Networking the New Ayre Building

[Ryan Berry]

I figured that if any audience would appreciate this, it'd be here.  Getting to network in the new Ayre building and finally being able to do things the right way may be my favorite part of the move!  Nothing beats getting to start a setup fresh.

[vortecjr]

Where is the music server:)

[Solstice380]

Nice rack!  ?

[Ryan Berry]

14 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

Where is the music server:)

 

Definitely coming.  Equipment is moving in this week to wire in.  Baby steps!

[GUTB]

I wonder why a boutique audio manufacturer needs a lot of networking and IT resources.

[kumakuma]

20 minutes ago, GUTB said:

I wonder why a boutique audio manufacturer needs a lot of networking and IT resources.

 

Why does any real business need these things?

[loop7]

@Ryan Berry Did you have some good options for broadband at the new location?

 

I know some light industrial areas here in the SF Bay area (of all places) suffer from lack of infrastructure. Fiber is often a pipe dream.

[Ryan Berry]

1 hour ago, GUTB said:

I wonder why a boutique audio manufacturer needs a lot of networking and IT resources.

 

Well, the unfortunate necessity of computers requires us to be fairly networked.  Between multiple electrical engineers working on PCBs together while interfacing with myself to make a chassis fit those boards, our customer service database to track upgrade and repair orders, the ERP system necessary to manage our inventory, the computers used to test every piece of gear multiple times before it leaves the facility, the financial system in place to track orders to make sure everyone receives the products they want, to the other various things I'm forgetting right now, a fair bit of networking is at play. 

 

Now, the system in those photos is massive overkill, but that's due to the building holding about 10,000 square feet of cubicles before we moved in as the place was previously used as a data center.  Most of the rooms have upwards of 17 network connections in them!  The photos that I posted were actually after removing well over 300 cables from the network, so to say it was a nightmare (and ugly as heck) would be an understatement.  The nice place about the building is that it is about 80% manufacturing floor (that was stuffed with cubicles) and 20% offices, which made a perfect mix for us.  It's definitely quite the step up from the old 70's offices we've been knocking walls down between for the past 25 years to make work!

Once set up for our needs, we'll use about 1/16th of the capabilities of the equipment there, but it wouldn't make much sense to pull out all of the boxes and runs, relabel the remaining jacks, and redo the room from scratch, so instead I spent the day reorganizing what was there to look clean and be able to follow more easily, and will likely leave most of the cables connected to the patch panel but not connected to the switch.

[Ryan Berry]

18 minutes ago, loop7 said:

@Ryan Berry Did you have some good options for broadband at the new location?

 

I know some light industrial areas here in the SF Bay area (of all places) suffer from lack of infrastructure. Fiber is often a pipe dream.

 

Funny you should ask about that, as I have a story there!  When I first was looking into broadband options, I was given the choice of a 3 Mbps DSL line or satellite that neighbors were none too thrilled about.  They were patching the two services together just to get something resembling a decent connection.  I had to explain to the rep that we can't run off a connection that my cell phone could beat.  So they dug around and realized that there was a fiber line not 250 feet from our building that was ran into one building and there was an intranet between the buildings to share connection.  So they are tapping into that line and sending a branch into our building since the buildings are no longer tied together (obviously).   We are very fortunate and are having fiber ran into the building now, so we're in good shape for at least another 25 years!

Our new place is actually relatively close to the IBM building in Boulder, so I was pretty surprised at the lack of internet options until they found that one for us.

[Ryan Berry]

Though GUTB brings up a good point: one of the things that was relatively surprising to us when we first released the QX-5 was hearing that the Ethernet input sounded better to many people than the USB input on the QX-5 and now the EX-8 and QX-8.  Testing at Ayre, we always preferred the USB input, but our music servers, etc. were simply on the same network as everything else.  Even with all the isolation we put into play, it seems pretty clear that the network traffic plays a role and there's no getting around it.  One of the things I plan on doing here is having a completely separate network for the sound rooms we're setting up for R&D and visitors and I'm willing to bet it'll make a big difference on that input.  I know the Ethernet port sounds killer at my house, and the lack of a massive switch with a bunch of computers constantly talking to each other across it is what I would think is the obvious explanation to the sound differences.

[tmkirst]

Few things match that new cable*network closet*server room smell. Congratulations.

[Ralf11]

we need some cheap opto-isolators...

[TubeLover]

I spent 33 years in IT and, as one of our roles, my staff used to direct and oversee these kinds of implementations across the country. That's first rate work with the cabling and infrastructure. Nice to see. Even major corporations will often take short cuts and/or hire less than optimally skilled low voltage companies to do the work. Good to see Ayre is doing things right in this regard to, it speaks to quality management in an overall sense.

 

JC

[Ryan Berry]

10 hours ago, TubeLover said:

I spent 33 years in IT and, as one of our roles, my staff used to direct and oversee these kinds of implementations across the country. That's first rate work with the cabling and infrastructure. Nice to see. Even major corporations will often take short cuts and/or hire less than optimally skilled low voltage companies to do the work. Good to see Ayre is doing things right in this regard to, it speaks to quality management in an overall sense.

 

JC

 

Thank you very much for the compliment!  We're pretty obsessive about doing things the right way here, which is not always easy to convey without it sounding like an advertising plug; which I have no intention of doing on the forums.  High end audio is a pretty crazy world to manufacture for that I certainly had never encountered before working at Ayre.  I need to figure out a fun way to show all the things we do around here to get it right.

[Ralf11]

I want to know if large areas will be sprayed with RAM

[Ryan Berry]

Like this?

[rando]

On the off chance, did you happen to take any pictures beforehand with the surplus 300 cables?  

 

I too nodded when I saw your neat but not fussy cable routing.   

[Ryan Berry]

Oh, I should have done that!   Here's some of the pulled pile at least.

[Ralf11]

Here is some RAM coating:

 

 

[Ryan Berry]

Interesting, but no.  We only use things that were know make the room sound better, and only experiment with things that have some explanation that strikes us, so we're probably pretty conservative compared to most rooms. Some rugs on the wall and on the floor sound dampen as well as anything else we've been sent to try, etc., so the money's all in the equipment for us. We do have a nice rack by HRS, and, of course, we use the dreaded wood blocks on the carpet. 

 

Things like that coating seems like a lot more work than I'd be willing to do, and I doubt most people would want to in their homes. Since our gear is made for people's houses, it doesn't make much sense to us to do things in our sound room and design gear for it that you wouldn't do at your home.  I can't speak for other companies, but it makes more sense to do it that way to us. 

[Ralf11]

barrows may have found something - he has a thread on it on here

 

RAM also comes in sheets & tubes then there is isolation by distance...

[rando]

15 hours ago, Ryan Berry said:

Interesting, but no.  We only use things that were know make the room sound better, and only experiment with things that have some explanation that strikes us, so we're probably pretty conservative compared to most rooms. Some rugs on the wall and on the floor sound dampen as well as anything else we've been sent to try, etc., so the money's all in the equipment for us. We do have a nice rack by HRS, and, of course, we use the dreaded wood blocks on the carpet. 

 

Sounds like an excuse for installing 100" 6K screen.   

 

Doing any upgrades to ventilation or cool air intake?

[Ryan Berry]

We have a 100" screen with one of the early prototype DLA projectors they were nice enough to send to us to test with, so we're appy there since we almost never watch thing when we can listen to music.  Not 6K, but the price was right!

 

No ventilation changes.  Again, way too much work to do for a small business.  The massive changes to the production floor are enough to keep us busy for quite some time and well beyond anything we've ever done before.  Floor was just sealed and coated, still have to get the air lines in place, etc.  Always something more to do!

[asdf1000]

On 7/27/2018 at 1:14 AM, Ryan Berry said:

I need to figure out a fun way to show all the things we do around here to get it right.

 

YouTube videos like Paul McGowan is doing (daily)?

 

Pictures speak a thousand words, so some short videos touring your place and what you’re doing would be fun to watch.

 

By “your place” I do mean Ayre HQ - not videos of what you get up to at home of course hehe

 

[Ryan Berry]

Not a bad idea. Charley was definitely fantastic for talking about technology down to the minute detail, but his accident made it an excruciating experience to even visit the factory 10 blocks from his house and interfacing with customers outside of his computer was near impossible. 

 

There's so many tiny details that work together to make our products the way they are... things like the parts that were had to buy the last remaining world stock on a number of no longer obtainable components that to date have never been made as well, to the companies that make special versions of their parts for us...even parts like simple resistors and capacitors.  It's a crazy business that I was very sceptical of as my background was designing and manufacturing boards for aerospace and military...I quickly learned audio was nothing like that when I started at Ayre 11 years ago. 

 

One thing I really respect Paul for is his understanding that our hobby's story needs to be told. I don't think there are many in the industry that gets that.