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In Reply to: RE: Recent Rega Saturn CD Player purchasers - any problems with the unit? posted by Sboez on October 11, 2009 at 22:11:51
If that happened then there would have to be a virtual avalanche of complaints from many, many different users. There have been complaints, but not near the required numbers for this to make any sense.
I think the Rega models had some problems and I think most online only reviewers have some problems.
'This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been attributable to human error'.
To debug divine.
There are many complex and obscure reasons why a design problem could show up as described. This is unlikely with analog electronics, but the operation of malfunctioning digital hardware and software can defy intuition. Problems can relate to simple matters like AC line voltage and noise, temperature and humidity, and peculiar patterns of user operation. Some people have a special talent for invoking problems with computer equipment. I used to read product specifications and manuals and then intuitively guess that certain operations would fail. More often than not, I was right. What happens is that a corner of the design space holds a subtle bug and the designers of the equipment may not even be aware of the situation. Often this is apparent in the product descriptions, where unclear concepts turn into design bugs and ambiguous documentation.
Reputable companies will use inputs from customers with problems as a way to improving their products. Other companies simply deny that there is a problem. I am presently looking to buy a NAS server for holding terrabytes of media files. I comb through the various forums, etc., and Google for "XYZ sucks". It is possible to read between the lines and learn much about the quality of engineering and the integrity of the vendor. Based on this information, I have narrowed down my search by excluding several vendors.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
They thought something was amiss with one person's complaints.
Again, the basic issue is if one consumer got six units that could not work either 1. The odds were completely defied, based on the volume of complaints from other consumers, which was not extraordinarily high, or, 2. There's something weird with this one user.
With six units it's not really possible he got a sliver of a production run, or pre production units, which uniquely had this trouble. Because six units usually connotes a certain period of time.
Now, your mention of particular computer end users being able to produce more faults than others can is a mysterious area. Some people suffer a lot of broken bones, while others who may be more active physically never seem to. Are their bones brittle ("manufacturer's" qc problem) or do they move in ungainly ways (end user, ineffable screw ups)?
I wasn't there to see the six units, and have never owned a Rega (bought my sister a table back in the 80's,) and I can't know for sure, but something seems odd. And I remain skeptical of many online reviewers in general for...various reasons.
I've seen cases where a problem showed up at only one customer site where the failing equipment worked perfectly everyplace else, and yet the problem was ultimately tracked down to an engineering design error. In one case it turned out that a combination of heavy usage, optimized software that enabled this heavy usage, and mechanical design problems that caused static electricity build up under heavy usage caused errors. A defective disk controller design turned intermittent errors into permanent errors when it wrote on the wrong spot on the disk. There were only a few customers running the latest software, only a few customers placing heavy load on their systems, and only one doing both in Arizona (or was it New Mexico). Customers in more humid climates never had any problems.
For various reasons, and this example is one of them, I am very skeptical of arguments that are statistical in nature. All of these arguments may be perfectly valid when they are based on a correct model of reality, but the interesting problems always are ones where the model is broken.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
> I've seen cases where a problem showed up at only one customer site where the failing equipment worked perfectly everyplace else, and yet the problem was ultimately tracked down to an engineering design error.
Except in this case the owner of the six units took one or more to a dealer's and could not replicate the problem...except by his claim _once_ when the dealer was out of the room.
There are outlying statistical events, but I don't dismiss probabilities. I think you're just making this particular case too complicated.
It's not complicated at all. Assuming there is even partial truth in the information in the thread it is clear that the manufacturer didn't handle an unhappy customer properly. Now they are stuck with a bad rep.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Oh baby, let me put you on my list of posters to take with a vat of salt.
Again, I'm not denying the Rega units had _some_ problems.
They could have given him 6000 units and if none of them worked they wouldn't be treating him properly. Proper treatment would have been to admit their mistake and return his money. (My apologies if this was mentioned somewhere in the thread that I missed.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I think your output need to be re clocked.
Six defective units to one individual who cannot reproduce the error at a dealer's means there would have been an avalanche of others complaining. There was not an avalanche; there were complaints.
And your invocation of 6000 units is clearly hysterical: It would indicate there were _no_ working units to any consumer, ever. That's just not reality.
"And your invocation of 6000 units is clearly hysterical: It would indicate there were _no_ working units to any consumer, ever. That's just not reality."
Every heard of Windows 3.1? Millions of non-working copies shipped. Good enough for some. Good enough for others not to complain. Good enough to make Bill Gates billions. You get the idea...
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Because buggy is a larger spectrum than "won't play a CD." And you could replicate a real bug at a computer store most of the time - if you have a clue.
And further, there were volumes of complaints about that software.
Again, it's simple: The episode of one individual requiring six units (or 6000 in your hilarious example,) would, if based in reality, imply a huge percentage failure in the field. That didn't happen. This one case was an outlier for some reason, and not due to a unit's failure, or two units' failure...because he had SIX of them.
lol. Carry on.
- failure to initialize (some) disks;
- fast forwarding to the next track cuts out a fraction of the start of
the music of that track;
- stop button on the remote does not stop CD;
- stop button on player, if depressed, does not stop CD operation;
- lifting of the lid does not stop disk rotation, where it usually does;
- garbled audio (dropouts).
I have experienced all of the above noted "gremlins." I believe Doug Schroeder wrote honestly about his experiences.
If you read again, Mr Schroeder was able to demonstrate the defect to a dealer with his second unit.
Otherwise the sound (sans glitches)of the player is very good.
Exactly.All of the symptoms you report could be caused by software bugs in player firmware. It is entirely possible that every single unit in the field has these problems, but depending on customer usage patterns only some people saw them. It is also possible that firwmare bugs only showed up with certain hardware. (I have seen the appearance of a firmware bug be hidden by certain lot numbers of a dual port memory, for example.)
The quality of a product using digital technology includes the quality of the firmware. All manufacturers have bugs in their firmware. The quality of a company is demonstrated by the way they handle these bugs.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 10/18/09
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