When we announced Tide16, a few people immediately asked whether we were using an ODM—basically, another company owning all the IP while miniDSP just feeds them ideas. Sounds tempting, right? Less work for us… in theory ?
But no—Tide16, just like every other miniDSP product, is fully engineered in‑house. Hardware, firmware, software… the whole stack is ours. No third‑party doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Now, the honest part:
The downside:
This was hands‑down the most painful project we’ve ever taken on.
The upside:
We now have complete control over every detail of the platform. We know exactly what’s happening under the hood because we built it, debugged it, and lived through every twist and turn. Could we have done it faster and cheaper by outsourcing? Absolutely. But where’s the fun in that? Engineers love a good challenge ?