The REAL Problem of March Audio's Sointuva WG (Review, Measurements and Reinforcements with Klippel device)

[Doodski]

Not sure what relevance what Amir does on HIS own site is relevant to what Erin or other contributors post or link on Amir's site.

The, "What about'isms" have been thick and plentiful.

 

[cavedriver]

Could you explain the second sentence please. Are you saying Madrona sells the gear received from manufacturers/ distributors that arent required to be returned/ sent on for further review?

As for the rest of it- Amir is of course at liberty to solicit members and visitors here for funding- its his site. Not sure what relevance what Amir does on HIS own site is relevant to what Erin or other contributors post or link on Amir's site.

I'm saying that while Amir has acknowledged that Madrona is a Harman dealer it seems likely and plausible that the work Madrona does installing hi-end home systems includes a relatively small portion of the project budgets from installing Harman gear. If Madrona pushed Harman products over all others and ASR did the same thing that would be a severe conflict of interest that would taint the site. Amir is obviously aware of this danger and has taken some pains to maintain his integrity and distance ASR from Harman, and regarding the reviews and their content I agree that he has succeeded. I'm not suggesting anything more than this like receiving gear for free to review or any of that bs.

 

[amirm]

For reference, this is the content requesting donations at the bottom of every one of Erin's text reviews (I admit, I hate youtube- watching linear content is so cassette tapes, haha!), and below that the donations page from ASR, which you link to with a single sentence at the end of most newer reviews.

OK then. I will official ban myself. Donation are supported by the membership so we have them. Sponsorships, commissioned sales, and advertising is not so I don't do it. So sure as heck not going to let a member milk our traffic for that.

 

[Jimbob54]

I'm saying that while Amir has acknowledged that Madrona is a Harman dealer it seems likely and plausible that the work Madrona does installing hi-end home systems includes a relatively small portion of the project budgets from installing Harman gear. If Madrona pushed Harman products over all others and ASR did the same thing that would be a severe conflict of interest that would taint the site. Amir is obviously aware of this danger and has taken some pains to maintain his integrity and distance ASR from Harman, and regarding the reviews and their content I agree that he has succeeded. I'm not suggesting anything more than this like receiving gear for free to review or any of that bs.

Im afraid your posts on this thread are something of a confusing mix of innuendo, deliberately vague "points" and a heady dose of wilful misunderstanding.

 

[MAB]

I'm saying that while Amir has acknowledged that Madrona is a Harman dealer it seems likely and plausible that the work Madrona does installing hi-end home systems includes a relatively small portion of the project budgets from installing Harman gear. If Madrona pushed Harman products over all others and ASR did the same thing that would be a severe conflict of interest that would taint the site. Amir is obviously aware of this danger and has taken some pains to maintain his integrity and distance ASR from Harman, and regarding the reviews and their content I agree that he has succeeded. I'm not suggesting anything more than this like receiving gear for free to review or any of that bs.

I ask that you stop posting about this. Just me asking.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I can imagine missing the sealant on both speakers if they are being manufactured in pairs, and the manufacturing flow calls for putting the sealant on both pairs in the same step. Maybe he stepped outside and had a beer right before the sealing step and forgot!
Or, maybe he didn't know that using hollow binding posts on speakers requires the holes to be sealed after soldering. I found that out on my DIY journey building speakers.
No matter what the reason, the binding posts are a mistake. And not a ve

I would. Just last night I had to delete another one of his puppet accounts. He has created others where he pretended to be a customer and praised his speaker, customer service, etc.

What you say was true before he started to make audio products. He was an early member and a delight to have here. Then he got into business with a DAC board that he put in a box and sold for high premium. It was pulling teeth by members to get him to come clean on this. Meanwhile I got accused of protecting him because "he was my friend." Money corrupts people sad to say.

This doesn't say he is dishonest with everything he does. Not at all. I can only share my direct and personal experience with him over a number of years. And that experience points strongly at lack of ethics by my standards.

I remember he repackaged the Khadas Tone Board which I bought on Amazon for something like $89 and placed in a small case I ordered from Audiophonics for somethin like $45. And it was an excellent, performant dac, one of the first really great finds from ASR. Alan took that board. put it a really nice case, and charged a high mark up. I'm certain it was an excellent performer, and probably well made too.

In and of itself nothing wrong with that. NAD sell amplifiers that are little more than the Purifi amp board and Hypex SMPS, adds things like 12v triggers, their own buffer boards with different op amps (Sparkos maybe) then puts it all in a premium case with their logo on it ,and sells it for in excess of $4000 a unit. As a diyer, I assembled the same Purifi/Hypex/Ghent for l.t. $1300 and it probably is the more performant unit. But I can well understand if a fellow audiophile feels NAD is adding sufficient value to justify the premium, though I personally do not.

March wasn't doing anything different than NAD, and he contines to be an assembler of Purifi Modules, If someone is willing to pay the premium for his very nice casework and neat internals, that's a completely respectable thing between both buyer and seller, IMHO.

But dissembling about what he was doing? not so much! Really don't even know what the big secret was in that incident. Many manufacturers were (are) selling DACS which were (are) inferior to March's initial offering for larger sums of cash. He could have just pointed out forthrightly where and how he was adding value to the Khadas unit, and saved himself considerable embarassment.

 

[AdamG]

I'm saying that while Amir has acknowledged that Madrona is a Harman dealer it seems likely and plausible that the work Madrona does installing hi-end home systems includes a relatively small portion of the project budgets from installing Harman gear. If Madrona pushed Harman products over all others and ASR did the same thing that would be a severe conflict of interest that would taint the site. Amir is obviously aware of this danger and has taken some pains to maintain his integrity and distance ASR from Harman, and regarding the reviews and their content I agree that he has succeeded. I'm not suggesting anything more than this like receiving gear for free to review or any of that bs.

You just keep going and going. The “I’m going to keep asking, until I get the answer I want” routine is over. We gave you plenty of space and time to make your point and express your thoughts. Take a break now please.

 

[MAB]

I remember he repackaged the Khadas Tone Board which I bought on Amazon for something like $89 and placed in a small case I ordered from Audiophonics for somethin like $45. And it was an excellent, performant dac, one of the first really great finds from ASR. Alan took that board. put it a really nice case, and charged a high mark up. I'm certain it was an excellent performer, and probably well made too.

In and of itself nothing wrong with that. NAD sell amplifiers that are little more than the Purifi amp board and Hypex SMPS, adds things like 12v triggers, their own buffer boards with different op amps (Sparkos maybe) then puts it all in a premium case with their logo on it ,and sells it for in excess of $4000 a unit. As a diyer, I assembled the same Purifi/Hypex/Ghent for l.t. $1300 and it probably is the more performant unit. But I can well understand if a fellow audiophile feels NAD is adding sufficient value to justify the premium, though I personally do not.

March wasn't doing anything different than NAD, and he contines to be an assembler of Purifi Modules, If someone is willing to pay the premium for his very nice casework and neat internals, that's a completely respectable thing between both buyer and seller, IMHO.

But dissembling about what he was doing? not so much! Really don't even know what the big secret was in that incident. Many manufacturers were (are) selling DACS which were (are) inferior to March's initial offering for larger sums of cash. He could have just pointed out forthrightly where and how he was adding value to the Khadas unit, and saved himself considerable embarassment.

Yes, I recall that too. I have the same Khadas ToneBoard, with one of their little VIM computers stacked in a cheap and cheesy Audiophonics case. I love it. I did like the looks of the case and product that March put together, even the markup was OK if customer service came with the product. But what unfolded here was really unfortunate, and indicated a lack of understanding on how to engage customers.

 

[Universal Cereal Bus]

You just keep going and going. The “I’m going to keep asking, until I get the answer I want” routine is over. We gave you plenty of space and time to make your point and express your thoughts. Take a break now please.

It's understandable why people keep coming back to these questions: you haven't yet sat them down and had "the talk."

Listen kids, Mommy and Daddy both love you all very much and always will. But they now hate each other's guts and won't be talking to, or seeing each other anymore. In fact, in the next few days, you'll pretty much have to decide who you want to live with going forward. But it'll be ok--don't cry--you'll get lots of extra measurement data on your birthday and at Xmas. Do you hear that? Is that a new puppy!? Yay let's go get ice cream.

 

[Robbo99999]

Quite the investigation, did you email march audio your findings?

Both Erin and March audio are banned here, so this might not be the best place to have a conversation.

Edit: Erin graciously responded. 12:24

(When did they get banned? I have vague memories of seeing them here.)


And in response to the investigation of this speaker and to the OP - nice work! Makes you wonder why manufacturers don't tie down these loose ends - partly QC standards and partly design standards - how much it would cost to ensure both were sorted I don't know.

 

[SDC]

If 380hz is inherent in the motor how did they even get this graph.

Isn't this infinite 'baffle' measurement?

It is a big disappointment with their decision to hide the problem with cheating. Or shall I say unprofessional method?

 

[Doodski]

It's understandable why people keep coming back to these questions: you haven't yet sat them down and had "the talk."

Listen kids, Mommy and Daddy both love you all very much and always will. But they now hate each other's guts and won't be talking to, or seeing each other anymore. In fact, in the next few days, you'll pretty much have to decide who you want to live with going forward. But it'll be ok--don't cry--you'll get lots of extra measurement data on your birthday and at Xmas. Do you hear that? Is that a new puppy!? Yay let's go get ice cream.

That guy was simply being naggy.

 

[Robbo99999]

He offered the person a monetary compensation for his purchase, If i purchased this speaker i would definitely not consider that disappointing.

Yeah, the supplier did seem very reasonable in his exchanges. Sure there's some things to improve, but it was good communication in general, albeit some of the technical details of what they said about the speaker faults didn't seem to stack up.

 

[antcollinet]

Ok, I understand, but you do accept contributions from members? They get a little banner saying, "contributor", yes? How do we tell those contributions are just for the cost of the site? I mean of course they are, I'm not trying to be smart, it's just that Erin hasn't said he's trying to make a living (or even a profit) from this, and from what I can tell he has some kind of engineering day job and his number of views are so low I doubt his collective income is very significant. So are you saying that any effort to collect compensation from his channel, no matter how effective, is not ok if people that visit this site can visit his site through a link and see him asking for money, but your acceptance of (even request for, on occasion) donations, is not the same and therefore ok? Wouldn't it be equal if he simply ran a post on youtube insisting on what his day job is and how there is no way his youtube channel derives any significant value for him compared to how much he makes from his main business? I understand you run a company called Madrona Digital. I believe that it does high-end technology installs that include relatively little profit from sale of the gear reviewed on this site. I believe that the donations to this site are small enough that they do not influence your opinions or create a revenue stream large enough to bias your content or distract from the content on the site. I think what we the readers greatly appreciate the work that goes into this site. What we are asking is that you extend the same trust to other readers that are trying to do the same thing as you but may be less subtle in their request for funds and who may not be able to afford $200k in instrumentation right out of the gates. If Erin gets to millions of views like tech ingredients, then ok, he's hit viral land and you can ban him and I won't care. If Erin is rude or disingenuous or shows bias, then ok, again, I understand the ban.

You are not getting it are you. Amir can do what he likes on his site with respect to funding. Others cannot use his site to divert funding their way.

This site is not a business, but a (probably poor) analogy: can you imagine a shop owner being happy with another shop down the road visiting and putting up notices that people should stop dicussing with the shop owner, but should instead go down the road to the other shop?

And that doesn't even cover the problem that the sort of affiliate monetisation being pushed by Erin devalues the reviews shown here since it creates the appearance of conflict of interest. This is precisely why Amir's fund raising is by voluntary donations from members rather than manufactuers of the kit he might be reviewing. No conflict that way.

 

[Lbstyling]

He post a public video yesterday saying I am a narcist. That is beyond rude. I trust this is the last post from you on this topic.

To be narcissistic just means you put yourself first to a larger degree than others would like.

Don't see the offense? Or is this just me?

Most successful people do this to some degree.

I've been called it several times, I don't have a problem with it myself.. perhaps something wrong with me?

 

[hmt]

That depends on the degree of narcissism. What really bugs me is the degree of mistrust sometimes is shown here. Everybody is assumed the worst. Gene is bribed by manufacturers, Erin just wants to divert traffic. That's borderline paranoia and creates a toxic environment.

 

[AdamG]

THREAD NOTICE: In the spirt of getting back to and keeping this thread on Topic. Any further comments about Bans will be treated as off topic and deleted. Continued posts will earn a Thread ban. Please and thank you for your understanding and assistance.

 

[puppet]

After reading most of this thread, one piece of advise I'd offer to the maker is ... "measure twice, cut once". Hastily constructed products are bound to be a crap shoot as I'm sure you now realize. Your name is on the product and if you've got a small workforce doing assembly sometimes you've got to check what's happening in your name. If you are personally going from a-z in the build ... slow down and get it right. Stuff like this will kill you and your business like a heart attack.

 

[BlackTalon]

Geeze man, that was pathetic.

(the lb... post)

 

[Doodski]

To be narcissistic just means you put yourself first to a larger degree than others would like.

Narcissism and psychopathic personalities with the sociopathic personality are all three in the same category. Narcissists tend to be abusers and users for their personal satisfaction at the expense of using others and collectively turning each against the other from what I read. Tend to have rage episodes if they don't have success with their grand schemes... It's very complex I found.