Brief Summary

While superficially similar equipment exists in different sectors of the audio industry, the premiums charged for equipment targeting the motion picture and broadcast sectors might seem surprising to some. But if you consider the severity of the consequences of equipment failure in different areas of the industry it makes more sense than the numbers suggest.

Going Deeper

For those of us who work in music production it might seem that our colleagues working in the motion picture and broadcast industries seem to have a big sign over their heads saying ‘charge me more’. What other way is there to explain the prices these industries get charged for gear? The specifics might differ but surely not so much as to justify the seemingly arbitrary extra zeroes which seem to have been added to the prices of some equipment?

To take a simple example, a field recorder from Sound Devices costs nearly ten times as much as a similar device from Zoom - Why?

This is a question which I hadn’t been actively thinking about until it came up in a recent conversation at NAMM. Best summarised by the tongue in cheek statement that where music pays a dollar, motion picture pays ten and broadcast pay a hundred, for those of us at the bottom of this pyramid of costs it might look like those higher up are being exploited - Are they?

Broadcasters Understand Why They Pay More

The short answer is no. There is definitely a law of diminishing returns in operation here but there is no conspiracy between manufacturers. Zoom’s much cheaper alternative to the aforementioned Sound Devices field recorder illustrates the point that companies are in competition with each other and, unless there are protections like patents in place preventing it, companies will, and do, try to undercut each other. But it is also the case that you do not get something for nothing. There will be people for whom the Zoom recorder provides the most appropriate choice for the work that they do. Whereas for others, the peace of mind offered by the quality and flexibility of the premium option is worth it.

Higher quality gear costs more, and each person has to choose what level of equipment works for them. Although for many people it looks like the disparity isn’t justifiable.

Why The Disparity?

So why is there such a disparity between gear which, while different, does basically the same job and the tech specs are so similar? Whether used for recording music in a music studio or recording dialogue in a film studio, it’s all recording. There are of course differences in build quality but the aspect which doesn’t get acknowledged as much as it might is the difference in consequences in the event of failure - That’s a real driver behind these disparities.

Home studio gear is as cheap as it gets, it’s built down to a price whereas professional studio gear will be built up to a spec. If you want to record release quality material at home, you really don’t need to spend very much. A computer, a native DAW, a desktop interface and mics. Save your money for the monitoring and acoustic treatment. What happens if something stops working? In the case of a home production, not much. The project stops until the issue is fixed, if it’s a few days then if there are collaborators they wait. They might grumble but everyone gets over it.

In the case of a professional studio an equipment failure is more of a problem and much more costly. For example, we hear comments online from people who baulk at the cost of an HDX system but many professional studios still favour them because of the guaranteed performance in terms of track count and latency performance of a DSP system. 

For the same reasons buying over-engineered equipment, which is less likely to develop and fault, and pairing that with an appropriate aftercare agreement to ensure priority support in the event of a fault is expensive but to the intended customer is absolutely justifiable.

Taking a worst case scenario in a recording studio, if it was an orchestral session, the consequences of downtime are severe. You need a plan for the possibility of something going wrong as orchestras are expensive. However, a day of downtime in even this scenario is nothing compared to a day of downtime on a large film shoot or a commercial broadcaster.

Support Is Expensive

Looking at this from the perspective of a manufacturer, if you are receiving two support requests. One of them from someone in a critical role in a large production whose essential piece of gear, without which they can’t do the job, is blinking vacantly at them and refusing to work, and the other of those calls is from someone who is at home and can just get on with something else, who might be prepared to pay to get priority support? Both can have support, but the large facility needs fast turn around support, whereas the home studio is less likely to be prepared to pay for speedy support.

Support is expensive, and 24 hour priority support is even more expensive. We may complain about it when we can’t get it as quickly as we would like but you get what you pay for and if you want responsive support, it has to be paid for and if your downtime is really expensive then, like insurance, you’ll probably willingly pay to indemnify yourself from consequences which are potentially very expensive indeed!

This can also show itself in the different types of dealers. Whilst a home studio, looks for the cheapest price for the equipment, it’s only when something goes wrong that they find out why it was so cheap. The dealer with the cheapest price, can’t afford to have anything beyond basic support , whereas high end dealers don’t slash their prices, but it does mean that they have the capacity to have a support department and be able to loan spare units out to provide the customer with cover until the faulty unit can be fixed.

The consequences of downtime become more severe as the scale of productions grows. From the outside it can look like the motion picture industry (as opposed to broadcasters) adds a zero to the costs but rather than looking at whether cameras are involved we should look at the budgets involved. How much does an expensive album cost to make? How much does a feature film cost to make?

Then there is broadcast. Delays to film production are expensive but they do happen, people get shouted at, people get fired but ultimately everyone gets over it. Broadcast is different in that it can’t be late. You have to make transmission. Failure isn’t an option. This is why, if you add a zero for non-broadcast motion picture, you add two for broadcast! And those people paying for that level of support expect to get what they paid for.

A nice example of how companies for whom paying extra is a way of buying peace of mind and security was shared by Mike Thornton… 

“Back in the 1980s, when I was an engineer at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, the commercial radio station covering the Greater Manchester area (a good reminder that broadcast doesn’t always involve cameras). We made a business decision to spend more on our ¼ inch tape machines. Where other stations were buying Revox tape machines, at Piccadilly Radio, we invested in Studers. Revox was the consumer division of Studer, and Studer was the professional division and the design and build quality and so the reliability were very different. The Studer machines stayed in alignment much longer, so saving maintenance time. Yes the Studer’s were significantly more expensive but were built to the highest standards and in a business where gear needs to work 100% of the time we took the decision that the extra expense was worth it. Another example is the degree of redundancy. As a broadcaster we would have spares all the way through the chain, each studio would have three tape machines, one, effectively as a hot spare, we had redundant paths for the signal to get to the transmitters and as engineers we provided 24/7 cover. All these were business choices, because although expensive, they were small in comparison to the cost to the business, both in terms of lost revenue abut also damaged reputation, if we went off air.”

Not all customers have the same value to brands. It’s not nice to hear that everyone isn’t equal if you’re at the bottom of the hierarchy but if you are paying orders of magnitude more to a brand you’ll understandably expect a higher level of service and that’s exactly what we see. If you remember some years ago when there was an issue with Avid workstations suddenly refusing to reboot. The situation was extremely fast moving, if you want to review the details the story was reported by us here.

The speed of the response was impressive, and considering the potential consequences such an incident might have on such a sensitive area of the industry it was exactly the right response to an issue which, despite the confusion at the beginning turned out to be a result of a faulty Chrome update, nothing to do with with Avid or their software. An answer machine message explaining the opening hours of the support line isn’t going to cut it in a case like this.

How ‘Dead’ Is Your Deadline?

Some people’s deadlines are soft, they can move. When affected by unforeseen delays, for example because of equipment failure, the deadline moves to accommodate that. If a delay incurs significant additional expense then it makes sense to pay extra for products and support which minimises delays. If your deadlines are non-negotiable then the amount you are willing to pay to protect yourself from missing them rises to reflect that. Seen from that perspective what looks like an eye watering premium is actually a reflection of what is at stake in different areas of the industry. Adding two zeros to the price might save someone three zeroes, or in the worst case, their career.