I simply can’t believe what I am reading.
Is that person seriously implying that we made this massive investment in our R&D capabilities for marketing purposes? So that we can put a tiny 1 1/2-inch sticker on the back of a speaker?
That would be the single worst marketing campaign imaginable, at least since the Bud Light fiasco. Marketing, by definition, implies an activity to encourage sales. No one even sees that sticker until -after- they purchase the speakers, assuming they even notice it or even know what it means. My apologies to ASR, but while this website is growing, ASR represents such a small niche in this industry. The vast majority of our customers don’t even know what NFS stands for.
I could’ve sent the speaker out to Klippel (Klippel offered this service to me) to get the data I needed and then still have used that sticker. That would’ve cost us nothing but maybe $200 in shipping fees. Or we could’ve simply purchased the base NFS unit rather than having continually expanded our R&D after the initial purchase by spending another $30K or so on add-on modules.
Truth is, that sticker came to be so that we can save a few thousand $$$ by using up our old inventory of product labels before purchasing and designing new V2 labels. There must be a way to distinguish new V2 units from original V1, and we thought putting “NFS Optimized” on the V2 label looked better than simply a plain “V2”. In our product line, V2 literally means NFS optimized. I recently had a customer ask if it meant that the speaker sounded "fast", because to him, and probably thousand others, NFS means "Need for Speed"
I suppose that poster thinks maybe it was our intention to use these stickers so they can get some positive vibes here at ASR. I can understand that thought process. But had this person read the full review, he would have quickly learned that we had absolutely nothing to do with having this speaker tested by Amir. In fact, I had specifically requested that this customer avoid sending his speaker to Amir after he informed me that was his intention. Why did I request that? For specifically this reason of crazy nit-picking that can sometimes occur here.
Feel free to ask this customer himself, he is probably reading this thread.
What kind of ingenious marketing expert would spend, in the neighborhood of, $150k to put a tiny sticker on the back of a speaker meant to gain some favor at a review website where that same marketing genius tries to avoid having the speaker sent to that website for review? Makes absolutely no sense.
I suppose I should be somewhat flattered that someone would think a small company like Ascend would have that kind of marketing budget. There is no conceivable way we will ever recoup our expenditure for the NFS, nor do I care. For anyone who knows our history, or anything about me at all - I have been measuring / testing loudspeakers as a professional in this industry since around 1987. I have owned or have used basically every measurement device ever made for taking these types of measurements. NFS is presently the SOA, and by a wide margin. Even if I were retired from Ascend, I would have still made this purchase as this is simply what I do. If eventually something better replaces the NFS, and assuming I am still fit enough to lift speakers - I will be purchasing that device as well.
The irony in all of this is that this person is here, on this forum, publicly sharing his thoughts (which he is entitled to), for which this website and forum would not even exist without Amir’s purchase of an NFS…. Strange….
