A Pioneer of Chinese Audio That Has Made a Name for Itself in the World
At the beginning of the Year of the Sheep, there is news from the other side of the ocean that excites the Chinese people and shakes the world: Hivi Audio brings its top home theater audio series to the annual International CES International Consumer Electronics Show and THESHOW 2003 in Las Vegas, USA. At the audiophile equipment exhibition, it won three highest honors in the world: the best CES2003 High-End audio award, the perfect engineering design award and the highest speaker innovation design award at the audiophile exhibition. The 2003CES exhibition is the world's largest trade fair for consumer technology products. The Consumer Electronics Association (Organizing Committee CEA) has invited 2,283 exhibitors from around the world, including Intel, Texas Instruments (TI), Dell, Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba, Pioneer, SONY and many other industry giants and the world's largest audio-visual brands . The exhibition attracted 110,000 visitors from 128 countries. Swans' super flagship Swans2.2 ribbon speaker system amazes visitors with its innovative full-band linear speaker audio structure, super high-end appearance design of modern technology, perfect reproduction of the magnificent sound field, and faithful portrayal of musical details endlessly.
In the face of the noble and perfect Haoting series products, visitors linger. Swans products are like exquisite electro-acoustic works of art, which fully demonstrate Swans' strong technical strength. Hivi, as the only company in China that goes global in high-end loudspeakers, has achieved great success in the world electro-acoustic industry market, which not only greatly improves the overall level of China's national electro-acoustic industry, but also plays an important role in the development of the world's electro-acoustic industry. contribute.
Quietly grown audio giant
Hi-Vi Group Hi-Vi RESEARCH, the world's top speaker manufacturing multinational company. All over the world, whether in high-end audio equipment stores or computer supermarkets, you can almost see fashionable HiVi products and hear the perfect sound brought by HiVi. At present, Swans Group has the world's best electro-acoustic engineers and world-class research facilities and development methods. Swans invented the world-renowned magnetic field ribbon loudspeaker, which has established Swans' leading position in the international electro-acoustic field. In this exhibition, Swans once again competed side by side with world-class audio brands, won three awards, and further expanded its international influence. Yao Hongbo, chairman of Hivi Audio, said, "In this white circle, I, a yellow-skinned Chinese, can win such three awards, I am very proud."
As an international brand from domestic to overseas audio industry, HiVi participated in the CES exhibition as early as 1996, and was the first Chinese high-end audio company to participate in the CES exhibition in China. Since then, it has performed well in the exhibition every year. With its world-renowned ribbon loudspeaker and excellent technical strength, it has gradually won the respect of the international electro-acoustic industry. The 2003CES exhibition is the eighth consecutive year that Swans has participated in the exhibition. This has created a record in the domestic audio industry, which is unmatched by other domestic high-end audio manufacturers.
Yao Hongbo was born in Harbin in 1964. Graduated from Shaanxi Hanzhong Aviation Department 012 Base Technical School in 1980, and was assigned to work in Shenzhen Southern Airlines Electronics Factory. After graduating from the Computer Control Department of the 012 Base Engineering College of the Aviation Department of Shaanxi Hanzhong in 1988, he returned to Shenzhen to work. He was responsible for the development, design and market operation of audio products in Shenzhen Weida Electronics Factory. In 1991, he borrowed 30,000 yuan from relatives and friends. Established Hivi Company and became the first audio manufacturer in China specializing in the manufacture of Hi-end loudspeakers.
Since its establishment in 1991, Swans has been focusing on the research and development of loudspeakers and sound box systems. This development direction has not changed until today when it "has a considerable seat in the global audiophile industry" (the language of a mainstream audio magazine in the United States). not deviated.
Based on technology, looking at the world
Yao Hongbo believes that to enter the market with dignity and dignity, instead of relying only on cheap goods, development should have something different in principle. Hivi's eyes are on the whole world.
Swans has the world's best speaker design experts as its design engineers, Swans has never set any restrictions on the design of these engineers and hopes that they can design products to maintain their own style and personality. Once the product is completed, it must pass strict physical characteristics and subjective Evaluation test, no matter how perfect the engineer thinks his design is, if the audience is not satisfied, the product will not be released.
Hivi has established itself in the market with high technology, high quality and reasonable price. Swans saw China's cheap labor and foreign excellent design technology, and decided to find a way of its own. In the past few years, the US economy was not very good. Yao Hongbo hired foreign engineers who are famous in the world today to participate in research work. , and installed advanced equipment in the United States, Canada and China to make Swans prosperous. David Graebener, a famous American speaker designer, said with emotion after visiting Swans in China: "The manufacturing, production and , supply and quality control. Compared with the best speaker manufacturers in the United States, they may be better than them in quality control. Because the wages here are relatively cheap, more people can be hired to do quality control work. These advantages are impossible. In contrast, in order to keep pace with the development level of speaker production in the world, Swans invests a lot of money in production equipment every year. As long as there is new speaker production equipment, Swans directly buys it from the United States and installs it in China.
In response to the Chinese people's general advocacy of foreign brands of audio, many domestic audio systems have concocted trumped-up "foreign origin" for themselves. In the eyes of audio professionals, some tricks that are almost scornful can deceive many consumers who lack knowledge of audio expertise. The problems reflected in this are naturally multi-faceted, and the immaturity of China's audio industry as an industry is also evident.
Domestic audio brands often encounter embarrassment in marketing. Consumers are more likely to trust foreign brands of speakers, the same materials, the same technology and functions, and even some domestic speakers are more beautiful and diverse than foreign brands in appearance and style, but Chinese consumers who are frightened are often afraid of domestic speakers. Sound is hostile. Therefore, if the manufacturer is playing a foreign brand, it is often easy to win the favor of consumers.
Mr. Yao said that the series of products developed by Swans after going to Canada are the real starting point of Swans, and only then did Swans truly enter a new kingdom and reach a new level. Every time a new product is developed, it is essential to focus on style and practicality. Hivi employs world-class sound engineers. They first consider all the factors that affect the sound in the speaker structure. No matter how you design, the most fundamental is To make the speaker get a linear, balanced driving force within a certain range. Hivi's loudspeakers always follow this rule, explore and create in accordance with the scientific and philosophical ideas of acoustics, so as to continuously obtain high-quality sound effects and improve the effectiveness.
Mr. Yao believes that in designing and manufacturing products, one cannot always follow others and simply imitate them. Products with low taste, low starting point and low quality cannot really win the market. Even if you have a certain strength, you must pay attention to the overall balance of the system in the design of the product, and consider the problem in an all-round way.
The concept that supports Yao Hongbo's innovative spirit is that "China's miracle should rely on brains and technology, and it should improve the competitiveness of the Chinese nation in all aspects through high technology." Sprint to the commanding heights of the industry." When some well-known domestic brands "dare to be the queen" and repeated production on a large scale, and then fought endless price reduction wars, Hivi embarked on product innovation and continued to climb to the peak of audio technology. process. This road is of course much harder to walk.
From 1992 to 1993, Hivi's products had received rave reviews in the domestic audiophile industry, and Yao Hongbo decided to "go out". But in 1993, when he came to North America alone, he found that China, which accounts for 85% of the world's speaker production, has less than 15% of speaker sales in the international market. We have almost become a company that just sells resources to others. s country. Especially in the United States, the hegemony of speakers in the world, sometimes Chinese products can only be found in stalls. In Yao Hongbo's words, "how to gain a decent foothold in the world's largest speaker market" is a realistic and arduous problem that Swans faces.
Swans adopts the "bringing doctrine", which is different from the method of introducing expensive technical equipment that some enterprises usually adopt. Swans directly looks at the people with technical power. In this regard, Yao Hongbo has a unique view of "operating cost accounting": "We directly hired a senior engineer in the United States with an annual salary of 100,000 US dollars, which seemed a bit unreasonable to some people at the time, but it was more than spending thousands of dollars. It is much more cost-effective to introduce the complete production line designed by this person with the capital of 10,000 yuan." This effective "bringing in" made Swans quickly gather a group of the world's top electro-acoustic designers. Not only that, Swans has also successively brought famous American and European audio companies such as SWANS Swan Electroacoustic Company into its own command through capital operation, so that it has gradually formed its technical competitiveness against international audio brands.
Americans respect invention and despise imitation. They also value individual colors and unique styles of audio products. This was reflected when Swans successively launched Swans-M1 professional monitor audio, Dulcethi-fi and home theater speaker systems: Swans quickly established itself as a professional audio system manufacturer in North America. Especially in 1995, when HiVi's own engineers completed the challenges of various technical requirements and launched a pair of "HiVi Duchy No. 1" superb speakers weighing two tons, it made American audio experts feel this. The shock of the audio brand from the other side of the ocean. But Yao Hongbo believes that HiVi appeared in the United States, the world's largest audio market, in a "decent" manner after it successfully launched the world's first NdFeB uniform push-pull high-sensitivity wideband tweeter in 1997. Until then, the traditional dome-type electric tweeter has been the mainstream product in speaker systems. However, as we all know, the dome tweeter uses a voice coil to indirectly drive the vibrating surface. At the same time, limited by the physical properties of the material, the tweeter playback often lacks the ability to describe details. The ribbon tweeter voice coil of the HiVi ribbon tweeter system is directly manufactured on the surface of the diaphragm, which can drive the air synchronously and evenly, and improve the response speed between the voice coil and the diaphragm, so the tweeter playback is accurate and clean. The high-quality bass and bright, lubricated mid-frequency make the whole sound system have wonderful effects with high analytical power and rich musical details. In 1998, after HiVi's ribbon tweeter system was unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, ribbon tweeters became the loudspeaker unit that some well-known international audio brands competed for.
Swans does not make exaggerated propaganda as a foreign product after going abroad. Swans believes that it must absorb foreign advanced things, and then use its own strengths to combine the two in order to produce products with vitality. Swans' success is success in this sense.
Dedicate the most beautiful voice to the world
It is High's business to be able to truly restore and reproduce the beautiful and unforgettable sounds in the world. Yao Hongbo, a 38-year-old Canadian-Chinese businessman, has been in the Hi-Fi (high-fidelity) speaker and audio design industry for more than 10 years since he started his business. Talk to him about how to play the sound and how to listen to the performance of the voice. He tells you in a little exaggerated Mandarin, mixed with Western gestures, and his expression is obsessed and intoxicated.
"To measure the quality of sound, Europeans use their ears to listen, while Japanese use instruments to measure it. This reflects nationality: when listening to classical music, it is best to use European sound, while modern music should use American sound."
In 1999, Burmester, the most famous German audio manufacturer leading the world audio trend, grandly launched the B99 top reference speaker speaker with a price of up to 60,000 Deutsche Marks. The arrogant Germans wrote "High-end Made in Germany!" But the speakers used in this speaker are ribbon speakers produced by HiVi. Today, when the core technology of China's audio industry is monopolized by foreign oligarchs, HiVi has already sold its original core technology internationally, which is really exciting for the Chinese!
After the most professional Voice Coil magazine in the American speaker industry tested the Swans DMA midrange speaker in December 1995, Vance Dickason, the most famous contemporary speaker designer in the United States, excitedly pointed out:
"This DMA speaker is clearly in the top tier!" "If you still think that China can only produce low-end speakers, please reconsider, this DMA midrange speaker is indeed on par with its European counterpart, although Swans is based in Canada , but the production base is in China.”
Swan currently has its own sales network in the United States, its own dealers in Germany, and its own distribution network in South America, France and other countries and regions. , Dedicating the best things to human beings is Swans' greatest wish!
