Hi there:
Just thought it might be fun to clear a few things up and set the record straight.....
First of all thank you Caesar and Myles for the kind words, they are always appreciated.
As for Gregadd, Kach and Albert Porter, normally the criticism would be laughed off but there is a bit of a backstory that the readers here are probably not aware of. Where should we begin? My good friends Gregadd, Kach and Rich Teer harken back to the MartinLogan forum days. Both Gregadd and Kach were banned from those forums when their arguments/discussions/whatever got childish and personal when they could not defend their position on a few topics, so I understand their grumpiness towards me.
I find the Albert Porter comment about "someone else admitting how bad I am" as laughable, because three years ago Albert was begging me for a chance to work at TONEAudio. I've still got the emails. We had countless hours of phone conversation, but after I did due diligence and did a little bit of background checking, it didn't make good sense to add Mr. Porter to our team. He's been crabby ever since and refuses to make eye contact with me at any of the shows. That's mature. A perfect example of his "professionalism" was the recent Montreal show. He came in the Burmester room taking pictures for Positive Feedback and almost walked into me before acknowledging my presence. I noticed after reading his "Show Coverage" (if you could call it that) included every room but Burmester. Really? Is this childish or what?
And our pal Rich Teer at Vinylphile actually went as far as to steal our website layout and early magazine issue layout for his little project. When I confronted him on this, he said I should "be flattered" that he copied what we'd done. Ironically, it was right at the time that we changed our format from the original square layout to be easier to read on the iPad. One of the best copyright attorneys in the US just happens to be a good friend and if we wanted to we could put Vinylphile out of business tomorrow, but that's bad karma. Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone wouldn't be so generous.
Last but not least, the Penaudio Serenades. If ever there was a transaction I wish never occurred it would be those speakers.
I purchased the Serenades from Penaudio after they had done some duty with Dan Wright of ModWright for some time. The speakers had taken some pretty severe blows before Dan got them and the cabinets were rough. I used them for the review, because we could clean up the cabinets in Photoshop and it didn't require another $10,000 pair of speakers from Europe. At the end of the review I bought the speakers at a highly discounted price - $2,000 because they were just going to trash them. After using the Serenades for three years it was time to move on and Penaudio was kind enough to sell me a fresh pair of cabinets for a reasonable price and I spent a weekend moving the drivers and crossovers to the new cabinets. Unfortunately, all the bouncing around in shipping had pretty much destroyed the crossovers and they came out of the cabinets in pieces. Another call to Penaudio, another check written for new crossovers and the speakers were reassembled, now looking perfect.
In the three years since the original Serenade, there had been some crossover modifications and the Serenades were now single wired as opposed to the original bi-wire configuration. Rather than wait again for new parts to arrive, I was told to just parallel the speaker connections to each set of binding posts. A few days listening verified that the speakers were up to snuff and off they went.
I've made it a point NOT to sell much gear on Audiogon, so we don't look like a clearinghouse for used audio gear, I took the speakers to my local used shop, Echo Audio. I have known Kurt Doslu for almost ten years and he has always been an excellent and overly fair businessman, btw. I now had $3000 in the speakers and Kurt offered to sell them for $3500 making a small profit for himself and me recovering my investment. Remember, these are $10,000 speakers new....
The fellow on AudioCircle who had his undies in a bundle was offered his money back twice from Kurt and from me personally. Both times he refused. I don't sell a lot of used hifi gear, but I have perfect feedback on ebay and audiogon. Anyone who has ever bought a piece of gear from me has always commented on the condition and the extra effort made in packing and shipping. Not to mention over 500 pieces of gear that have been reviewed in TONEAudio. In that period of time, two pieces of gear have been damaged and we have paid for the repairs both times, even when the mfr. insisted that we did not have to go to this length.
As for the snarky comments about the magazine, whatever. As my editor and good friend Ben Fong-Torres says, "If you aren't pissing someone off then you aren't doing your job." When I started the magazine, Lew Johnson told me that we'd be judged by the company we keep. As we enter our sixth year, I am very proud of both the people on the masthead and the companies that have chosen to support us with review gear and advertising dollars. Unlike any of the other online entities, we pay our writers, editors and other contributors pretty close to print magazine fees and the quality of our contributors is unmatched. With Steve Guttenberg, Ken Kessler and Jacob Heilbrunn from the audio world, and the rest of our staff harkening from Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker.... I've got nothing to be ashamed of.
Our gear reviews are more straightforward and perhaps lacking in the prose of Art Dudley or a few other writers, but that was by design. If all we did was be another Stereophile clone, what would that serve? While I don't always agree with my competitors I certainly respect them. I still have the first issue of TAS and it was certainly a thrill to work for them for a year and be on the same masthead with the great Harry Pearson. I wrote about 700 gear reviews in the photography space before starting TONE for the likes of Macworld, CNet, The Robb Report and countless others, so I developed that style, trying to answer questions that a potential buyer would want answers for. Sure it's fun to hear what new car Ken has just driven or where Sam Tellig has recently been wine tasting, but does that tell you if a preamp has a good remote?
Again, that's not to criticize any of them. I've always enjoyed both of their columns and right behind HP, Sam Tellig has always been one of my favorite hifi writers. If you're looking to spend a big pile of your hard earned money on a piece of gear you should read EVERYTHING you can find. Between about six of us, hopefully, you'll have enough information to decide if said component is worth your time to seek it out. If we've helped you to make that process easier, then we've done our job. If not, then we haven't it's that simple.
Whether that clears anything up remains to be seen. But that's my side of the story and I'm sticking to it.
As for my favorite hifi writers? In no particular order, Harry Pearson, Corey Greenberg and Sam Tellig but I've been reading every hifi magazine I could get my hands on for the last 35 years and I've enjoyed them all - and I've learned a little something from them all.
Just thought it might be fun to clear a few things up and set the record straight.....
First of all thank you Caesar and Myles for the kind words, they are always appreciated.
As for Gregadd, Kach and Albert Porter, normally the criticism would be laughed off but there is a bit of a backstory that the readers here are probably not aware of. Where should we begin? My good friends Gregadd, Kach and Rich Teer harken back to the MartinLogan forum days. Both Gregadd and Kach were banned from those forums when their arguments/discussions/whatever got childish and personal when they could not defend their position on a few topics, so I understand their grumpiness towards me.
I find the Albert Porter comment about "someone else admitting how bad I am" as laughable, because three years ago Albert was begging me for a chance to work at TONEAudio. I've still got the emails. We had countless hours of phone conversation, but after I did due diligence and did a little bit of background checking, it didn't make good sense to add Mr. Porter to our team. He's been crabby ever since and refuses to make eye contact with me at any of the shows. That's mature. A perfect example of his "professionalism" was the recent Montreal show. He came in the Burmester room taking pictures for Positive Feedback and almost walked into me before acknowledging my presence. I noticed after reading his "Show Coverage" (if you could call it that) included every room but Burmester. Really? Is this childish or what?
And our pal Rich Teer at Vinylphile actually went as far as to steal our website layout and early magazine issue layout for his little project. When I confronted him on this, he said I should "be flattered" that he copied what we'd done. Ironically, it was right at the time that we changed our format from the original square layout to be easier to read on the iPad. One of the best copyright attorneys in the US just happens to be a good friend and if we wanted to we could put Vinylphile out of business tomorrow, but that's bad karma. Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone wouldn't be so generous.
Last but not least, the Penaudio Serenades. If ever there was a transaction I wish never occurred it would be those speakers.
I purchased the Serenades from Penaudio after they had done some duty with Dan Wright of ModWright for some time. The speakers had taken some pretty severe blows before Dan got them and the cabinets were rough. I used them for the review, because we could clean up the cabinets in Photoshop and it didn't require another $10,000 pair of speakers from Europe. At the end of the review I bought the speakers at a highly discounted price - $2,000 because they were just going to trash them. After using the Serenades for three years it was time to move on and Penaudio was kind enough to sell me a fresh pair of cabinets for a reasonable price and I spent a weekend moving the drivers and crossovers to the new cabinets. Unfortunately, all the bouncing around in shipping had pretty much destroyed the crossovers and they came out of the cabinets in pieces. Another call to Penaudio, another check written for new crossovers and the speakers were reassembled, now looking perfect.
In the three years since the original Serenade, there had been some crossover modifications and the Serenades were now single wired as opposed to the original bi-wire configuration. Rather than wait again for new parts to arrive, I was told to just parallel the speaker connections to each set of binding posts. A few days listening verified that the speakers were up to snuff and off they went.
I've made it a point NOT to sell much gear on Audiogon, so we don't look like a clearinghouse for used audio gear, I took the speakers to my local used shop, Echo Audio. I have known Kurt Doslu for almost ten years and he has always been an excellent and overly fair businessman, btw. I now had $3000 in the speakers and Kurt offered to sell them for $3500 making a small profit for himself and me recovering my investment. Remember, these are $10,000 speakers new....
The fellow on AudioCircle who had his undies in a bundle was offered his money back twice from Kurt and from me personally. Both times he refused. I don't sell a lot of used hifi gear, but I have perfect feedback on ebay and audiogon. Anyone who has ever bought a piece of gear from me has always commented on the condition and the extra effort made in packing and shipping. Not to mention over 500 pieces of gear that have been reviewed in TONEAudio. In that period of time, two pieces of gear have been damaged and we have paid for the repairs both times, even when the mfr. insisted that we did not have to go to this length.
As for the snarky comments about the magazine, whatever. As my editor and good friend Ben Fong-Torres says, "If you aren't pissing someone off then you aren't doing your job." When I started the magazine, Lew Johnson told me that we'd be judged by the company we keep. As we enter our sixth year, I am very proud of both the people on the masthead and the companies that have chosen to support us with review gear and advertising dollars. Unlike any of the other online entities, we pay our writers, editors and other contributors pretty close to print magazine fees and the quality of our contributors is unmatched. With Steve Guttenberg, Ken Kessler and Jacob Heilbrunn from the audio world, and the rest of our staff harkening from Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker.... I've got nothing to be ashamed of.
Our gear reviews are more straightforward and perhaps lacking in the prose of Art Dudley or a few other writers, but that was by design. If all we did was be another Stereophile clone, what would that serve? While I don't always agree with my competitors I certainly respect them. I still have the first issue of TAS and it was certainly a thrill to work for them for a year and be on the same masthead with the great Harry Pearson. I wrote about 700 gear reviews in the photography space before starting TONE for the likes of Macworld, CNet, The Robb Report and countless others, so I developed that style, trying to answer questions that a potential buyer would want answers for. Sure it's fun to hear what new car Ken has just driven or where Sam Tellig has recently been wine tasting, but does that tell you if a preamp has a good remote?
Again, that's not to criticize any of them. I've always enjoyed both of their columns and right behind HP, Sam Tellig has always been one of my favorite hifi writers. If you're looking to spend a big pile of your hard earned money on a piece of gear you should read EVERYTHING you can find. Between about six of us, hopefully, you'll have enough information to decide if said component is worth your time to seek it out. If we've helped you to make that process easier, then we've done our job. If not, then we haven't it's that simple.
Whether that clears anything up remains to be seen. But that's my side of the story and I'm sticking to it.
As for my favorite hifi writers? In no particular order, Harry Pearson, Corey Greenberg and Sam Tellig but I've been reading every hifi magazine I could get my hands on for the last 35 years and I've enjoyed them all - and I've learned a little something from them all.
