Rockets today. ELTs tomorrow?
That is quite sad. They should explain why they won't or can't sell the drivers for out of warranty speakers.
This might be the nail.
Why would they do that? In the past, nothing from VA321 has been explained ... or, at least not in a truthful manner.
If it came down to the fact that they didn't pay vendors, thus the vendors cut off the supply to VA321, then VA321 would have to take their mask off to show their true face. I don't expect anything of that nature to happen anytime soon.
You have to look at AV451 the way archaeologists look at time. There are two major divisions - the Pu Era and the post Pu era - there are also relatively major events within those divisions - the Richard Pierce Period, the Danny Richie Period (which may yet reinvent itself), the Mark Seaton Period, and so forth. During the Pu Era, MLS worked through Pu to get his speakers built. Mark would come up with the basic design of the speaker, i.e. the way it looks, where he preferred the ports to be, etc. Drivers and crossovers were largely specified by Pierce and then that whole thing was turned over to Pu who had them built. There were, of course, price points that had to be hit from MLS's POV and to some extent that dictated the suppliers, assembly techniques, and so forth. Given a relatively solid initial working model, MLS would then look for ways to improve his margins.
But in the end, it was Pu who was the person buying in bulk and it was he who was able to take advantage of economies of scale and in turn provide the finished product to AV451 for sale.
Once the Pu era ended, or as it was in the process of transitioning (there are always gray areas in archaeological dating) changes had to be made. Hence the original drivers could no longer be sourced through Pu. AV451 of course had a backstock of replacements, but replacements have a way of being used up with respect to warranty claims. To facilitate this transition, marketing spins had to be devised. Spins such as the new driver is more this, more that, better this way or that. This hid the fact that one day there would be a time where older replacement parts would no longer be available. This is especially the case when the drivers, in order to work effectively with the cabinet designs, were very much custom designed with appropriate Thiel-Small parameters.
Now had it been that the parting with Pu was amicable, he just might be able to obtain replacements. However, it was very much not an amicable parting as Pu was stuck with an amount of debt that makes the raffle underfunding amounts look relatively paltry by comparison. Pu, I'm sure will one day have his say with respect to this, but there is no incentive for Pu to facilitate matters. After all, if someone you knew owed you considerable amounts of money and you asked them if they'd do you this favor and you'd pay them in advance for it, what would you do?
As anybody can see, there are enormous fiscal problems presently over at AV451 and there are still enormous amounts of debt that have yet to be settled. This very much precludes them from being able to effectively source a replacement for custom drivers from another vendor since the cash outlay for tooling and minimum orders would place an enormous financial strain on them. Hence, rather than accept this, monies are being diverted to other areas where profits are possible and in quicker fashion. Replacement parts are definitely not that profit friendly.
I do find it sad that with everyone knowing about all the wrongs that have been perpetrated, whether against charities, suppliers and workers not being paid, beta testers, store credits that had to be sold at a discount, prepays that can't be recovered, the value of people's existing products plummeting on the resale market, the ongoing sales of defective products, and so forth, it was this new policy that has gotten people riled up. Now granted, some of these people are also critics but really what about everyone else?
Oh, and with respect to Eras or Epochs, I think we're now seeing the end of the Uniaudio Epoch. While each of these events is different, they do share a commonality in that someone was finding themselves on the hook for large amounts of money and a spin will be created (it already is being done so privately to the few supporters that remain) as to the reason for the severance. There may still be a couple of gasps left, but only a couple. The Era that we, actually they, are now entering is the Extinction phase. The thing is, am I the only one who recognizes it? Or do you see it too?
Humbly bumbly folks!
