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3D Headphone Startup 'Ossic' Closes Abruptly, Leaving Crowdfunders Hanging (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Ossic raised more than $3.2 million in crowdfunding for its Ossic X, which it touted as the "first 3D audio headphones calibrated to you." But after delivering devices to only about 80 investors who'd paid at least $999 to for the "Developer/Innovator" rewards level on Kickstarter, Ossic announced Saturday it had run out of money -- leaving the more than 10,000 other backers with nothing but lighter wallets.
Ossic, which The San Diego Union-Tribune notes was founded by former Logitech engineers Jason Riggs and Joy Lyons, had excited gamers, audiophiles and other sound consumers by creating headphones that used advanced 3D audio algorithms, head-tracking technology and individual anatomy calibration to "deliver incredibly accurate 3D sound to your ears," according to its funding campaign on Kickstarter. In less than two months in 2016, it was able to raise $2.7 million from more than 10,000 backers on Kickstarter. It raised another $515,970 on Indiegogo. "This was obviously not our desired outcome," the company said in a statement. "To fail at the five-yard line is a tragedy. We are extremely sorry that we cannot deliver your product and want you to know that the team has done everything possible including investing our own savings and working without salary to exhaust all possibilities."
Ossic, which The San Diego Union-Tribune notes was founded by former Logitech engineers Jason Riggs and Joy Lyons, had excited gamers, audiophiles and other sound consumers by creating headphones that used advanced 3D audio algorithms, head-tracking technology and individual anatomy calibration to "deliver incredibly accurate 3D sound to your ears," according to its funding campaign on Kickstarter. In less than two months in 2016, it was able to raise $2.7 million from more than 10,000 backers on Kickstarter. It raised another $515,970 on Indiegogo. "This was obviously not our desired outcome," the company said in a statement. "To fail at the five-yard line is a tragedy. We are extremely sorry that we cannot deliver your product and want you to know that the team has done everything possible including investing our own savings and working without salary to exhaust all possibilities."
Hahahahahahahahahaha. *takes breath* hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I presume they'll be releasing into the public domain all their research notes, designs, prototypes, etc?
They can't license this tech to some bigger company? If the product had that much attention being producd why wouldn't some larger audio company want in on it? Unless of course it didn't deliver what the company promised and that is the real reason it's gone.
Sent from my TARDIS
They can have an ICO to raise more money.
Or may it be Ocheck. I like to whatch the bitcoin.
I thought we are in the 3D printed post-scarcity anti-Luddite game-changed future? We have 3D printed houses, 3D printed cars, 3D printed organs. Surely we have 3D printed 3D headphones?
My dad had a quadraphonic stereo back in the 1970's. Didn't really catch on back then.
Deal with it. You invest a certain amount of money, there may be a pay-off in the form of a product that would otherwise not have existed, but there may also not be a pay-off. Stop complaining.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Finding out that a crowdfund collected a lot of money and then disappeared without fulfilling their obligations is like a news alert that Trump tweeted something controversial today. You know it's coming, just a matter of when.
There's been a thousand of these on Kickstarter and GoFundMe. American startups are crazy likely to pull these, and then it's always attempted to be excused without accounting in any way how the funds have been spent.
Weirdly enough, I know these founders. They were great people, hard workers, and smart. I got to mess with the prototype a bit and it was pretty incredible; as acoustic engineers they were amazing people.
But I never shook the feeling that it wasn't going to work. Where did it go wrong?
1) Ossic got the tech working, but that's not enough to build a successful business. It needs the right product-market fit. The problem I had with their business was it was predicated on the hypothesis that VR would take off creating a market for them to fill. It has not, and their business floundered. Even if it did take off, a game developer would have to build their audio portion of the game around what their system offered for it to provide the full experience, so it was also predicated on developers designing for their headset. THEN people would buy it. That's a tough sell. When VR floundered, they tried to re-position the tech, but it didn't have a good application outside of VR gaming.
2) Design costs - product engineering always costs more than you think. Always, and if you're not experienced developing hardware it's often 5X what you expect it to be. THis is the hard part with crowd funding: people budget assuming the gross margin on the hardware at scale, but it's the ramp to gross margin (engineering, prototypes, re-engineering, test lots, first batches, then the working capital cost to develop inventory to deliver at scale) that hardware projects die. Ossic's folk are actually quite experienced at product design, but it's in the operational and budgetary side that can be difficult.
I like these guys, they did the best job they could and did make an interesting tech. It's sad to see folks with such passion and heart go down.
At least the guys didn't just leave an almost blank webpage with the word "penis" on it or something.
Audeze just closed an Indiegogo campaign for their 3D Headphone attempt. This could be an option. They're an established company with some great sounding headphones so I have no doubt these will actually ship to customers. How good they are remains to be seen but they have fooled people in demos with the sound positioning. People searched for the phantom speaker in the empty space.
https://www.audeze.com/products/mobius-series/mobius-headphone
I remember 3D audio being used on in music and theater sound effects back in the 90's. This is not new tech at all, except for the addition of making the audio source track with the image. I can see how this could be a real problem, especially when a SFX of any duration is triggered then has to follow an image's location in the game.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
I think last I read many of these crowdfunded startups fail its typical a product with limited appeal that wouldn't be eligible for traditional funding paths. Its a risk for people investing and shouldn't expect a guaranteed return. Your taking a chance on something you think is a good ideal. Maybe it has wide appeal and maybe you'll find out it doesn't.
Spectral cues How 3D sound works, (links in the description)
Never loan money without a contract.
It's a micro-investment but since they are not allowed to reward you with ownership due to government rules (like a regular investor would be), they reward you with a product
Then it's not an investment at all. It's simply a sale. No ownership, no investment.
Another Clinton affiliated company that ripped off hard working americans. Most of us want to end the partisan which hunt aganst the president and lock her up already.
I didn't back this, but I have to say I couldn't be too mad about this folding, as it was a reach to begin with - you don't back moon shots expecting every one to fly. You just back the ones you want to see try and enjoy whatever success you find.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I see the flaw! They didn't include "AI" or "Crypto-Blockchain" in their marketing to get even more money from more idiots. Then they could convert some of the BC investments (cause you'd want that!) into real money and disappear.
Get used to it. This is all your economy will create now (ponzi schemes) that Trump has sealed you into Chinese ownership. At least the Sauds kept you busy waging wars.. this next America is bigly SAD.
Without debts? Without responsibility? By working on what they wanted for as long as they were able to do so? By having probably learned a lot thanks to having enjoyed the most appealing version of the best possible learning proceeding (= momentarily tough conditions without relevant long-term consequences, a bit of fear and stress but nothing too serious)? I have no words!
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
With AMD's Ryzen, 8 (and next year 12) cores are 'cheap' high-end VR and gaming CPU solutions, and offer all the aural DSP processing power needed for anything. Indeed, AMD replaced its licensed 'Trueaudio' DSP hardware solution with Trueaudio 2, a CPU software solution.
VR already knows where the head is 'facing' so a software solution can take account of ear position in the virtual world. Hardware headphone solutions for 3D sound are all lying conning gimmicks. The 'problem' is getting software standards so well known positional algorithms can be common place in games, VR etc.
Today you can download a little free code patch to make mega popular open world games Skyrim and Fallout 4 true 3D audio on any headphones- and the method works really well. Better DSP algorithms allow more perfect up-n-down, and front/back positional identification (the Skyrim solution is really just 180 and distance). No solution needs special headphone hardware.
The problem is that classic HiFi fanboys are suckers for every con going. Their hobby is a religion, and they really need to believe in the insane rantings of their high priests. They have money to burn, and the belief that spending stupid amounts of it will buy their way into HiFi heaven.
PS it is like 3D TV. Had TV adopted the side-by-side broadcast standard, 3D channels would have been backward compatible with digital 2D TV sets (which would have simply zoomed into one side or the other of the transmission). Then sitcoms and soaps would have been shot in 3D, and the format might have taken off.
New sound standards need that backward compatibility- the days of new hardware for new sound formats are long gone. 3D sound will explode in next gen VR games on the coming new consoles from Sony and Microsoft next year- and the 3D sound will be solely a result of code running on the AMD Ryzen cores each of these new consoles will use.
How does this happen?
Let's assume for a moment that this was NOT just a way to hype a vaporware product, get a lot of VC funding after crowdfunding seed money, looting the treasury and disappearing.
Let's also assume that a "former Logitech engineer" knows how much it will cost to manufacture the product if it had been a Logitech product. Of course it'll cost more because the new company won't have Logitech's scale/logistics/infrstructure. But let's assume for the sake of argument he has a ballpark idea.He also must have known how much it would cost to develop the software (or he already has the software) and any other development time/costs. Noone begrudges him (the hardware dev) and a couple of software devs a living wage while they do this.
So, he knows the product will cost $30 to make (an arbitrary number for the sake of argument), so the product needs to sell for at least $90, maybe $100 to account for overhead and give some profit. Of course, he's already priced out how much it'll cost to make it, package it, and ship it before he even starts his crowdcsourcing. So, when he sets his goal of 1000 (arbitrary) units sold through the crowdsource, he knows pretty well what the costs will be. Right? A normal, sensible person would have done that, right?
How does a company then lose $4 million a year when they know exactly what it'll cost to develop the product, make it, package it, and ship it to the customers? Is it because no work was done ahead of time and all that was being crowdsourced was an idea? Was it that the creator dumped development on for-hire teams in India or China? Was it that someone was vacationing somewhere on an island, telling themselves that after they clear their head they'll jump in full-time and get the priject done? Was it money thrown down the drain wining and dining VC investors? Or was it just another case of taking people's money without giving them what they paid for?
Wait, you're telling me that people start companies without having any idea of what they're doing or how much it'll cost to do what they clam they'll be able to do quickly, easily, and better than everyone else in their industry? That "distrupting the marketplace" is just bullshit marketing-speak?
An investor is someone who provides capital in return for a share of the company.
On Kickstarter you are NOT an investor, unless they are offering shares of the 'company' in return.
You are just an unsecured pre-order client, or donator, depending on what you choose to do.
The most obvious difference is profit share, why on EARTH someone would give captial investment without any form
of profit share agreement in such a case is... special?
ROTFL.
So, its an investment is it?
Great! Where is the documentation showing that these 'investors' now own part of the company? If enough of them get together they can control it!
Pity it was not a success, then they could all claim a share of profits!
Oh, wait, there is none, as it is an unsecured pre-order. At best. Oops.
Yep, I'm trying to keep the bitching on articles down to minimum, but how does this even pass for news? And I'm saying that because major news sources broke the story long before SlashDot, so apparently it IS news. Out of seven reasonable, reachable-goals Kickstarters (Which is supposed to be the verified, trustable projects) I've participated in, ONE delivered what they promised, after one delivered my "Beta Tester Ultimate Package" in a broken state after the product was already being delivered at lower price through their own web-store. Really, it should be big news if a crowdfunded project delivers as promised. But this is also largely by design.
What I have more problems is that all of the crowdfunding projects basically grab your money & disappear going totally incommunicado with no feedback either direction, whether they will or don't deliver the project at the end, if there's any backer-updates at all they will be late and clearly showing their contempt for providing any feedback at all. I can't find the statement now (Was it actually removed?) but I remember Kickstarter stressing this was supposed to be a common journey to create something new. Now they're working exactly like (and, in most cases, worse than) traditional closed up development projects with free funding.