Over recent years we have seen a growing number of discussions on the lifespan of hardware products. it got us thinking as to why we are seeing more and more products being discontinued because the manufacturer can no longer get the parts. In this article, we look at why manufacturers discontinue hardware products and the growth in the number of products that are declared end-of-life.

The Life Cycle Of A Typical Product

To start with, let’s look at the life cycle of a product. As you can see from the graph above, you can see that sales start off very slowly, with a handful of innovators who are prepared to try out an untested product to see if it solves their problems for them.

Buoyed by reports from the innovators the early adopters get on board and sales start to increase. The early adopters take us to the peak of sales when the early majority jump on to the bandwagon.

Unfortunately for manufacturers, it’s downhill from here as even though the late majority finally start buying the product, sales are already dropping away, with the laggards hardly moving the needle.

When you are looking at a product that is no longer available it is more than likely that the product has reached the laggard phase of its life cycle and the damage has been done, not enough people are buying the product to make it economically viable to continue selling. Unfortunately, brands are not charities, they have to look at the bottom line, whether they are a small boutique business or a large multi-national corporation.

With this in mind, let’s now look at the different ways manufacturers regard their products.

• New: This is the latest version - some people think they should own it on day one, those people are at the head of the adoption curve. You might think they get the best deal getting the new features first, but those at the start of the curve have to deal with bugs, incompatibilities and of course paying the premium to be first.

• Current: This may not be the latest version, but it is still currently sold. Often those who buy this version are going to get most of the features of the new version, but without the headaches, they may also get a better deal on price.

• End of Life (EOL): This will be an older model, however, it is important to stress that end-of-life does not mean the end of support and often brands will support a product with updates and bug fixes for several years after the event. For example, Avid’s end-of-life policy is to offer support for hardware products for 5 years from the date they declare that product end-of-life. This does mean that you can get some real bargains if you don’t mind being behind the curve and still being assured of several years of support.

• End of Support: This is when a manufacturer no longer offers support for a product, this will include updates, bug fixes and any kind of help. This is when you may want to start to think about replacing products as they may be incompatible with many parts of your workflow.

As well as the normal sales-driven life cycle we have shown above, there are also a number of other factors that come into play which may mean a product becomes obsolete before sales numbers would suggest.

No Longer Cost-Effective To Manufacture Anymore

Although most brands are tight-lipped about this topic, there is no doubt that the use of a computer in a studio has significantly reduced the amount of hardware required, so reducing the market for audio hardware in most sectors of the pro-audio business. Take my own journey as an example. Back in the day, my studio was built around a large analogue mixing console, I then had multiple tape recorders, a turntable, for playing vinyl, analog outboard with multiple compressors, reverb units etc. Once I moved into the box, I no longer needed any of this. There was a time when I needed a DAT machine to deliver the end product, but once that was changed to CD and then file-based delivery, they were no longer needed. Everything was now in the box. Now that is just one studio, but when you multiply that up, you can see that the change of workflow to a largely in-the-box one, significantly reduces the need to buy lots of audio hardware, other than an interface or two. Yes, there will be some who choose to have some hand-picked ‘boutique’ items of hardware or those who don’t get on with computers, but never the less the market for audio hardware has taken a significant hit. This makes it much harder for brands to get a return on investment when developing a hardware unit.

Technology Moves Forward - We Can Do This Better

There is no doubt that technology is moving forward at a pace. This means that brands are constantly developing newer and better products, taking advantage of new technology. This also means that the older technology becomes obsolete more quickly. Alternatively, the more positive way to look at this is product iteration and we see this a lot in our sector.

For example Apogee in their ClipMic end-of-life statement say this…

“Effective immediately, Apogee Electronics is announcing its ClipMic digital lavalier microphone created in partnership with Sennheiser is End of Sale. The original ClipMic digital has been replaced with ClipMic digital 2 which features expanded connectivity to Mac and Windows computers along with iOS devices, a new and improved microphone capsule with lower noise performance.”

In fact in our research, we found that Apogee is one of a handful of companies that issue end-of-life statements for each of their products, explaining why they have had to discontinue that particular product. Most brands just have a page listing the discontinued products with no information at all on why their products have been discontinued.

The Manufacturer Can No Longer Source Key Parts

Another reason we are seeing growing lists of end-of-life products is that more and more hardware is dependent on specialised components, which don’t have equivalents. This means if just one component is no longer available the unit’s manufacturer has to choose between a costly re-design or discontinuing the unit.

There was a time when audio hardware used simple components like resistors, capacitors, valves and transistors. There were plenty of alternatives for most of these components, which meant users, repair shops and manufacturers could keep these units going for a very long time. However, as technology develops, hardware units started to use specialised components, including specialised, dedicated integrated circuits. All of this has made it more and more expensive to rework a product if key parts become unavailable. Circuit boards need redesigning, front panels need changing etc and that assumes that it is possible to even find a replacement.

When it comes to repairing a unit, it is rarely an easy swap, which makes fixing units difficult at best or impossible at worse. So we end up with pages and pages of discontinued hardware littering brand’s websites, of products they no longer manufacture.

It is interesting that brands in general say very little about discontinued products. But there are some examples where they have, for example when Avid announced the end-of-life and end-of-support dates for the Avid S3 control surface Avid’s Eddie Jones commented on our article saying…

“This was mostly down to not being able to get parts. It was already difficult to source some components before COVID, and now there are even more unavailable it would require a complete redesign. Most people preferred the S1 too (like 95%)” ​​

When Focusrite discontinued the ISA 430 MKII they tweeted in response to a question about its future saying…

“Thanks for your feedback. Sadly, many of the components used in this product have become difficult, and in some cases impossible to source as they too have been discontinued. We'll always continue to support ISA 430 MKII and are looking at all options for new hardware additions.”

Sometimes brands explain in more detail why a particular product is being discontinued. In this case, this is what Apogee had to say about their Elements interfaces…

“Effective immediately, Apogee Electronics is announcing its Element Series audio interfaces are EOL (End of Life). Because the critical Thunderbolt chip designed into Element interfaces is no longer available, we are not able to continue producing Element Series products.”  

This dependence on more and more specialised components can also have unforeseen consequences especially if a key component suddenly becomes unavailable.

You may recall our article AKM Factory Fire Could Affect Supply Of A to D And D to A Convertors For At Least 12 Months back in October 2020 in which we reported that there was a fire at the Asahi Kasei Microsystem (AKM) semiconductor factory in Nobeoka city in Japan on 20th October 2020. The plant is known for the production of high-end DACs/ADCs IC components for high-end audio devices.

We learnt that all of AKM’s audio-related chips were produced at the now-closed factory and that AKM chips were used in a wide range of pro-audio and high-end consumer audiophile manufacturers, including Solid State Logic, TASCAM, miniDSP, Merging Technologies, SPL of Germany, Focusrite, RME, Schitt Audio, SMSL, Monoprice and others. We suspect that brands were much more careful about making sure they weren’t so dependent on one brand making all their products on one site folloing that incident.

Changes In Manufacturing Processes

Another factor which makes repair and design changes difficult is manufacturing techniques. To keep the prices down of the increasing complex units used in our industry, brands are having to streamline their manufacturing methods and use techniques like surface-mounted components, which can be assembled by specialised machines.

However, changes to designs require the board to be completely redesigned, which is unlikely to be cost-effective for some brands, as they cannot be sure they will get a return on investment on the changes.

It also makes cost-effective repairs much more difficult as the repairer requires specialised tools to repair surface mounted components. 

To Buy Or Not To Buy - That Is The Question?

All of this may be worrying you that buying audio hardware may not be the best thing to do. The big question many ask is ‘to buy or not to buy? or when should I buy. As we can see from the product life cycle, if we buy later in the life cycle we can get a better deal, but the life of the product might be shorter. That said, we all like to have new things; but here are our tips for deciding what and when to buy;

• Does my current set-up do everything I need it to do?

• If I replace one thing, then how will that impact other parts of my workflow? For example; you might want to buy a new computer, but then you might need to spend the same amount of money upgrading peripherals and software to ensure compatibility.

• How will any changes impact on the work I need to do?

• How long will it take to learn the new product I buy?

• Does the old product have any second hand or trade-in value?

• Will buying it get me more customers? Or if you do it for fun, will buying it give me a better sound?

• IMPORTANT: Can I afford to buy it without getting into debt?

All is not lost, you need to establish whether the product will do what you need it to do today and not worry about tomorrow, because in this context, tomorrow never comes.

Good Design Can Extend The Lifespan of Audio Hardware

However, good design can increase the lifespan of a product and in the pro audio industry, there is one brand that stands out in this regard and that is Metric Halo. Their interfaces have been designed so that key elements can be replaced so that when computer technology moves on, you only need to replace the port card, rather than the whole interface.

The 3d Card Upgrade is a user-installable hardware and software combination that completely refreshes your Metric Halo devices for the next leg of the digital revolution. It replaces all the digital & computer interfacing on your hardware with up-to-date, cutting-edge implementations.

Anyone who has bought a Metric Halo interface in the last 18 years can upgrade it to modern-day specs.

The 3d Card Upgrade System includes:

• MH Link — Exceptionally low-latency, Ultra-high-bandwidth audio, clock and data connections over Gigabit Ethernet.

• MH EdgeBus — An Ultra-high-bandwidth programmable and pluggable audio expansion slot. MH EdgeBus allows you to effortlessly extend your system to be exactly the interface you need at any given moment.

• MH Console – A modern, 64-bit application to control your entire system with a simple, lightning fast and flexible routing model and a stunning new visual design.

• MH Mixer – 128 input x 64 bus multi-box unified zero-latency mixer.

• MH MonitorControl – Integrated surround capable monitor controller with system processing capability. Includes Analog Domain level control on ULN-8/LIO-8 hardware.

• MH Record – 128 input ultra-reliable multitrack recorder with deep hardware integration.

• MH DSP Engine — Enhanced processing power and massive memory in the hardware. All 3d hardware includes the +DSP license providing over a hundred plug-ins and the unique Metric Halo Graph environment.

• MH Link Audio — Direct Ethernet CoreAudio driver (with support for up to 128 channels of I/O @ 192k).

• USB Audio — USB-C Class Audio Interface.

If you want to learn more about the Metric Halo 3D Upgrade System then check out their web site.

In Conclusion

There you have it. Unfortunately, hardware products aren’t immortal. As well as the normal sales-related curve, as we have shown, there are a number of reasons why a brand may have to make a product obsolete, earlier than expected, and most of these are outside their control. It is a shame that very few brands are transparent about why their products become obsolete sooner than perhaps they had hoped, with Apogee being a shining example of how to do it better.

The AKM fire was a serious wake-up call to many brands in the pro-audio industry to make sure they know where their components come from and making sure their supply chains are secure.

As we have seen design can have its part to play with Metric Halo leading the way with their 3d card system.

But as well as taking all of this into consideration, it is also your responsibility when researching a new purchase of audio hardware, to establish that the product will do what you want it to do for a sensible period of time and not to worry about what might be over the horizon. If you wait for the next advance you will end up on a permanent wait, and not able to be creative today.