I wish you the best in your endeavor. I'm looking for something like the SAT CF1-12 for an introudctory modest price of ~ $2.5k. Filled out the survey.
Tonearm Project Consumer Study
Hello! I am a second year engineering student with an interest in vinyl and audio systems, my team and I are doing a year-long project to design a high-end tonearm targeted at vinyl enthusiasts. As part of this, we made a short questionnaire which we hope will let us consider some real opinions from in our design process.
The importance of this survey is mainly for the (imaginary) stakeholder, who has to be shown that we have considered the needs and wants of a potential customer of this product. We can then consider how to use this, if at all, for our decisions in the design process.
The link to the Microsoft Forms questionnaire is as follows:
We hope to hear your thoughts!
If you have any questions about the project or the questionnaire, please feel free to contact me using the email in the survey.
8 responses Add your response
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good on ya Nick. Ignore the anti education cynic. There is room in the world for a lamb free gyro and a sonically transparent end of record tonearm lift. i spent a lovely 30 years in product development and manufacturing of aerospace products, now on board of a Quantum computing software company, doing some similar research on customer desired feature set. Spencer has it right. Get started and move down the road. I would encourage you to consider 3D printability in your weighted design trade space. IF you want help, free help as advisor or just review, please let me know. Best to you and the team. What school ? jim |
Korf Audio just made exactly the hypothetical new high-end tonearm I might want to buy. You can read about it on their blog. Their price is incredibly reasonable. I’m not affilated with them in any way, and haven’t even placed an order yet. |
One of the questions, how much would you spend on the arm, cartridge, or base? There was a time when everyone but everyone knew it was a record player. Some people called them changers. Or if it played one at a time then it was a fully auto record player. The best of these, semi-auto, would only raise the arm at the end. Best of all of course were the manual turntables. The manual turntable does nothing but turn the platter. Over time the word manual was dropped so that today we call them turntables. At no point in this 100 year history did anyone anywhere ever call the turntable "base". Except I guess today, where it seems the more education you get, the less you know. I answered the questions and know you will get a good grade. Because: grade inflation. But hey, don't feel bad. I once saw WSU Nutrition Grad Students showcase their talents with an authentic "Greek Cuisine" menu at our major hospital cafeteria. Uh, your giro, no lamb? "People don't like lamb." Not a one of them even knew the first thing about "cuisine" Greek or otherwise. Because: the more they teach, the less you know. |
@nickgoatley I just completed your survey. First, I applaud your enthusiasm and intent! Some feedback for you, from the perspective of a marketing pro w/MBA and 20+ years in reasearch-based product development... Your survey is likely to provide you with data that won't help direct your design. You've got very broad open-ended questions with free form text responses. These are difficult to decipher and compile into meaningful action items. The range of focus is so broad from first-turntable to SOTA, answers can't lead to any specific direction. I'd suggest first narrowing your mission to a more specific use case(e.g. first tonearm buyer with turntable costing under $XX) and restructure the survey with assistance from someone experienced in marketing research in general and survey design (maybe a professor at your university?). Questions about features will yield more meaningful results if structured as selections from a list, rankings of a list of features, or scaled responses(e.g. not important at all...very important). Try imagining the tabulated dataset and how you'll take action with that result. If you're unsure, then the question isn't finalized. Best of luck...this is hard! Cheers, Spencer |