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In Reply to: RE: Why are you the "in-between" man from Magnepan? posted by Potzrebie on June 07, 2014 at 01:21:33
Potzrebie,Wendell no longer participates directly in these forums. He works six days a week and doesn't have time. In lieu of direct participation, when Wendell has something he wants to say on the forums, he emails it to a forum representative and we pass it on.
Currently, I fill that role on the Planar Asylum, and Steve Ford does it on the Planar Circle. Steve and I also pass questions from fellow forum members on to Wendell.
I wish I could say I get paid for it, but I don't.
Anyway, when I pass something on from Wendell it represents his opinion, not mine. Conversely, what I write here constitutes my own opinion and speculation and shouldn't be given any special weight. Sometimes, when I say something wrong, I'll get an email from Wendell informing me of that in no uncertain terms. Ditto when I guess right. And very occasionally, I hear something on background, and then I'm left with the frustrating task of using information that's publicly available to make a point. But basically, I'm just speculating, like everyone else.
In this specific case I haven't spoken to anyone at Magnepan since the incident -- all I know is what I've read here and on Stereophile's site. However, when I visited the factory a year ago as forum representative, I passed on a participant's suggestion that Magnepan send Stereophile a pair of Mini Maggies for review. Mark Winey said he thought it was a good idea, and then said to Wendell that it might be a way to get back into sending speakers to Stereophile. So I didn't get the sense that there was any great animosity. As far as I know the issue is that JA's measurements make Maggies look bad, and that JA understandably doesn't want to publish a review without them. That's just based on what I've read here and on the Stereophile site. And my own comments on this were just to point to the near field measurement problem since some people seemed to think that Maggies have awful measurements.
IMO, E-Stat's suggestion makes a lot of sense: When measuring large planars, Stereophile should just omit the bass curve and put in a footnote to the effect that gated quasi-anechoic measurements don't accurately represent the performance of large-area dipoles. Ideally, they could add an in-room measurement, or make the low frequency measurements at a normal listening distance outside (but at a normal distance from an exterior wall since that affects the midbass response).
Edits: 06/07/14Follow Ups:
If Wendall has something to say, he can post just like JA does. He is too busy, is BS!
Wendall is MAGNEPAN'S REPRESENTATIVE (Marketing Manager).
And it is "HIS" job to communicate to customers.
In all fairness, Wendell is very available to customers -- if you call Magnepan and ask for him, they'll connect you and chances are he'll spend a lot of time with you. They take pride in old-fashioned customer service. When we asked for example why they don't include an email address on their site, he asked whether people would prefer to email some phone bank guy in India or speak to people at the factory who really understand the problem.
Also, if you ask a question on the Ask the Factory thread on the Planar Circle, he'll respond there. He just doesn't want to get directly involved in the endless discussions on the forums, although I know he reads at least some of them.
I can also personally vouch for the fact that Wendell works long hours and has responsibilities other than marketing that occupy a significant amount of his time. Magnepan is a giant by high end standards, but it isn't a big company by any means and since they sell to the value market they have to be very careful about labor costs.
Are there other reasons why Wendell chooses to do things this way? Perhaps. He's told me that he's more comfortable with verbal than written communication, so that could have something to do with it. Obviously, not a problem that JA has! And some of the guys on the Planar Forum say that he was driven away by someone back when he did participate. I wasn't there to see it but it seems plausible.
I've long admired JA's cast iron stomach -- most of the time he manages to be unflappable in the face of accusations that would make a divorce lawyer quail. But not everyone in the industry wants to deal with attacks from the same handful of people day in and day out. And, really, participating in these forums can be incredibly time consuming. Between emails and responding to posts, I've spent much of the day on it. These days, I don't usually have time to do it myself, and I don't have a speaker company to run.
Steve Ford is the MODERATOR at Planar Circle.
You are not the REPRESENTATIVE of the Planar Asylum!
Who elected you? You are not even the official moderator.
You are a SHILL for Magnepan! Paid or not.
Wendall is too busy to take 2 minutes to respond? BS!
I hate second hand suspect info!
The guys on the Planar Forum did elect me, so yes, I am their representative. It doesn't make any difference in this case, since Wendell is free to communicate with or through anyone he wants. Before me, it was another Planar Asylum regular, Wazoo. And others are in touch with him as well.
If you don't want to get information through me, call him yourself, though given the tone of your discussion so far I have a feeling that the conversation won't last long.
As to what I say, you are welcome to read it or not, or agree with it or not. Really, it wouldn't really matter if I were Jim Winey in disguise, since what I say is either correct or not, and everyone is free to make up their own minds.
Finally, with respect to why Wendell doesn't participate, have you considered the possibility that he doesn't want to waste time responding to paranoid, defamatory posts like yours?
You are a lousy Jay Carney wannabe!
I think Magnepan and Wendell are the ones that are paranoid, not me!
Care to discuss why Manepam uses a "hidden" center channel speaker, in 2 channel show demonstrations?
No. It's been discussed to death on the Planar Asylum and the information doesn't need to be repeated here.
I am not sure who Jay Carney is, nor do I much care.
What you do for Magnepan is "ASTROTURFING"!
astroturfing
the act of creating a small organization and making it appear to represent something popular for the purpose of promoting a particular entity, cause, etc. (a play on grassroots in the sense of a popular movement originating among the common people, ultimately from AstroTurf, a brand of artificial grass)
The practice of astroturfing a widely used form of propaganda, as evidenced by the media coverage it receives.
Chill Out! Have a drink!
You are not going to win playing a "MANIC" game of WACK -A -MOLE!
Dude, what I am is a retired audio and video engineer who has owned Maggies since he was in his 20's and hangs out on the Planar Asylum. I like the people at Magnepan, I like the company's philosophy and integrity, and I like their speakers, which is why I own them.
By way of contrast, I'm not very fond of the frequently uninformed attacks that people make on these newsgroups, whether directed at Magnepan or Stereophile or anyone else. I think such attacks are dispiriting for those who are their targets and harm good people.
There are too many companies that don't care about their customers, employees, or business ethics. They're the ones who deserve to be attacked, and I reserve my criticism for them.
These attacks on Magnepan are real!
Wendell and Mark Winey have made several BIG missteps that you fail to acknowledge!
And DUDE I am a real EE from top ten university, and Design Assurance Engineer in the medical industry, and have owned Magnepans since 1976!
You are a BLOW HARD!
What you are is a guy with questionable grammar, erratic spelling, and a predilection for name-calling, baseless accusation, unfounded generalizations, and that ever-reliable indicator of a weak position, ad hominem argument.
As for Wendell and Mark's missteps, I'm not sure what you're referring to. I've seen nothing but penny ante stuff -- forgetting to mention a center channel speaker in a few demos, saying something that pissed off a member of the press. If that's what you're referring to, I'm not sure why you say I failed to acknowledge them, given that I've been discussing them for the last two days. Or do you mean that I didn't start inventing paranoid theories about what happened and calling for everyone to be drawn and quartered?
Meanwhile, Magnepan has had a string of successful product introductions, weathered a very difficult economic climate and the challenges that face high end audio without sacrificing its identity as a company that sells high end gear at prices the middle class can afford, and, most recently, introduced a new compact model that won raves. To me a major misstep would be a product introduction that no one likes, or a failed business strategy.
Do I agree with everything they do? No. But look up the Dunning–Kruger effect. I've worked all my life in pro audio and video and had for a time a company that manufactured pro audio equipment, so I know something of the challenges businesses face. But, paradoxically, one of the consequences of that knowledge is that I know how little I know about the their business. I've had the good fortune to get to know some of the people at Magnepan, to get a sense of who they are, warts and all, and of some of the challenges they face and some of the strategies they've tried. But I don't have the lore that one acquires after working for at a company, sometimes for decades. So while like many here I make suggestions and try to convince them to do this or that, I don't believe that I know enough about their business to know better than they do how to run it.
I do not like the way Magnepan is currently run! It is an insult to many, in all the internet forums.The old timers that have known Magnepan for decades are stunned!
The "missteps" with the 3.7i upgrade and launch (no official comment on what was improved), Wendell's public insult to JA, hidden center channel speaker demos, and bogus reasons for no Stereophile review sample, are all insults to Magnepan customers.
Under Jim Winey none of this would has occurred!
You defend all of this, over and over!
You are out of step with the bulk of Magnepan users
The people on the planar forum are a tiny, tiny group Vs the 400,000 Magnepan owners. They buy used Magnepan speakers to modify, and do not like the stock ones. How many happy users even visit the audio forums? Not 400,000!
Edits: 06/07/14
What I try to do is defend them against uninformed attacks of the kind that so often occur on the Internet and then gain currency merely by virtue of having been stated. And I was doing this long before I knew anyone at the company.
When people claim that Magenpan won't submit its products for review by Stereophile because the speakers don't measure well, and I know that Stereophile's measurements misrepresent the performance of the speaker because the quasi-anechoic measurement technique they use is inappropriate for the measurement of large planars, should I not point that out?
When people accuse Magnepan of hiding a center channel speaker despite the fact that they mentioned the center channel speaker at almost every showing, should I not point that out?
Some forum members run at this stuff swinging their axes like Hagar the Horrible. Minor slip-ups like being tired and pressed for time and forgetting to mention the center channel speaker at a few demos are transformed into evil conspiracies.
This is not the same as agreeing with everything the company does. For example, Steve Ford and I have nagged Wendell to death over his refusal to disclose basic technical details, as in the 3.7i upgrade. But even there, I'm aware that we're speaking from the perspective of people who don't know whether a spec can be mentioned without disclosing trade secrets.
For example, the 1.7 uses a novel series crossover with a .5-way supertweeter strip and I can see why they wouldn't want to talk about that -- it's clever and it doesn't have patent protection. But we didn't know that until Peter Gunn opened one up and made a schematic of the crossover. So if we had criticized Magnepan for refusing to disclose more crossover information, would that have been fair?
Let me quote part of an email I received yesterday from Wendell, touching on the center channel business:
"Something as simple as the desire to have a clean backdrop for viewing the two competing cosmetic designs has not occurred to anyone. Rather there are sinister reasons given."
I think that pretty much says it all.
nt
LOL. This post of yours reminds me of that old suggestion about what the US should do about the war in Vietnam: declare a victory and leave.
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