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EXACTLY what is it that you need to know about that company that Stereophile failed to tell you???

Posted by John Marks (M) on May 8, 2014 at 07:39:32

In Reply to: Stereophile skating close to the edge. posted by viridian on May 7, 2014 at 20:44:55:

As far as I am concerned, Stereophile told me all I need to know about that company!

Precisely what do you think you need to know about that company, that Stereophile failed to tell you, swept under the rug, or otherwise hid from you in the Vast No-Center-Channel Conspiracy against you and you wallet and all you hold holy?

I was not halfway through that painful read (and was a long way from the test results) when I said to myself two things.

One, "I bet that that manufacturer rues the day he asked to have his product reviewed."

From Hero to Zero in the amount of time it takes to fail to do meaningful Quality Control.

Two, "I hope that this is a lesson to small manufacturers and also to the carping naysaying readers and haters, that small manufacturers should wait until they have OBJECTIVE reasons to KNOW that they are "ready for prime time," and are not just whistling past the Graveyard of Over-Ambitious Audio Companies.

I myself, believing that "human nature has no history (an no future, either)" fear that on more than one occasion, JA's trusting nature has been taken advantage of, with respect to the much-decried five-dealer rule.

What does it take to "become a dealer"? There is the phenomenon of the "non-stocking dealer"--which I think is legitimate, at least in the CEDIA world where nearly all jobs are custom jobs and therefore a dealer who is an approved dealer with credit terms in place and literature and often times color and trim samples on hand is, in that world, a "real dealer."

But what about an audio dealer who had stock, sold it out, and now can't get stock? Should that count for Stereophile's rule? I think not.

More troubling is the case of a manufacturer or importer with a wide range of price points.

Let's say that their entry-level loudspeaker has an MSRP of $8000/pr. and their "statement" speaker costs $50,000 a pair. A canny conniving importer can create five dealers by shipping pairs of their entry-level $8000/pr. speakers to five compliant dealers, all of whom know that they will not have to pay for them until they sell them. Which may happen, if Stereophile creates a buzz.

The importer then informs Stereophile that he does indeed have five dealers. He can even provide a list.

HOWEVER, of the $50,000 speaker he wants a full review of, his audio-show pair is the only pair in North America. What that guy is trying to do is to make Stereophile the fulcrum of his marketing for a product he is unwilling to put his own money and effort behind... .

Does it not stand to reason that if Raven had five fully-stocking dealers, that Raven could have phoned one and shipped a dealer's pair of monoblocks to Art at its own expense? That NONE of Raven's dealers could help in that scenario made me question. Worst case, they could have begged a customer to lend his amps and provide a stereo unit as a loaner.

(The same question arises when a loudspeaker importer tells me not to form opinions until 500 hours of playing music. That's three months of 8 hours a day, five days a week. Forget it, Charlie. If that is so important to you, swap stock with a dealer whose showroom pair is broken in. Oh? No dealers have this model? Call me back in five years, if you are still in business.)

In the end, if you try that product and you love it, and whether there are real dealers or nominal dealers makes little difference to you, you can be happy. But apart from the unavoidable and I think enlightening fact that the inflammatory monoblocks were the only pair to be had, I found nothing to fault in Art's writeup.

But the ultimate fault for this imbroglio lies with naysayers and haters like the original poster. We at Stereophile often get upbraided for "Oh, yeah, another review product from frequent-flyer Audio Research (or Wilson Audio)." News flash, guys. Those companies are ready for prime time and have real stocking dealers, all the way up the line, and all over the round earth's imagined four corners... .

So when Stereophile takes on a review from a company (which I must note, in its ManCom ruefully admitted that it had not been ready for prime time) whose eligibility for a full review arguably comported with the letter of the law but I think not its spirit, and the product blows up or at least wants to grill some shrimp, somehow it is all our fault, and further evidence of our depravity and bad manners.

The manufacturer got a free pass from the OP. Why? Was that because "Scorpions gotta sting"?

I myself turn to the Good Book:

"They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept." Lk 7:32.

On alternating days, we have demons or are gluttons. Or at least the naysayers and haters so say.

To me, it was the manufacturer who skated close to the edge, and Stereophile had to make the best of it, because the print space was already allocated.

I have a suggestion for the OP and his ilk, ith, kin, and minions:

This has gone far past the point of a Bad Marriage. If you are stuck in, "Everything You Do Is Wrong and You Will Never Be Able to Make Me Happy Again," FILE FOR DIVORCE.

In other words, stop reading, tune out, and shut up.

And in this case, realize where the fault really lies.

Speaking only for myself of course. And influenced by the fact that an importer has been pressuring me for a writeup and I then asked not how many dealers he had but rather, how many of those things are really in the US? He never answered, and so it seems that that was another case of, take advantage of Stereophile's good nature, and if they love it, I can always really import the thing.

Speaking only for myself--again.

JM

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