I don't think I have ever written it down. So here is a brief one.
Before forming this forum, I co-started another one with a "subjectivist." The idea was to appeal to both camps in audio. It worked for good number of years. Then the wheels came off with my partner getting disillusioned with my views on audio and expressed the same in the forum. The situation got quite ugly behind the scenes and in the forum. It became clear that what I needed to exist in a forum would no longer be something that could be done there.
Thomas was a member there and we had built a relationship. In one of the messages back and forth he said something to the effect of "do you really want to spend your energy fight this?" That was all I needed to radically change directions and think about starting this forum.
My original thought was to start a forum were we review published literature and research in audio and discuss that. You may have seen some of my early efforts on this. We got some subjectivist members and the usual food fights started and went on for a year or so.
Meanwhile I had this Audio Precision analyzer gathering dust at home. I decided to use it to measure some audio tweaks (USB filters and such). That went on for a bit but then someone asked if I would measure a cheap DAC with it. I said sure and started to buy and test DACs in the $100 range. Little did I know that there was a huge audience there for such products, one that was far larger than high-end audio I was focused on in the previous forum. So I bought more and more products to test.
Then the next phase started where people started to loan me gear to test. With many of them being USB devices, I had to buy a new Audio Precision analyzer which set me back near $30,000. At that point, "I was all in" and I decided I needed to do this seriously and committed to very high rate of reviews (almost one a day).
Membership and traffic heavily grew, proving that original content like reviews is key to attracting and retaining membership. Just having a forum where people come and argue with opinion alone has no where near the same traction. Such sites are dime a dozen.
This led to another one liner by a member,
@Blumlein 88 I think, saying something like: "we are spending so much time and energy testing things in audio that don't matter as much, while not testing what matters a lot (speakers)." This was last summer. I decided I needed to potentially tackle speakers too. The cadillac system just as Audio Precision was the Klippel Near-field scanner. Alas, that made the Audio Precision look cheap in comparison. Months of pondering eventually led me to make that investment too last fall. The system arrived just before Christmas and here we are.
Today, we enjoy a position that is way ahead of vast majority of audio forums. Only a few sites do better than us. It is a group effort, fueled by much expense and time investment on my part to keep advancing it. Meanwhile the kind commentary and financial support of many members keeps me going.
Last year I polled on us using ads and other sources of funding and the overall view was negative so I have not gone there. Donations from members and my own money are the main currency to make this all work.
As to panthers, I thought my equipment pictures were too boring. So I thought of what to put next the gear and remembered that my wife had given me these Pink Panthers years ago when the movies were popular. I dug them out and put them next to the gear with secret meaning which is now in the open.
I think that is it. Let me know if you have questions.
