I was browsing www.esi-pro.com and stumbled over a pressrelease from ESI about how M-audio have basicly stolen the whole design of the ESI nEar 05 eXperience monitors and applied it on their new BX5 monitors.

Quoted from the pressrelease:

quote:

ESI Professional concerned about M-Audio Studiophile BX5a product design ESI Professional wants to inform its worldwide customers about the design similarities of the new M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers and the top-selling ESI nEar05 eXperience monitoring speakers. The new M-Audio Studiophile BX5a replicates many of the distinctive cosmetic design features and most technical design features of the ESI nEar05 eXperience. The main technical specifications of both products are identical, including the used materials, including the basic design of electronics, and even including the meassurements down to the mm of the cabinet given in the specification tables. A close look on the back panel of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a even shows that the position of every single cabinet screw as well as screws to fix the internal electronic parts are matching the original ESI nEar05 eXperience exactly. ESI Professional in the meantime verified that the chinese supplier that is manufacturing the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers for M-Audio did obviously try to copy the successful ESI nEar05 eXperience monitoring speakers during the development process. ESI assumes that the cosmetic design concept, the actual technical design and specifications of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers are intended to confuse consumers as to the origin and quality of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers, obviously intending to profit from ESI's success with the nEar05 eXperience product. This is underlined by the fact that the M-Audio website still uses quotes from reviews of one of the predecessors, the M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B that has since been discontinued, to advertise the new M-Audio Studiophile BX5a. It is interesting to know that the M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B was a product designed by the ESI engineering team. ESI offered the OEM product to M-Audio, however no successor of the M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B was designed or engineered by ESI. Our initial concerns after the anouncement of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers have sadly been confirmed. ESI has since received several comments from international distributors, music instrument retailers and end users indicating that they believed ESI to be the supplier of M-Audio for the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a model. ESI Professional would like to inform all its customers that the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a is not manufactured by ESI Professional or by any factory affiliated with ESI Professional. Only the original design and tuning by ESI Professional engineering delivers the exceptional sound quality you can expect from the company that has been the market leader for extremly affordable active monitoring speakers in recent years in many markets around the globe. This has been confirmed after verifying the design and sound quality of the M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitoring speakers - as a result, ESI Professional can only advise its customers to favor the original product. Chess Lim, President of ESI Professional, commented: "We are very concerned that M-Audio obviously has taken advantage of our existing design, which is the result of years of hard work. Considering that it was ESI that designed the product that allowed M-Audio to enter the market for active monitoring speakers several years ago in the first place, we are now extremly dissapointed that M-Audio took this route to save development cost. Imitation is not flattery, especially not in a competitive market like this where actual technology is more important on the long term than the pricing and quality of a product."

The pressrelease at ESI's own webpage

ESI near05 experience backside...


Look at the backside here, especially the layout of the screws and contacts and compare to ESI's

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quote:

Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

Last edited by Vizay on Oct-18-2005 at 17:02