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dCS threatens with a 7-figure lawsuit over a review

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pablolie said:
There is a risk in presenting yourself as a professional expert and making claims about products on the internet. Anyone that thinks they can publish professional reviews without risk deludes themselves, even when they truly believe they're being honest. *Especially* in our lawsuit trigger-happy USA. I work in high tech, and I could easily be fired if I make disparaging claims about competitors' products in public... even when I know them to be entirely true. The legal liability is big. Never forget many companies live one big commercial failure from going out of business. Tends to bias the fight-or-flee reflex to do the former...

I am pretty sure that's why audio magazines never fail to find something-anything to like even in the worst products they review. They guide *you* to conclude the obvious, but they are careful about openly stating it.
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Big serious companies dont really care about a negative review. Imagine if car companies would harass anyone who find some car ugly or uninspired lol.

dCS could easily move on or make a storm out of a teacup. They chosed the latter. I guess their marketing dept has too much free time.
 
ElJaimito said:
My very first post-education salaried job (1972) was as the "Senior Sales Supervisor" at Rackhams, Birmingham (UK - maybe think Neiman Marcus US or el Corte Ingles Spain) for Bang & Olufsen. This after a B&O sales training course teaching me how to convert the curious into a cash sales using tactics that I disapproved of even as a youth. I got fired after about 7 months for sending hopeful buyers of the junk products to a DIY electronics store which also sold assembled versions in an adjacent mall. This was for amps (dreadful) and turntables (awful). The tape decks were quite good so I sold a few of those.

This was highly overpriced mostly- junk with beautiful design but mediocre performance. I still have one old B&O tape deck I use for recovering ancient recordings. On the whole, though, poor sound. Oh, and the BeoVox speakers? Ye dogs.

I am assured they have made some good products since, I remain unconvinced.

This stuff has been going on forever.
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My 1972 Beogram 3000 with SP12 is a very pleasant working and sounding turntable - too much like an appliance in its rapid slick operation (I love me Duals and Garrards), but it's still a looker and well up to lower cost Projects and Regas even today. The UK model Beoxox 3800 (Goodmans bass and mid plus a Philips tweeter I believe) was excellent as was the 5702, which had a lot of Celestion in it (a smaller squashed Ditton 66 I recall)

The Beolab and Master 5000 amp/tuner were excellent and happy to drive 4 ohms all day. The 4000 receiver was good too (I used one as a tuner for a while) and the 4400 from the late 70s was a star in that styling, but with updated performance. The 8000 separates range also did well, especially the turntable but the 9000 cassette deck was beaten by a top Nakamichi of the era. They went off a bit in the 80s but came back, especially when the speakers went mostly active. Sorry for the digression, but these products were latterly never intended for 'ordinary' people who wanted value for money, but for people wanting a more tactile experience and were prepared to pay for it. I heard a set of Beolab 8000 'pencil' speakers a couple of months back (Quad Artera Play+ driven) and they sounded delightful to me in the quite large room.

I went on a B&O sales course in 1995, all but kicking and screaming, but actually found it educational and very helpful as by then I was older and mature customers looked on me as a bit more mature by then. @Doodski may understand the methods shown, in *listening* to the client, speaking their language and so on. I never worked on commission, so it wasn't a do or die situation, but it helped me focus better...

As for dCS and repeating what I said earlier, they made serious high end dacs twenty odd years back for those able to afford them, but like Chord Electronics in my opinion in the next price bracket down, I feel they've been upstaged by dacs at a fraction of the price - simpler signal and supply paths can work well too...
 
dCS uses a lot less subjective audiophile gobbledygook in their marketing that some other DAC companies (including Topping and Chord), but they do make some subjectivist claims. So, I don't have a lot of sympathy for their complaints about subjective reviews. They invite it with text like this:

"Our relentless focus on delivering quantifiable sonic benefits, coupled with our decades of experience working at the cutting edge of digital, has enabled us to deliver the most revealing, lowest distortion, and most emotionally communicative music playback experience available. "
 
shuppatsu said:
Exhibit A is Cameron's own meticulous testing. I know he got dragged at ASR for his "misleading," "click-bait" headline, and confusing presentation of methodology. But I thought it was a pretty good demonstration that a high tap sinc filter such as can be found in the Chord products can possibly be detected.
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That was a pretty shaky exhibit. :cool: The loophole was obvious.
 
So Cameron and headphones.com outright reject the dcs claim of having had a meeting to clear this up. So is it a straight up lie?
 
DSJR said:
I went on a B&O sales course in 1995, all but kicking and screaming, but actually found it educational and very helpful as by then I was older and mature customers looked on me as a bit more mature by then. @Doodski may understand the methods shown, in *listening* to the client, speaking their language and so on. I never worked on commission, so it wasn't a do or die situation, but it helped me focus better...
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The very first sales training course that I attended was sponsored for me by a major insurance company so that I could attend a expensive 4 day sales training course put on by a famous professional sales trainer of the 80s. There was about 400 of us in the hotel conference room. I was stoked to try the new tools and techniques of schmoozing and sales and I did and within 3 weeks my sales doubled and then even exceeded that a bit and I maintained that for years afterwards. So yes, sales training works. It's like judo for me; I studied for years, I used it a couple times when attacked by misfits and otherwise it has been a great skill for falling off ladders, tripping over curbs, falling down for whatever reason. It's a life skill that never leaves and sales training has been with me since the day I studied that and had lotsa role playing and hearing the stoked up stories from a master salesperson really fires up a willing participant.
 
amirm said:
It is clear that many in the industry don't know much about PR and don't think these actions through. They let emotions get in the way of making the right decision for the company.
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Good show Amir ! Even though you guys have butted heads in the past you still stood up against this BS.
This crap in our industry has to stop and we need to do whatever we can to stand against it
 
Human Bass said:
Big serious companies dont really care about a negative review. Imagine if car companies would harass anyone who find some car ugly or uninspired lol.

dCS could easily move on or make a storm out of a teacup. They chosed the latter. I guess their marketing dept has too much free time.
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dCS is not a big company by any means. LinkedIn says they have between 11 to 50 employees.

Car reviews are also quite careful with what they say and write. And car companies have thousands/millions of customers, so one bad review doesn't hurt them a bit. Very different for boutique audio companies that live in a crowded market and probably just sell a hundred (tops!) units in a good year.
 
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Blockader said:
I've been a member of GoldenSound's Discord channel since day one. I also followed his Telegram chat for a while, but it eventually became too cringe-y.

The issue with GoldenSound is that his passion often surpasses his knowledge in various fields of audio. This leads him to make hot takes and bold claims about audio products based on his subjective impressions, which he attributes to his exceptional hearing abilities.

Since he released his review, nearly everyone on Head-Fi and people in his discord group associates dCS with a soft sound. Let me explain why:

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The problem with such statements is that many audiophiles are delusional; they lack a fundamental understanding of audio and are unwilling to learn anything that might challenge their beliefs. Instead, they gravitate towards confident individuals who make bold claims and have strong opinions. These audiophiles seek out someone to follow who reinforces their existing beliefs (such as "everything makes a difference," "DACs can make speakers sound more impactful," "DAC/amp synergy is very important," etc.).

GoldenSound fits this mold perfectly. He is confident, bold, and has strong opinions about what he hears, especially regarding DACs and amps. When he says dCS sounds soft, he creates a powerful confirmation bias among audiophiles, leading everyone to listen to dCS DACs to perceive the 'softness' he describes. He tries to back up his claims with explanations that might sound plausible only if we could hear -160dB distortion. But most audiophiles believe that everything makes a difference and this correlations between measurements and subjective claims make Golden appear as a grounded subjectivist person who isn't delusional.

One more thing: Hearing that 'softness' makes you feel like part of the 'cool kids club'; it suggests you have such exceptional ears that you can hear the 'softness' that other people who bought dCS DACs can't detect. You feel extraordinary. Considering all this, when GoldenSound says dCS DACs sound soft, they start sounding soft to everyone.

This isn't directly GoldenSound's fault, but it is a consequence of making bold subjective claims without having anything to back them up. I quit his Telegram chat after he said, "Ah, I know why dCS DACs sound so soft! They have high 3rd order distortion." That's pure nonsense. While listening to music at 85dB, -130dB third order distortion is at -45dB. -45dB is the loudness of the kitchen water pipelines in your neighbor's apartment two floors away.

But this is the price one can pay if you make such subjective claims without having anything to back up without a substance.

Is Golden the victim here? Definitely. People should be able to make their own subjective claims about audio products without being afraid of the consequences. You may disagree with me here. That's another debate.
Is dCs overreacting to the situation? Yes.
am I in Golden's side? Yes, because I do not think he has bad intentions.

However, the way I see it, this is another 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes' kind of situation. Good luck to him. One last note: He is not always negative dCs and I do not think he has an agenda against them. I think he tends to believe what his perception is telling him, too much.

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I can say this 'cos I'm much older now, but he's a relatively youthful strapling still, he's keen, wanting to make an impression and probably likes having a willing audience following his every word. I look back on posts I made ten to fifteen years back on other sites and these days I cringe with embarrassment as I was stating opinions as definite facts (I'd argue I was right a lot of the time, but still). It was only a very few years back and shortly before my ears caved in, that I did some comparisons and proved to myself how important level matching is in an A-B comparison and also I think, how we seem to be a multi-sensed species where our decisions and world views are concerned.

I'd love to see how this gent feels in forty years' time with some more learning and life-experiences about his subjective stuff written today. I feel very different today to how I was forty odd years ago.
 
DSJR said:
... likes having a willing audience following his every word. I look back on posts I made ten to fifteen years back on other sites and these days I cringe with embarrassment as I was stating opinions as definite facts (I'd argue I was right a lot of the time, but still)....
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You can say many things as an individual expressing an opinion about a product. Look at Amazon reviews. And notice how even when there are a thousand positive reviews, good companies reach out to those few dissatisfied with the product and try to make things right a lot of the time.

If you are building a larger audience in youtube, you are ultimately a *business*, and that is subject to different rules. It is both flattering to build an audience, it may also become profitable - hence it comes with much higher liability, too.
 
Human Bass said:
Big serious companies dont really care about a negative review. Imagine if car companies would harass anyone who find some car ugly or uninspired lol.
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Imagine if car reviewers stated that silver wiring in a drive by wire throttle made the acceleration more visceral and engaging. That a car with royal purple oil had more emotional turn-in than one with pennzoil platinum.
 
This, to me, seems like a total BS. Help me understand something. Why is this matter becoming public now? The email that talks about misinformation is from October last year. Why is this on Youtube and various forums exactly now? If this matter was concluded and only then made public, it would make more sense to me. How is the sides' ability (or inability) to solve a matter of importance to the public? The only thing that I read is "Hey, audio community, unite and make some noise! We need you!" and bla-bla-bla. Sorry, I will not fall for this. Again, this is everywhere - on youtube, on forums, (and, if it hasn't been mentioned before too,) on reddit too. This, in my opinion, has become way beyond a matter of who is right or wrong. Remember - we live in times when content, clicks, clickbaits, and drama make living.
 
And the reply to the reply.

forum.headphones.com

dCS Response and Story

For those who did not see, this was posted on The HEADPHONE Show yesterday. This video was made in relation to an ongoing situation regarding @GoldenSound by dCS in regards to a video review he did of the dCS Bartok in 2021 before he had joined The HEADPHONE Show and Headphones.com which...
forum.headphones.com forum.headphones.com
 
I have a couple of friends who have spent big bucks on DACs (and amps and transports and well everything). They have the money and they are going to spend it. They don't care about these reviews, they don't purchase based on these reviews, they don't care about measurments. They listen and based on what they hear, and if they like it, they purchase the equipment. More importantly, they *know* that a $200 DAC can't sound as good as a $20000.00 DAC (and they'd never do any kind of blind testing).

I wonder how dCS doesn't realize who their target sales audience is?
 
Whoareyou said:
They don't care about these reviews, they don't purchase based on these reviews,
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I sincerely doubt that your friends make the norm, specially in "high-end" audio, where verbose reviews on magazines have been the norm for decades. As stated previously in this thread, the video made by GS had a deep impact on the image of dCS "house-sound" inside the subjectivity community, so much so that it bothered them to be stapled with those adjectives.
 
amirm said:
Tekton went after such a reviewer and when he caved, he went after me and then Erin. We have to stand up to what is right. And what dCS did, is not right. Companies need to follow fair and proper protocols in engaging reviewers. This is what every reviewer deserves.
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Is there anything that companies deserve? Or is it just reviewers? Are there any fair and proper protocols that reviewers should follow?
 
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