trigger happy

[oontahey]

Yeah..but quoting Kevin Costner? woo-boy... :-)

[Eric D]

LOL!

[Gregisme]

well, he's not reeally quoting Costner now is he?? It's the screenwriter, afterall.

and I agree with just about everything from that famous quote the screenwriter put in Kevin Costner's mouth to say!

[Sean Parque]

Why do I work at AV123? Because for over half my life I have been involved with music and movies in one way or another. From being a floor director, sound engineer and camera operator for local TV shows to simply sitting in my home enjoying one of life's great gifts, music. When I read the things being said and all the back and forth, I loose a little bit of my zest for all this. I am ashamed that this stuff affects me so much sometimes but it does because I do love this hobby and I *enjoy* helping people get their gear set up. I see a comment like this:

that there was an overwhelming desire by the Rocket followers to convince the auditioning customer that there was something wrong with him-his room-his equipment-his emotions-the phase of the moon etc.

Now, true there are some overlyenthusiastic people on the AV123 forum but that applies to every forum out there. Truth is, when someone posts something that is so uncharacteristic of a product that many of us know extremely well, then we want to try and figure out what's up. I think it would be wrong *not* to try and help. Someone spent some serious cash to get speakers and I'd rather try and see why they have this impression rather than have him or her return everything and lose money on shipping. Another reason for this is 95% of the time, it is a set up issue or something along those lines. I take calls all day here...a lot of knowledgeable people call as well as people that are just getting started. Many don't know how to properly set up a system. I'm talking about proven rules that apply to all speakers - not just ours. So again, while some get too worked up, the reason for trying to help people with issues...is to *help* them! If it does not work out in the end, he returns his speakers.

One last item here...a select few of you are very selective when referring to posts. If you take the time to do some searches, you will see several posts where someone comes in with "my bass is muddy" or whatever...suggestions are offered and the problem was found...mis configuration, whatever. It is solved. Why not quote these as well? ...because it's harder to bag on us is my only guess. I had a customer that purchased a P3A DAC. He posted saying he heard no difference. With the logic being presented here, he should have just returned it. Turns out he neglected to hit the pure direct mode and his receiver was reprocessing the signal and stripping the improvemts made by the P3. Simple fix. I simply can not see an argument against us trying to assist a customer that has an issue that seems completely off base. I would hope all manufactuers would be so kind rather than treating me like one of a million other customers and not caring if I was happy or not - and not caring if I returned something or not as a result of that dissatisfaction.

I mean c'mon...selling a $1500 "tuning" software for a speaker that only costs $1400? Who the heck in their right mind would buy that? I can see if the speakers costs $40,000 that maybe it would justify the costs, but $100 more than the speakers?
Another thing...SPEAKER STANDS...FOR TOWERS. Hullo? Made by the manufacturer no doubt.
All these little side items being sold for the 750 can only mean one thing...even av123 knows the sound is lacking...bigtime.

Here is where things get really off track...to make such a terse post...dissapointing.

The $1500 tuning item Jake is talking about is the P1A with SOCS. There is so much wrong here, I don't know where to begin. First, the SOCS software is made for all speakers. It needs to be customized for each model but the base code exists for every speaker ever made. We measured the 750s first because they are our speakers...why wouldn't we? We know the speaker inside and out. I can't think of a reason not to use ours first. We will have correction algorithms for thousands of speakers when we are done. Please do a tiny bit of reasearch and see what the P1A does alone. We have been selling the P1A for *years* without SOCS to owners of speakers from the Rockets to $135K Genesis 1.1s. SOCS corrects frequency response and time alignment. Nearly every speaker on the planet has phase shifts. All of ours do. So do Ascends. This corrects that. It's not something that can be done in the XO as it's partially the XO that causes phase shifts. Please see 2000 CES info that has the software running on B & W N802s. We've tested it on many others as well. Note that version of the software had a bug that could not be corrected so the entire code base was re-written by hand in assembly...that's why it's taken so long to introduce. The point is this software is not just for Rockets...it will improve any speaker. This is a measurable effect. Flatter FR and less phase shift.

On the comment about the Risers; no one is forcing anyone to buy them. I don't even use them myself. See my gallery photos at AV123 forum for proof. The point of the Risers is 1) to add stability for people with small children or rambunctions pets. The Rocket towers are slim and can be a little tippy on large-pile carpeting. We know this. They are slim to improve the WAF. Most wives don't want a big ugly box in 'their' living room. A smallish tower that is slim is much preferred in our studies. This does not apply to everyone, but a large enough percentage. 2) If the tweeter is below your ears, you need to get that tweeter to ear level. I don't use the Risers because the tweeters are at my ear level while seated. If you are very tall or have a high seating area, then you can use them. Another thought is to make your own. A few supplies from Home Depot and you can do whatever you want...easy.

>>>Speaker measurements - Mad Dog posted measurements of the ELT, RS750, and Ref1. His findings were not near the AV123 specs. But, his methods were not questioned. Can you explain to me why? Whose specs are more accurate?<<<

Neither. Properly measuring speakers is extremely difficult. Sorry no one questioned Mad Dog...but I don't believe most speaker measurments as there are differing techniques etc. It's not as an exact science as one may think. The 750 is expecially a PITA because of the topology. If we could all send speakers to the same third party and have them measured then those measurments would hold water. Otherwise, nope. Not even ours! (before you ask, we did have the speakers measured by a third party. Bascom H. King if anyone wants to send theirs over there as well)

>>>SOCS - What is the claim that it will do? That for $1500, it will make a $1500/pr of speakers sound like a $40,000 pair? There is not even a set release date for this product, yet there are already reviews on how well it performs, and the reviews are not written by a third party. Who is the target audience?<<<

Not sure what the problem with a product not having a release date is. It's still in beta. Mad Dog and Hectic1s posts should have been prefaced with the fact that it was early software...the versions they have are already outdated. Curtis, I am not sure what you mean by "not written by a third party", but these are just forumites like you and everyone else here. We always pick the beta testers from the forum as they are the ones that are active in the community and many people know their names. If the fact they are beta testing a product makes them biased, then what can I say? Don't read their posts. Wait until Stereophile (or whatever mag you like) does a review of SOCS. The P-Tech gear is already Class A rated by Stereophile. Those two got to test the software because they are extremely familiar with the speakers we readied it for. When we are ready to release the software, we will be able to burn a CD with a track from any CD and then burn it corrected for your speakers. This way you can hear what it does without even demoing the actual gear. Seems like we are not afraid of everyone hearing this 'tuning' are we?

>>>The SOCS relesase coming up is ONLY for the 750's.
It was ONLY programmed for the 750's, I believe, according to MLS.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
****, ****, ****
Garbage, Garbage, Garbage.
<<<

This is the stuff that makes me ashemed for our hobby. Newbies see this type of misinformation with nothing to back it up and doesn't know what to think...

In the end, these are just speakers. This has taken way too much of everyones time and has served no purpose at all.

I recommend Ascend speakers frequently. Anyone who calls in and talks about past speakers, types of music they listen to etc will have me asking lots of questions. There have been several cases where I recommended the person NOT buy Rockets as I did not think they would like them. These cases are documented on the AV123 Forum. I care about the customer having good sound as much as I care about my pocketbook. Having a system out there that sounds bad to a person does not help our hobby in the long run even if in the shrt term it's beneficial to me personally.

I personally think the 170s are great speakers and have said so numerous times. I love lots of speakers...not sure why so many seem to think you can not like more than one...170s, RM-30s, 300Es, etc are all favories. We can all get along here...

That's all for now. I'm available at Sean@av123.com or 877.543.7500 x 308 if anyone wants to chat one on one...

Sean

[Sean Parque]

Curtis, the post with the screen cap has been removed.

Regards,

Sean

[curtis]

Thanks Sean,

I have cleared things up with Steve in my posts and on the phone.

One question about SOCS and the CD you can burn for demos. If you new a specification for a particular speaker, loaded it into a SOCS like program on a PC, could that PC then burn a copy of that CD as interpreted by SOCS, and then played on the speakers?

If SOCS does what it is said to do, I think selling it as PC CD burning that would do very well! Making it available to the masses is a much better thing.

-curtis

[Eric D]

I hate to mix the fun with the very serious, but another one did pop into my head that seems applicable here. And if I was in trouble for quoting Crash Davis, how bad is it to find wisdom in the words of Ebby Laloush on this "rainy day.":

"A good friend of mine used to say, 'This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.' Think about that for a while."

[Sean Parque]

>>>If you new a specification for a particular speaker, loaded it into a SOCS like program on a PC, could that PC then burn a copy of that CD as interpreted by SOCS, and then played on the speakers?
<<<

Not quite. Only we can burn the CDs...there are securioty measures we must take to keep the software from being copied...too much time and money has already been spent!

>>>If SOCS does what it is said to do, I think selling it as PC CD burning that would do very well! Making it available to the masses is a much better thing.
<<<

Once we have a large DB of speakers built up, anyone could call up and request the CD. We will simply burn it for their speakers...doing it this way makes it available to the masses as they don't even have to purchase the gear to hear the improvment. Please let me know if you have any other questions!

Regards,

Sean

[Eric D]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Gregisme

off topic to Eric D. -

referring to your earlier post, anyone who quotes Dr. Dean Edell is alright by me.. if more people would follow his health care advice, there'd be alot less gullible, misguided people in this world!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Thanks, and I agree wholeheartedly with your follow-on statement. The other words I hear him use from time to time are meant as a restatement of Occam's Razor: "If you hear hoofbeats, think horses - not zebras."

I wish I had time to hear him on a regular basis, rather than the odd times when I'm back late from lunch when running errands or on my off Fridays if I just happen to have the radio on. Sometime I've got to check out his book.

[Lou-the-dog]

Sean,

This was a quote from my post so I'll respond.


"that there was an overwhelming desire by the Rocket followers to convince the auditioning customer that there was something wrong with him-his room-his equipment-his emotions-the phase of the moon etc."


My opening line in that particular post was to explain that I was a relative newcomer to this hobby. I intentially explained this so my views would be taken in that context. When I explored the different speaker options available I was turned off by the overzealous nature of the posters supporting your products. Lots and lots of "fixes" offered but very few statements like, "Hey, that is the Rocket sound and maybe it's not for you!" This type of overly-aggressive support sometimes does more harm than good. For every auditioning customer that they really do help there may be two or three that get turned off by the circus show and leave to find another product that is not so "apparently" finicky. This sums up my situation and I found the people of Ascend and the Ascend Forum to be much more casual in there approach to win me over to there great products. I realize now that there seems to be a small core of the over-zealous "helpers" but reality is, at least in my case, they cost you the sale. I live in a small (500 people) town in the Midwest and we often say that we are lucky to live here because everyone cares so much. We also often say that we are UN-lucky to live here because, "everyone cares TOO damn much!" I think trying to sell internet direct speakers with the support of us on the forums can be similiar- if you know what I mean.

Regards,
Randy