Audio “Herbalife” and MLM.
Unlike computers or phones, it is very difficult for audio equipment buyers to understand issues of quality and price.
Audio equipment almost completely lacks characteristics from which one can make a conclusion about its quality. The situation has given rise to a huge number of different scammers.
The list of concepts for which you will be asked to pay a lot of money has no limits. Meet:
Alexander Klyachin , “doctor” (that’s what he calls himself).
Without glasses, hat, or false mustache.
Specialization: directing coils and wires, jerking off a microphone.
He mainly does acoustics. The only one we found. information about how this acoustics is made dates back to 2001. In the last twenty years he hasn't bothered with such nonsense. And just sells boxes of speakers, simply claiming that they are all very great.
Don't be alarmed, but his products look like this:
Let's consider the only technology available to us. description.
These are bookshelf speakers. On two speakers. Externally similar to the photo above.
VIFA M17SG-09-08 speaker is used as bass/midrange.
But the “doctor” does not use this speaker for exactly the purpose intended by the speaker manufacturer. He uses it as a full-range speaker - he doesn't put a band-limiting filter on the head.
What the speaker manufacturer thought and assumed, we cannot know. But we clearly see a large frequency response hump in the 1-4 kHz region, which logically should be suppressed by a strong bandpass filter, which will limit the frequency band.
Instead, the “doctor” unexpectedly uses a notch filter. What a move!
Notch filter and its frequency response
On the filter operation simulator you can see its influence on the frequency response - almost like a poultice for a dead person. And to a greater extent this is profanation, not a filter. The level of influence of the filter is so microscopic that it can be considered as if it does not exist at all.
It's like lowering a couple of decibels at one point on an equalizer. What will this change in the overall picture?
Looking at the frequency response graph of the speaker, the question arises - what the hell? If broadband speakers without frequency response emissions on the market are “like dirt”.
It's simple. If you take a typical wideband speaker, its frequency response will extend much more towards the HF. These high frequencies will be, like all wide-field speakers, “dirty”. Compared to HF reproduced tweeters.
And if you add a tweeter to a standard wideband speaker, you will need to install a filter on the wideband speaker that allocates space for the tweeter strip.
And if the woofer/midrange speaker has a natural roll-off in the high-frequency region, there is no need to install a filter. And we get away from nasty phase distortions.
This type of head division scheme was widely used in the last century..
We took a woofer/midrange speaker with a natural “good” frequency response roll-off at the top. And Twitter was added to it. That's all.
Complete happiness - no phase distortions in the range of notes.
It happened that even three-way speakers were made on this principle. For example, JBL 4312, which are called JBL's best-selling speakers.
on the large speaker. The natural roll-off of the “woofer” dynamics is about 1500 Hz! You can read more here – Sound Character. Selecting the type of mixing of household speakers.
The sound of a clean (without a bandpass filter) speaker is very natural .
Especially if such broadband sound is compared head-on with classic two-way acoustics with band-pass filters.
There is nothing new here. This was known in the last century. And not only JBL, but all other normal developers. It is not known whether the “doctor” knew about this, or whether he accidentally, “at random,” repeated the decisions of fifty years ago.
But instead of this, the “doctor” broadcasts a stream of enchanting nonsense. Personally, I really like the arrows and microphone jerking.
As you know, the depth and flow of thoughts of many DIYers is limited only by the number and size of cockroaches.
Typically, most cockroaches do not move further than the direction of the wires.
This is the idea that wires conduct current differently in different directions. The fact that the current is alternating and in itself multidirectional does not deter cockroaches at all.
But the “doctor” went further. Even its inductors have directions (see picture). But he spared the resistor - there are no arrows on it.
Let's give the floor to the doctor himself:
“The arrows near the inductors also correspond to the directionality.
The main criterion for the preferred direction is a more “exciting”, soulful sound. Increasing detail when flipping the cable can be misleading, since it is often the weakening of emotions due to incorrect use of directionality that allows one to distract from the emotional content of the music and focus on the perception of details.”
This is the kind of verbal diarrhea the doctor usually feeds his potential customers.
The fact that speakers without band-pass filters (or high-frequency) sound much more natural than traditional two-way filters is interpreted by the doctor in a completely unusual way.
He attributes this physical property to his immense talent for fine-tuning the frequency response. For this purpose, it invents ratings with an error of 0.06% (like the inductor in the figure above - rating 165.1).
No audio equipment manufacturer in the world produces or uses inductors with an error of 0.06%. That's bullshit.
You can, of course, write the denomination 165.199. But the problem is that reality categorically “does not fight” with his legend .
For speakers with a high band separation, all other things being equal, the frequency response will always be several times worse. They don’t have an frequency response as such. The slightest movement in space will “break” the frequency response in different directions. And very strongly. This is absolutely normal, and always is.
And to prove that his products have a wonderful frequency response, he came up with his own method for measuring the frequency response!!!
Really strong. This is how a car manufacturer will declare an acceleration speed of up to 100 km. Having come up with a method by which the car will drive downhill at 45 degrees. Likewise, “Moskvich 412” can be accelerated to 100 km, like a Tesla.
The meaning of the technique is this.
The microphone, while measuring the frequency response, performs uniform back-and-forth movements.
Unfortunately, we do not know the details of how exactly this should be done.
It’s possible that anyone can jerk off the way they want. Perhaps the doctor has strict regulations on the time, speed and depth of friction.
Dear doctor! If you are reading this article, please send a video of exactly how you do it. I, and I think many of our readers, will be very curious to observe this process.
I suppose many have already understood the trickiness of the invented technique. If the speakers at nearby points have a completely different frequency response, then you can take . ” And even if a couple of people “got crazy,” then on average everyone is healthy.
The averaging will always tend to a straight line. Therefore, the longer and deeper you masturbate, the better the frequency response turns out. And in the most literal sense,” the doctor jerks off at the frequency response.
And, according to him, he achieves outstanding results in the linearity of the frequency response. Much better than expensive studio monitors from the world's top brands. I am not kidding. He broadcasts this in all seriousness.
Moreover, you still need to believe that he collects such outstanding frequency response results, in comparison with world brands, in a residential panel apartment on the outskirts of the Moscow Ring Road.
Those who are interested in methods for measuring frequency response can read We measure frequency response competently and meaningfully.
Prices at the end of 2020
The photos of the products you see above are exactly the doctor’s advertising photos. It looks like he took them off himself,” one can feel the master’s hand, exhausted by jerking off the frequency response. According to the “doctor” himself, this work lasts for many days and takes a huge amount of effort.
The first question that usually arises among people unfamiliar with the doctor’s activities is how, for this money, he manages to sell this for decades? How's that?
The answer is: Herbalife and MLM .
By “Herbalaf” we mean a typical MLM model. In Russia, this sales model came just 20 years ago.
You can take absolutely any product, and through marketing it is endowed with amazing, almost magical properties. But you cannot buy this product in a store. Available only through a network of dealers.
Dealers take a large percentage of each sale and are very active in advertising their products. Endowing them with more and more magical properties.
I personally know a person who bought a saucepan from an MLM dealer. And he claimed that the quality of the pan is such that dishes cooked in it do not require salt. Everything in this pan cooks so deliciously that salt is no longer needed.
At the moment, the doctor's dealer network is rapidly decreasing. There are only a few people left. Previously there were much more of them.
This is due to the fact that over the course of 20 years the “food supply” was almost completely consumed. The number of people in the Russian Federation is finite. The number of people willing to buy this has physically depleted.
And there was no one else to sell (“the weakening of emotions due to the incorrect use of directionality allows you to escape from the emotional content of the music and focus on the perception of details.”)
The sales model works like this. Clients are driven in one way or another to a closed forum platform .
Only clients who have provided their contact phone number, full name, and locality can write messages on this forum After which they will call you. Registration may be refused, without comment on the reasons for the refusal.
It is presented as a closed elite club, where all participants undergo strict selection.
Which may even flatter some clients who are unable to ask themselves a simple question - why such prohibitively strict restrictions on writing posts on the audio equipment forum?
Has anyone even heard that registration on the forum requires telephone number, full name, locality and communication with you by phone? Can you be denied registration because your last name is of the wrong nationality? Or what?
Such restrictions on information do not exist even in countries at war. For example, during the 2008 war at Georgian political forums, all restrictions consisted of the correct answer to the question - who owns Ossetia? And that’s it, you could then write comments.
By becoming participants in the forum, clients find themselves in an atmosphere of exaltation of the “doctor’s” products.
Clients do not realize that they are communicating almost exclusively with multiple dealers (who presumably operate under multiple nicknames). Or similar clients who are smoothly led to a sale, but are also used as extras.
And if any opinion differs even slightly from the general “party line,” it will be instantly blocked “without comment on the reasons for the refusal.” And you won’t be able to object; another e-mail will not help you with such a registration system.
This is the point of such strict registration - any slightly different point of view that does not contribute to sales is immediately cleared out.
And if everyone wants to advance as much as possible on social networks. The “doctor” ignores social networks; total censorship is impossible on social networks.
When, a long time ago, this whole “Herbalife” thing was started, against the backdrop of the characters from the movie “Zhmuriki”, this activity looked very funny.
Now the tax office, year after year, sets multiple collection records. And it’s one thing when you privately sell shampoo to someone for 400 rubles. And it’s completely different when the website says in black and white that you are a dealer and have been selling goods worth 307,400 rubles for decades. Please note that all contacts are only mobile phones and e-mails.
Comrade Mishustin has achieved outstanding results. To understand, when purchasing goods, not a single penny of money can go into the company’s account... First, the transaction data goes to the tax office, and only after that the money is transferred.
But the doctor apparently has no company. And if you think that this is just large-scale tax evasion, then you are very mistaken.
This is a whole bunch of criminal offenses: illegal entrepreneurship by an organized group of persons, sales in residential buildings, lack of certification, etc.
At the same time, the doctor carries the mantra that with his sales he helps people and makes them happier.
Well, yes. And all other people living outside of Russia are doomed to be unhappy.
Try somewhere in the USA... not to sell , but just to grow vegetables on your plot - you will get such fines that you will never have this desire again. Up to this point: Julia Bas, a resident of the town of Oak Park, was threatened with a prison term of three months in addition to a fine for growing vegetables on her plot.
So the residents of the USA have to suffer and suffer while listening to their JBL.
The way the doctor drives and drives through the snowy plain...
But it doesn’t go anywhere near them.
Organized crime is definitely not the topic of our publication. But it saddens us greatly if someone here and there sometimes doesn’t want to live honestly.
And yet, let's return to the topic of audio technology.
It makes sense to explain why people order handmade acoustics in general.
The fact is that, for example, for phones the difference in cost and retail price is approximately only two times. Because they make phones in multi-million copies and everyone needs them.
Few people need acoustics, especially in the high price range. And for Russia, the difference between the cost at the factory and the retail price in the Russian Federation is approximately 6-10 times.
And unlike the same phones, acoustics are a very simple product in terms of production. From a technological point of view, these are bedside tables with speakers.
You also need wires, several inductors and capacitors. But in any case, technologically, acoustics are much simpler than refrigerators, not to mention smartphones.
If you have the components, assembling a speaker is no more difficult than a computer. I know from myself, I have collected both of these many times.
You just need to know how to solder. And then the analogy is clear. You can go and buy an IBM or DELL PC, or you can buy components and assemble an analogue yourself. Or ask someone who has already done this many times to assemble a PC.
Only in handmade speakers, the price gain will be many times greater than that of computers .
The economics of NPP projects are always determined by the quality of components. Just like with speakers sold in stores, you can read about it here - Recommendations for choosing acoustics .
For an example of economics, let's take the basic standard: Two-way floorstanding speakers, two 6.5″ bass/midrange speakers, dimensions 900-200-300 .
The picture above shows a budget-level speaker. The speakers are budget, the housings are completely budget. The illustration is provided solely to indicate the speaker size.
The price of really good heads may vary, but a set of heads for these speakers will cost about 20-30 thousand rubles. The main criterion for the quality of speakers is a powerful magnetic system and a rigid frame.
There are several sellers of speakers in the Russian Federation and the EU. In China, where they are mainly made, prices can be found here . It will surprise many, but in the Russian Federation there is a manufacturer of speakers of quite decent quality in Kaluga.
The quality of the boxes is of great importance. You should focus on weight, wall thickness and the presence of multiple stiffeners. Multiple stiffeners are the most economical way to make any structure rigid. And if the hulls do not have stiffeners, this means only one thing: initially the goal was not to make the hulls high-quality.
With speakers, the weight of the finished speaker will be 22-25 kg. If you take high-quality components, you can’t get less.
High-quality veneered cases of these dimensions cost about 15-20 thousand rubles. With multiple stiffeners, prices can be found here .
You will also need wires, several inductors, capacitors and terminals. Even if the coils are without cores, in total it will be about 3-5 thousand rubles. (depending on what we do).
That is, the budget for speaker components will be at the level of 40-50 thousand .
All these components still need to be assembled. Solder and screw in self-tapping screws. And this is quite labor-intensive. Everyone can decide for themselves how much these labor costs can be estimated at.
But in any case, when they ask you 210 thousand rubles for similar acoustics, motivating this price with the correct direction of the wires, fun shui or some other crap... you know.
The difference between the price of components and the selling price of 160 thousand rubles will be used to feed the cockroaches. They will get even bigger. And they will run in different directions, with even greater speed.
How to determine if you are being deceived?
Over the past 50 years, nothing particularly new has happened in the design of acoustic systems. The entire set of existing speaker solutions is described here - “Character” of sound. Selecting the type of mixing of household speakers.
If you are offered to pay money for a unique concept that fundamentally changes something in the sound quality of acoustics... this is exactly the place that should make you very wary. Always keep the phrase “
Do not offer
Herbalife ” in your head.
Be tense if information about which speakers and other components are used is closed. How the cases are made . What the speakers look like from the inside. The only reason why such information is hidden is to hide the real cost of components from you .
There's nothing to steal in the area of soldering enamel wire and screwing it to speaker cabinets.
Unless the technology of jerking off a microphone remains under a veil of secrecy.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl+Enter.
Shelter for business travelers
Now Alexander Klyachin’s Gleden Invest company is one of the largest in the real estate market, with a portfolio of more than 800,000 sq. m. m of office and residential real estate, retail and warehouse space. And it all started in the mid-1990s. It was then that a graduate of the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University came into business. M. V. Lomonosov Alexander Klyachin.
“It happened naturally. Doing business is my natural state,” the billionaire explains in an interview with Forbes. “I was involved in a variety of things that were popular in those years.” Klyachin made his first serious money at that time by trading cars: he bought used Soviet-made cars in Central Asia and resold them in the central regions of Russia. In the south, due to the dry climate, cars were better preserved during operation; Russian cooperators and representatives of the Transcaucasian republics willingly bought them.
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But the entrepreneur made his capital in the mergers and acquisitions market. In 1993, Klyachin and his partners were known as one of the most aggressive players in the real estate market. By purchasing securities of enterprises and land shares of disintegrating collective and state farms, entrepreneurs collected 20 development projects in Moscow and about 15,000 hectares of land in the Istrinsky, Podolsky and Odintsovo districts of the Moscow region. In 2008, Klyachin sold these assets to a pool of investors from the Middle East. After the deal, which was valued at $160 million, Klyachin said that he “intends to focus on the hotel business.”
“The first hotel in Samara was bought in a deplorable condition: an old building, many encumbrances, a bad economy in the city,” recalls Klyachin. He purchased the hotel in 2004 “very cheaply, for only $1 million.” Two years later, when the nascent chain already had seven hotels, the Azimut brand was registered. The name was thought up quickly, the entrepreneur says, it was important that it began with the letter A and sounded equally good in Russian and English.
Material on the topic
Subsequently, the network grew with old Soviet hotels in large Russian cities. Azimut carried out reconstruction, changed equipment and opened them to guests. In 2008, the company became the first and so far the only Russian hotel chain that began operating in Europe. In one year, Azimut hotels opened in Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Munich, Nuremberg, Erding and Vienna. At the same time, renovation and refurbishment into a hotel began in a five-story building on the territory of the Danilovskaya Manufactory in Moscow. The company opened its first hotel in the Russian capital in 2012; the chain’s revenue at the end of that year amounted to 3.5 billion rubles.
In May 2013, new prospects opened up for Klyachin when the owner of the Renova group, Viktor Vekselberg, gave the management of the Azimut Hotels chain a hotel complex of two hotels with 3,600 rooms, which was being built for the Olympics in Sochi. This contract doubled the number of Azimut Hotels rooms in Russia to 7,100, after which the chain overtook the Swedish-Belgian group Carlson Rezidor (brands Radisson, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson, etc.) and took first place in the country in terms of room capacity. A few years later, Vekselberg withdrew from the Sochi projects; the largest of the hotels, with 2,880 rooms, went to a company associated with Krasnodar businessman Roman Batalov, the son-in-law of former Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev. Yug-BusinessPartner transferred management of the complex to the tour operator Biblio-Globus for five years and renamed the facility Sochi Park Hotel.
Material on the topic
According to Azimut Hotels CEO Maxim Brodovsky, Azimut Hotels’ strategy has changed since 2022. “At that time, the vast majority of the network’s assets were owned. To continue to develop in the same way, huge investments were required. We decided to grow through signing management or franchise agreements,” he explains. The first franchise hotel was opened under an agreement with (part of Vladimir Potanin’s Interros) for the management of the Freestyle Rosa Khutor hotel (174 rooms) and the Valset complex (394 apartments) located at the ski resort, which after the conclusion of the contract added the word Azimut to the name. A little later we signed an agreement with a hotel in Nalchik.
Today Azimut Hotels is the largest chain in Russia in terms of room capacity - more than 10,000 rooms. Klyachin’s hotel assets include over 60 properties, more than half of them are owned (including the Moscow Metropol Hotel purchased in 2012), the other part operates as a franchise, under management contracts or long-term leases.
“The formation of the operator’s portfolio followed the classical scheme, like many international chains: from the concept of asset heavy (ownership and management of assets) to asset light (only asset management), says Yana Ukhanova, head of the hotel business department at JLL. “The asset light concept allows the operator to scale faster by providing operational expertise and minimizing the debt burden for the construction of its own new projects.”
According to Maxim Brodovsky, the most successful year for the network was 2019, when revenue reached $140 million (8.5 billion rubles). Hotel clients are mainly representatives of the business community who live in them during business trips. In favorable years, up to 30% of revenue came from business events. “But during the pandemic years of 2020–2021, the segment sagged greatly for obvious reasons,” says Brodovsky. And Azimut decided to attract other clients.
For many years, Azimut was recognized exclusively as a hotel for business travel. In 2022, the chain began to expand its resort destination. (Photo by Yuri Chichkov for Forbes)
