"Tell the industry what you want" postingboard

As someone who does new product research for a living, I think this can be a useful exercise. I imagine that few if any high-end companies do any serious market research. Most get their feeback informally from the channel and, of course, from their customers, as it should be. But just like this, it's qualitative.

Here are some of my thoughts:

More CDPs should have accomodations for hard-drive based systems, so a digital input to access the DAC. USB is good, but S/PDIF is the first choice I think.

More standardization of spade connector sizes. I keep running into speakers that will not easily accept the spades on my speaker cables.

Some facility on components for "grabbing" the power cord IEC connector and holding it tight.

Better labeling of inputs and outputs and switches on the backs of components: bright lettering that is sufficiently large to read from a angle and in less than ideal light.

More attention to fine gradations of attentuation at the low end of the volume scale. Very frustrating to have a system you can not turn down enough (for very low-level listening) or set to the level you truly want.

More CDPs should have accomodations for hard-drive based systems, so a digital input to access the DAC. USB is good, but S/PDIF is the first choice I think.

Bingo.

Better labeling of inputs and outputs and switches on the backs of components: bright lettering that is sufficiently large to read from a angle and in less than ideal light.

A nice touch on the Modwright SWL9.0SE is the addition of upside down labeling of inputs and outputs, so you can read the label as you're looking over the top of the preamp.

Of course we design in features that have proved popular and we even look for ideas in other product lines. Sometimes, in spite of having what we think is a strong list of useful features, a product will fall short of sales expectations and other times, some little feature that we think will be little more than a bullet point catches on and a product will outperform our expectations. What I find useful (when it happens) is feedback from actual users or users of other manufacturers products that tell me what we're missing or explain how something like a user interface might be made more intuitive. This can lead to innovations that no one else has.

"Cannot the mbl's be used as reference speakers"
Sure, ok. What else should be the reference for, say cars, beverage to drink, music style, movie genre, what should my house look like, what food should be the reference, what flavor of ice-cream. Just make a list of everything you like so the rest of us will know what it is that we should think is best.

Time and phase accurate speakers. Stop designing speakers around out of phase midrange vs woofers or tweeters to "compensate" for poor electrical and construction.