Danny Richie, GR Research, doesn't recommend a speaker he can't sell an "upgrade" kit for

[amirm]

He has an amazing gig going. Has the right accent and demeanor for video. Knows more about speakers than his audience. And got a good start from another popular youtuber. He also has a sales channel to monetize the work in addition to youtube ads.

If you want change, you can't look to him to do so as that would be against the strategic system he has gone for him. You need to think what you/we can do to counter with good information to counter what he says which is wrong.

 

[ryanosaur]

He has an amazing gig going. Has the right accent and demeanor for video. Knows more about speakers than his audience. And got a good start from another popular youtuber. He also has a sales channel to monetize the work in addition to youtube ads.

If you want change, you can't look to him to do so as that would be against the strategic system he has gone for him. You need to think what you/we can do to counter with good information to counter what he says which is wrong.

This! OMFG, this.

 

[EB1000]

To be fair, he said its good for the price point and he doesn't recommend UPGRADING it.

No need to misrepresent.

Have you watched the entire video' or are you his rep?

He clearly says he does not recommend the speakers...

 

[formula 977]

He won't do it and I know why, he doesn't want to look like a fool

Isn't it only necessary for him to refuse to prove his claims to make him look like a fool.
His customers saying they hear a difference is the actual problem. I don't have anything against entrepreneurs or opportunists.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

Have you watched the entire video' or are you his rep?

He clearly says he does not recommend the speakers...

I know it’s like a train wreck. It’s terrible but one just can’t look away. Stay strong - don’t watch the vids. Just adds revenue to the act.

 

[mightycicadalord]

Man his videos are tough to watch, you can't go 10 seconds without him saying something wrong. It's like he struggles to just admit the LS50 meta is a good speaker, but he can't because he couldn't work out mods to sell for it. His ego won't permit him to recommend anything that doesn't look like he made it.

 

[Vacceo]

He has an amazing gig going. Has the right accent and demeanor for video. Knows more about speakers than his audience. And got a good start from another popular youtuber. He also has a sales channel to monetize the work in addition to youtube ads.

If you want change, you can't look to him to do so as that would be against the strategic system he has gone for him. You need to think what you/we can do to counter with good information to counter what he says which is wrong.

It´s quite easy to debunk him without going for hardcore scientific arguments. I´ll use your own words: "layman intuition" may not apply to a lot of audio elements, but it often does (Occam´s Razor) when dealing with profit: you do not sell crossovers, he does.

I can also come up with a funcional reason to bypass his complains: worried about crossovers? Fine! Go for active speakers!

 

[Chaconne]

I think most purveyors of snake oil adhere to the George Costanza philosophy of truth:

"If you believe it, it isn't a lie."

 

[captainbeefheart]

Isn't it only necessary for him to refuse to prove his claims to make him look like a fool.
His customers saying they hear a difference is the actual problem. I don't have anything against entreprenuers or opportunists.

You do have point, or two points......

The fact his customers give positive reviews is probably the biggest problem. I did have some old messages from youtube and one of them was Danny responding to me, all it says is "come on down" and nothing else. Probably to make him publicly look like he is willing to do it but he doesn't return any private messages or move the process along in anyway. I left it in his hands to make it as easy as possible for him, I said pick a date and time and let me know how you want to move forward and crickets.

 

[captainbeefheart]

So watching that video had me thinking.

Did anyone notice the size of that 10uF copper foil and paper capacitor he installs? Now compare that to the size of the capacitor that was originally inside. It's a HUGE difference!! At first I was only concerned with noise measurements with these larger capacitors and the increased noise is measurable but, I never thought about the internal total volume of the speaker has now been significantly reduced going with that huge capacitor. I am more an electronics guy and don't build speakers but it dawned on me that even I know the total cabinet volume is important to how the whole system is fine tuned. I wonder if some of these sound differences when installing these huge capacitors is more to do with the fact they are changing total internal cabinet volume than anything electrically changing. If so, then changing the capacitor isn't what made the sound change, you could just place some material inside to reduce the volume to get the same results. This is more apparent in smaller bookshelf sized speakers where that sized capacitor is the size of a 22 ounce beverage can, it has to make some sort of difference in how the speaker as an entire system behaves. No? Again I'm not a speaker designer so maybe some of you more intelligent guys here that do build speakers can shed some light on this theory.

Aside from just a capacitor, some of these complete crossover boards he sells is WAY bigger than the stock network, same question could reducing the volume of the internal space change the speaker drastically enough to change the sound?

 

[tw 2022]

So watching that video had me thinking.

Did anyone notice the size of that 10uF copper foil and paper capacitor he installs? Now compare that to the size of the capacitor that was originally inside. It's a HUGE difference!! At first I was only concerned with noise measurements with these larger capacitors and the increased noise is measurable but, I never thought about the internal total volume of the speaker has now been significantly reduced going with that huge capacitor. I am more an electronics guy and don't build speakers but it dawned on me that even I know the total cabinet volume is important to how the whole system is fine tuned. I wonder if some of these sound differences when installing these huge capacitors is more to do with the fact they are changing total internal cabinet volume than anything electrically changing. If so, then changing the capacitor isn't what made the sound change, you could just place some material inside to reduce the volume to get the same results. This is more apparent in smaller bookshelf sized speakers where that sized capacitor is the size of a 22 ounce beverage can, it has to make some sort of difference in how the speaker as an entire system behaves. No? Again I'm not a speaker designer so maybe some of you more intelligent guys here that do build speakers can shed some light on this theory.

Aside from just a capacitor, some of these complete crossover boards he sells is WAY bigger than the stock network, same question could reducing the volume of the internal space change the speaker drastically enough to change the sound?

I get the feeling port tuning might also be affected by changing the internal volume by a large amount..i don't know if if any of gr research mods would be enough change to qualify in this regard though..

 

[captainbeefheart]

You can skip ahead to the last half of the video where this guy that owns the speakers is there. How many times did that guy feel the need to tell us how expensive his electronics are and how "reference" they are, no names though. I'd wager a bet his uber expensive electronics are garbage, all too often I see huge price tag amps just not perform well so we have no idea what's going on in that regard but they seem to be really hung up on cabinet resonance. Now as I said I'm not a speaker designer by trade but I have picked up a few things from the pros and one of them is that not all cabinet resonances are bad or even emit any sort of pressure wave that gets to your ear. I read a few books that discussed this and the exact facts allude me but from what I took away is that the old trick of wrapping the speaker with your knuckle before buying isn't a good test on sound quality. You can have cabinet resonance that's completely benign and in no way negatively impacts the performance of the speaker, point in short is the speaker knock test isn't valid in regard to sonic quality.

Again, Danny boy is really hung up on changing ALL inductors to air core, I have no idea why and he only explains that the core causes "smear" to the sound. Okay well he in other videos he contradicts himself in saying the inductor for the woofer isn't important because we don't hear bass distortion so he focuses his efforts to the inductors in the high pass networks. What I don't understand is these are shunt devices, their current loop never passes through the driver. Why is he so hung up on the "dental floss" magnet wire in these inductors? Why does it have to be huge gauge air core inductors? Where are the measurements that show these inductors making an improvement? He talks a lot about measuring yet we never see any before and after measurements, or at least I don't see them from him.

Why are they so hung up on inexpensive resistors? Specifically the "sandcast" types? I may be a little slow but the types they call sandcast because of their look are actually wirewound just in a cement body. Am I missing something? To me it looks like he just changes one type of wirewound resistor for another type of wirewound resistors. Regardless, even if they are using say a ceramic power resistor vs a wirewound what improvements are had? I don't really see it making a scrap of difference.


There are just too many things that this guy says as gospel that really don't make any difference in performance. How was Danny boy able to create steeper slope networks by removing parts? Typically going with steeper filters you end up adding parts not the other way around. Nothing he says makes any sense to me and it appears most of his customers like the guy in the video just has too much money at his disposal and suffers from "upgraditis" where he needs to upgrade everything regardless. Must be nice to just burn your money away while the majority of us try and figure out how to fill up our gas tanks. The two of them just kept saying "better quality parts" and that's all I ever hear from them with hardly any evidence of improvement sans anecdotal evidence from their drinking/listening tests. Danny claims he measures for best performance but I can't seem to find any before and after data, if there is can anyone post the link for me? Greatly appreciated because unlike Danny boy I like to see data on these mods not just their word for it.

 

[DMill]

You probably hit the nail on the head with upgraditis. We all suffer from it. I see a review for “my” speaker and it’s not perfect and now I can spend $500 to replace cheesy parts and now my purchase is just fine. It’s really pretty amazing. Years ago it was cables. Bill Low would tell you that you got $20k of gear, why not spend $4k more to get it tweaked just right? Put out some half ass science and 90% are going to believe it. I see people say he’s just too dumb to get it. My guess is he is smart as sh-t and knows he is in it for the money. That bothers me more.

 

[tw 2022]

You probably hit the nail on the head with upgraditis. We all suffer from it. I see a review for “my” speaker and it’s not perfect and now I can spend $500 to replace cheesy parts and now my purchase is just fine. It’s really pretty amazing. Years ago it was cables. Bill Low would tell you that you got $20k of gear, why not spend $4k more to get it tweaked just right? Put out some half ass science and 90% are going to believe it. I see people say he’s just too dumb to get it. My guess is he is smart as sh-t and knows he is in it for the money. That bothers me more.

That's the thing.. So many wannabe's go to best buy and drop $600 on a power conditioner to make htib speakers sound better because the guy at BB told them to...10 minutes of serious research would at least put the brakes on this idea if the buyer is rational...

 

[ryanosaur]

if the buyer is rational...

Since when was Commerce an act of rationality?

 

[tw 2022]

Since when was Commerce an act of rationality?

Very astute observation.. I agree.. But common sense would tell you the BB guy has an agenda that isn't about the buyers best interest... People love to hear happy horse manure though...

 

[fineMen]

... not all cabinet resonances are bad ...

I read some really scientific literature on loudspeaker cabinet resonances. Latest was about a mathematically legal trick to transform the problem of the radiation to something easily measurable. Point was: even with a deliberately "bad" cabinet--it was meant as a showcase for the measurement procedure--the resonances were minuscule.

Then the cabinet was stuffed with the regular wadding. Resonances all gone.

What I'm after: the amateur's "knocking test" exposes the amateur. It is in no way related to the cabinet's acoustic behaviour when driven by the drivers. Again, the "model" or theory behind the relevance is lacking thinking to an amateurish degree. Danny knocks.

 

[tw 2022]

I read some really scientific literature on loudspeaker cabinet resonances. Latest was about a mathematically legal trick to transform the problem of the radiation to something easily measurable. Point was: even with a deliberately "bad" cabinet--it was meant as a showcase for the measurement procedure--the resonances were minuscule.

Then the cabinet was stuffed with the regular wadding. Resonances all gone.

What I'm after: the amateur's "knocking test" exposes the amateur. It is in no way related to the cabinet's acoustic behaviour when driven by the drivers. Again, the "model" or theory behind the relevance is lacking thinking to an amateurish degree. Danny knocks.

that sounds like a viable argument..

 

[d'Brit]

He's a charlatan. Don't support his channel.

Upon what do you base that claim?

 

[captainbeefheart]

Upon what do you base that claim?

Practically every video he puts out supports this claim.

He continually correlates the "better" a part is by how much he pays for it. He even lines up his "upgrade" capacitors in a linear fashion in regard to price, as he goes down the list the price increases and each time he reaches a higher price he says something like "this cap is x times more expensive but the sound has less "smear" and more "clarity". Every time!!

He not once shows a clear before and after measurement between the two parts to support his claim.

His gross incompetence as an engineer shows time and time again how little he knows, almost every time he opens his mouth either a lie comes out of misinformation, I don't know his intent so I cannot be certain which one it is. A lie is when he knows what he says isn't true but says it anyway for profit. I'm leaning towards a liar more and more I watch is videos and try to communicate with him because he is ignorant about the subject and will not broaden his understandings because it will get in the way of profit.

He continually wastes customers money on things that don't matter, if they did matter it would be easily measurable and verifiable. But he falls back on the old adage "we don't know how to measure audible quality, we can only listen and my ears tell me I'm doing the right thing". Sadly he doesn't take into consideration an entire aspect of audio, perception and bias. If in his reality he thinks things are better then they are better, he's not objective and he only cares about stuff he can sell you based on not promoting anything he can't "upgrade". If he can't make money on it he doesn't recommend it.

Someone needs to start a youtube channel debunking everything Danny says as a service to the people. Far too many have already been taken advantage of by this clown. His title as an "expert" on the matter is sad and laughable at the same time.