Synth NOT made in China

[3ptguitarist]

I'm curious if anyone knows if the Hydrasynth has any Chinese spying devices in it? Hydrasynth is made by a Chinese company.

[cryophonik]

I'm curious if anyone knows if the Hydrasynth has any Chinese spying devices in it? Hydrasynth is made by a Chinese company.

Yes. It stole my favorite presets and gave my Hydrasynth COVID.

[ghettosynth]

I'm curious if anyone knows if the Hydrasynth has any Chinese spying devices in it? Hydrasynth is made by a Chinese company.

Yes. It stole my favorite presets and gave my Hydrasynth COVID.

You should put tape over any displays as they are have cameras behind them and will upload penis pics to their social networks if you start jamming on your synth naked, like right when you get out of the shower, or something.

[cryophonik]

Tape, or aluminum foil?

[3ptguitarist]

I'm curious if anyone knows if the Hydrasynth has any Chinese spying devices in it? Hydrasynth is made by a Chinese company.

Yes. It stole my favorite presets and gave my Hydrasynth COVID.

I know to some people my question sounds silly, but Lenovo allegedly had spy chips in their laptops at one point. So that's one reason I ask.

[ghettosynth]

Tape, or aluminum foil?

Industrial aluminum tape, like what they use on the surface of space vehicles. You can get some from aliexpress at a good price...oh wait...

[digitallysane]

The Yamaha Montage is made in Japan.

[Constructed Identity]

Keybed from Italy, the rest from... Germany?

[BertKoor]

I'm curious if anyone knows if the Hydrasynth has any Chinese spying devices in it? Hydrasynth is made by a Chinese company.

Once any one knows, it's use as a spying device diminishes. Its supposed to remain secret.

In all honesty: what intelligence can they lift from it? Do you let it access your wifi?

Lenovo allegedly had spy chips in their laptops at one point.

Not only Lenovo. All intel cpus had/have a small core running a full micro-linux os in super-supervisor state, with hidden access to your network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
One reason perhaps why Apple is no longer using intel chips.

[BONES]

They'll be using it to train their music AIs, which will write subversive tunes to set the youth of every nation against us. The end is nigh, brothers!

[Scotty]

As far as I know we aren't at war with China so those trade deals aren't stopping due to this thread. I believe Korg Volcas are made in Vietnam so do with that what you will.

[cryophonik]

In all honesty: what intelligence can they lift from it? Do you let it access your wifi?

Whenever I get a new synth, the first thing I do is punch my social security number, bank PINs, and debit card number into it. Is that not good practice?

[ghettosynth]

In all honesty: what intelligence can they lift from it? Do you let it access your wifi?

Whenever I get a new synth, the first thing I do is punch my social security number, bank PINs, and debit card number into it. Is that not good practice?

That's really dangerous. To be safe just put them all on sticky notes and tape them to your monitor.

[cryophonik]

In all honesty: what intelligence can they lift from it? Do you let it access your wifi?

Whenever I get a new synth, the first thing I do is punch my social security number, bank PINs, and debit card number into it. Is that not good practice?

That's really dangerous. To be safe just put them all on sticky notes and tape them to your monitor.

That’s some solid advice! Done!

[mknell]

The "Chinese spy chips" thing was (and I say this as someone who's been doing computer stuff for a very long time, including in the security area) basically mass hysteria on the part of a bunch of journalists. Their assertions rely on various impossible things - namely, that a "chip the size of a grain of rice" can somehow exfiltrate all your data *and* contains the communication hardware necessary to do so without being detected trivially due to generating obvious traffic on the network, that basically everyone in the entire supply chain can be sworn to secrecy, and more importantly on the assumption that the Chinese government *wants* to exfiltrate your data.

These things have happened - modified hardware has been found in the supply chain with added surveillance features - but, and this is a *big* but - they were always intended for specific people or installations. And no, this isn't just the Chinese government. The US government and I'm sure many others have in the past intercepted shipments of hardware, taken them away, modified them and then allowed to be delivered as normal. This is really just an updated version of sending someone in dressed as a copier repair worker to discreetly plant a hidden microphone. It's been done forever and has always moved with the technology. But surveillance is always risky. If it's discovered, that surveillance route can be lost forever. And the more there are of something, the more eyeballs are going to be looking at them, and the faster they'll be discovered. So installing surveillance chips in 100,000 servers just in case you ever want to look at one of them just makes it inevitable it'll be discovered. In other words, routinely embedding clandestine surveillance into consumer products.. just doesn't work.

When it comes to the security and privacy of my personal data I'd worry a lot more about Jeff Bezos than about Xi Jinping, frankly.

Anyway, that's a digression from the real question at hand. Tim Cook said a few years back that Apple was finding that manufacturing in China was in some cases not that less expensive than manufacturing elsewhere these days, and that the reason to manufacture in China is simply because Chinese companies have become really, really good at mass production. Being able to turn out iPhones by the million is quite the feat - they're small, full of fiddly components, and manufactured to the kind of tolerances that Jim-Bob's Electronics of Priestly Fart, Nebraska just can't get close to. Companies in the USA just don't have the deep expertise any more, because they didn't work on keeping up while Chinese companies got really good and then ate their lunch.

But - again, and finally getting to the point - below a certain volume local manufacturing is entirely possible and, yes, it's great to support it. My Synthstrom Deluge was made by a tiny group of people in New Zealand and it feels like a true labour of love to work on. Elektron's hardware is *beautiful* inside - if you've never looked at the inside of a Syntakt the circuit board was obviously designed by a real perfectionist. This is stuff that should totally be encouraged, even if it's at the level of "boards manufactured and populated in Shenzhen, assembly in Belgium", because design, assembly, marketing, logistics and support being local supports a lot of jobs anyway. My personal favourite benchmark is whether a company has locally-employed support staff who know the product rather than just sitting in a call centre somewhere anonymous and following a script. Extra marks for doing their own logistics rather than using a fulfilment warehouse. Building quality products that people love in will always create jobs regardless of where the product's assembled.