The other thing about audio equipment in general is that far fewer people are involved in designing them than you could possibly imagine...so very often the people who design it are really, really good at one area of design but much less so than another, but there just isn't the money floating around to get the design thoroughly checked over...one person designs it and off it goes to production! When I left SSL (and the music / broadcast industry) I moved into an industry where every detail has to be got perfect (because people will die if it isn't!) and suddenly costs rocket up a hundred fold at least, it was quite interesting.
We did design one desk, called at different times the ARC or Bertha, where every detail (mechanical and electrical) was actually very carefully worked through and reviewed, that would have been a fantastically reliable desk (as well as amazing sounding). Sadly by the time we got it near production around 1991 there was no market for a £500,000 analogue desk... Bits of the design did make it into the 9000, but that was designed much quicker with a much smaller team.
This is why I like dropping in and out of the ProAudio DIY forum on Facebook, at home you can, if you have the skills and knowledge and know who to ask for advice, nearly always make higher quality equipment than you can buy! Because you have the time to check everything carefully.
That's all got very philosophical from a discussion about VU meters
I guess it's because it's my day job now, making sure engineers really have thought about everything that could possible go wrong (even 20-30-50 years into the future) so they don't kill people... At least we didn't have that problem at SSL, short of the desk falling on you! Or sticking your hand into the awful 4000 power supplies. Or grabbing the 263Vdc on the bargraphs...
Cheers,
Andy
