected and much more than I was comfortable with. As days passed, I was gasping for breath, the trek was tiring, my right shoulder was paining like hell, my clothes were wet, thus making the whole trek a harrowing experience. Everyday when I used to wake up in the morning, I used to worry about how we are going to go on with the bad weather constantly following us around. And then on the last day, technically speaking the 2nd last one, the weather opened up, and everybody crossed the Rupin pass. We still got some bad weather on the last day, but we had made it and we were filled with a sense of achievement and joy. So, after a few months, when I try to recall my displeasure, my tiredness, my paining shoulder during the trek, I come back with a nought. The only thing I remember is that I crossed the Rupin pass and a very pleasurable feeling comes back to me. Quite bad.

Have you watched a movie called "Touching the void", a real story of a guy called Joe who gets stuck up alone in a crevasse while descending from a successful climb of the mountain Siula Grand? Joe made it through, miraculously, and I remember the tears in my eyes when he comes back dragging himself to the base camp. Joe recovered from his near death experience, and still climbs mountains, ignoring the fact that he had almost lost his life while climbing. The movie should have evoked feelings of dread, mountains being dangerous and unpredictable, and that mountain climbing can be fatal for one's life. But after watching the movie, I was only left with a strong desire to see snow. That's how bad my situation is.

This addiction has made me introspect. I came to certain conclusions - that there are 2 kinds of people - people who have never tasted adventure and people who are addicted to it. Definitely, some people may have just overcome their addiction, but they are invisible to me.

In order to discover more about mountain climbing, I recently saw another movie about mountaineering called the Vertical Limit, and the conclusions I reached from it are nothing less than bizarre. 3 people are stuck on K2, one of whom is dying fast. So for saving these 3, a rescue team of 6 starts to climb up. If the mission had been entirely successful, you would have expected all 9 people to come back safe. But the real result of the rescue is that (sorry, this movie review contains spoilers) only the hero's sister survives out of the 3 stranded, and worse, only 2 out of 6 people in the rescue team survive and the rest die off. Effectively 3 out of 9 survive. In the case of nobody going to rescue, the survival ratio would have been 6 out of 9, the 6 being the people in the rescue team who wouldn't have gone and thought of risking their life. Any logical person can see which scenario was preferable. But then you consider, one of the guys stranded on K2 had bad karma, one of the rescue team was old and mad, and the fact that survival of the hero, his girl-friend and his sister were of paramount importance and consequently the importance of survival of others very little, then the odds may tip in the favour of the 6 going for the suicidal mission. Suicidal? Am I claiming Vertical Limit is teaching suicidal tendencies to people? Yes sir, i back my claim by the simple fact that the movie is about a few people climbing K2, and that to me, is strong suicidal tendency in itself!

Thus I come to my final conclusion that mountain climbers who climb very high mountains have suicidal tendencies or at least, have very little value for their own life, otherwise why would somebody go to the death zone and leave his life in the hands of the unpredictable mountain weather? I can joyfully claim that I am still sticking to comparatively lower altitudes, and thus I score less on the addiction scale and more on life expectancy. But the problem remains, I am addicted, and only time will tell where this addiction is going to take me.

Savandurga trek

We were 5 people on 3 bikes who went for the Savan Durga trek. Savan Durga was known to be one of the largest monolith rocks in Asia. How did it matter, if we walked on many rocks or a single one?

I was on my bike and we had to go through the terrible city traffic of Bangalore to reach Magadi road. We realized that we had missed the NICE road (a major highway) that could have saved us the trouble.

After taking the Magadi road, we were in for a nice riding experience as there were major curves on the road. We reached Savan Durga by 1:15 and started trekking by about 1:30 pm. I was leading the group, and was fast climbing up. I started with the wrong route and climbed a little too steep slope which I abandoned soon. Then when I was ahead of others, I couldn't see them and I had to figure out the way. I again took the wrong route, tried climbing a steep slope and was thrown down by the rock. I realized my folly, and moved back to the trail.

Follow the electric lines, the locals had said. I tried doing that literally, and ended up climbing lots of rocks. I thought that I couldn't have gone the wrong way since there were rocks there, which made the climb easy. Plus I was following the Electric lines. But I was greatly mistaken. There was a steep climb on rocks, and I soon hit a difficult climb. I had to climb a height 6 feet, in a single step. I managed, but then I hit a big dead end. There were steps that were going directly into the fort wall with an opening for a cannon at a height. I guess in olden times, soldiers would have climbed that way just to find a cannon sitting above them that would have blown them to pieces. Lucky for me, there was no cannon. But unluckily, I was stuck at the wrong place. The path was very steep on either sides and I had no footholds. I tried to climb up against the fort wall, but it was no use. I was panting heavily and trying to find out what to do. I took a short break and regained my breath. I found a small step on the rock and put my foot on it. There was nothing more, so I had to think hard before I could continue. Then realizing, that going back was not an option for me, I used my knees to climb the steep rock. I lay on the rock, climbing bit by bit on my knees. The trick worked though it left my knees quite bruised. Finally, I got up and saw that what horrible trail I had climbed and I also found the right trail.

After that, I met 3 guys coming down and they were sort of surprised to see me alone. They told me to be careful since it was a difficult path ahead. I smiled. With what I had just climbed, whatever's ahead must be a cakewalk. I climbed up within a short time and I was on the summit after a gruelling climb of 1 hr 15 minutes.

I sat peacefully, enjoyed the quiet and waited for my friends to turn up. I saw them waving at a large distance, and they soon came to the top to join me. We had lunch, spent some more time talking, listening to music and then climbed down without any difficulty.

This time we took the NICE road, and we were at home soon. It was a nice trek, certainly a bit challenging, but not at all a difficult one. Being a monolith rock, it certainly gets a bit difficult climbing since its a single rock to climb up and it gets a bit steep at times. Good thing is, people have cut footsteps in the monolith for making the climb much easier. But if you are like me who lost his way, then you are going to find it difficult to climb. So you are advised, if you are doing Savandurga for the first time, stick to the trail and leave all the adventurous, off-the-beaten-path climbing for the subsequent attempts.

My first song

It all begain in January 2009 when I got a microphone and an amateur audio recording system from U.S. with the help of a friend. I had already started learning various open source software for recording, audio editing, mixing and mastering. It was a dream for me to have a home recording studio. Unlike professional studios, one doesn't need to pay hourly rates for your recordings in a home studio. :)

I was writing a song called Raindrops, inspired by the Pune monsoons which were late that year. I sat in hot afternoons, with the fan off, recording and rerecording my song. I had to work really hard to get something close to good. Then the inevitable happened. My system crashed, I lost all my recordings. I abandoned my song for quite some time, discouraged a little and didn't take out time for working on it.

I had to setup all software from scratch. I finally recorded and finished the song recently. Though I had planned a multi-track recording, and recorded a second bass track for my song, I wasn't satisfied with the results and left a single track with my guitar on it.

The song has the longing for rain and the pleasure that touches me when after long hot summers, the first raindrops hit the ground, making nature so beautiful and the pleasant smells filling the air. I was inspired by the 'Rain Song' from Led Zeppelin to write about rains.

Download the song from here:
http://www.esnips.com/doc/a75d91e5-9655-49d2-80b8-760fc9c6091e/Raindrops

Mittal theory of crow shit

On a company campus where I used to stay once, there were huge trees where a large number of birds, mainly crows used to sit on the tree and attack unsuspecting people with their droppings. The crows went out to work (or something equivalent) during the day but were present at night, ready for their next attack.

The modus operandi of the crows matched with that of the jehadi terrorists. In fact, we can probably call the crows - a bunch of terrorists. Why, you ask? The attacks are always random, even though the victims always claim that they were the intended targets. The attacks are also sudden and can happen at any time, any place under the tree and generally happen when you least expect them. And lastly, the crows instil in us, a feeling of disgust as well as fear.

Looking at the above picture, I tried to apply some mathematics on this issue and came up with a theory which I tentatively named as 'Mittal theory of crow shit'.

The theory can be elaborated as follows:
On the ground, you see white spots of crow shit covered all over the road, only thing is - their density varies a lot. Imagine the road as your sample space and the spots as the plotted points. So the density of white spots indicates the probability of another attack that may happen at the same place. That is, at the place where density of spots is more, there is more chance of an attack than at a place with lesser density. Thus you can calculate the regions which are more prone to attacks and which are less.

But there is a statutory warning that I need to supply with my theory. And that is applicable to all sorts of probabilistic models. It is the fact that probability never tells you precise information about the next attack (an event), it tells only the probability or chance of the event to happen. Thus probability can't save you if providence has chosen you as its next victim. And worst part is, the probability of an attack at any time is never zero at any location under the tree.

Talking about the solutions to this problem of terror, the issue can be tackled in various ways.
My favorite, but the one which will never be implemented, is to eliminate the terrorist camps in the area where they are trained, that is cut off all the trees and finish the habitat of these terrorists.
The second is that you carry a pistol in hand, by which you can probably kill one or two terrorists but the problem will largely remain unsolved.
The third one is the most popular, lifted from the case study of terrorists. That is to make yourself immune to attacks by protecting yourself or shielding yourself using special equipment, in this case carry an umbrella to protect yourself from their projectiles.

Or what you can also do, like the Indian politicians, after every attack, condemn the attacks, use tough words, say that the terrorists will be severely dealt with, but do nothing and pray for somebody else to do the job for you. Just ignore them till they attack you again when you can do the whole process again and thus a vicious circle will be formed.

Well, there is an extra bonus measure on offer. Call the terrorists as a part of a minority community, fight for their rights, give them reservation to sit on those trees and stop anybody from harming them, and say proudly that you coexist with the black crow community, while the crows keep giving you more and more shit ...

Donkey games people play

I had various eminent people having tea with me. That's why perhaps, they called it High tea. I started this conversation, which goes like this:

"Have you been in this situtation:

'Son, just study for your class 10 exams, then you can enjoy and have fun in life'
After the tenth exams
'Son, just study and do your class 12 board exams well, get into IIT/NIT/some good engineering college and then life will become cool'
After you enter a nice university, the expectations just keep on rising:
'Son, just get good grades, since your CGPA is required for getting a good job. Good grades will get you any job you want.'

'Son, grades are not everything. You have to be overall smart. Prepare well for your interviews and once you get a good job, you can relax, earn loads of money and enjoy life'
Then comes the most frightening one:
'Son, prepare for MBA, nowadays B-schools are where you need to be.'

And then it doesn't stop
'Son, get married by this this age'
'Son, let me see the faces of my grand-kids' and you were left wondering if they were asking you to have a thousand kids.

'Son, become a CEO by 40'
'Son, do something something blah blah'

Sometimes, you feel cheated by this shifting of YOUR goals by others including teachers, parents, peers, friends."

After listening to this, Spencer Johnson screamed at me "Who moved my cheese?"
John Lennon couldn't hide his feelings and had to write a lyric for the situation which goes something like this, "Life is what happens to you, when you are busy making other plans."
And I said:
"We have been treated like donkeys. Imagine a donkey, having a guy (read society) sitting on his back holding a pair of carrots in front of the donkey's mouth using a rod. Now the donkey is motivated to move forward to get the carrot, but he doesn't realize that the carrots just keep on moving forward with him. The donkey, obviously is no physicist to deduce the fact that the carrot has zero relative velocity with respect to him. So he marches on. The man sitting on his back boos, makes funny sounds, motivates the donkey, sometimes kicks him, and the poor donkey keeps on moving without knowing where he is going or where he will end up."

Robert Frost, after being in a silent, thoughtful state all along, had the final say in this conversation:

"Miles to go before I(donkey) sleep."