Sun-fired

[gene]

If I may add my 2cents. About a year ago we had to ban an obsessive and rude individual named Mikeyb. This decision did not come lightly as to date we have only banned two people on the forums, one of which is now back with us. However, the individual (Mikeyb) relentlessly attempted to discredit us on our forums and on other forums such as AVS. He also pursued us continually via email with each new email he sent us becoming more offensive and demenial.

Sadly he seems to be back (Hi Mike) as evident by the unregistered poster that Clint just answered in post #58.

His IP Address points to the following email router:

svfulraptor1.beckman.com

and IP Address: 134.217.237.30 which also posted message #15 on 7/21/03 within this thread along with a host of others. Some were posted anonymously, others posted under the name MikeyB with a beckman email address. All IP's DO point to Beckman. I am uncertain if they are all MikeyB or a group of individuals he works with. Interestingly the map back to the same physical location out in California.

It’s sad to see this individual’s obsessive pursuit against us degrade the company Beckman that he works for. I don’t know what motivates people down a path of self destruction like this, but its scary.


As for hometheatersport banning us, yes I did hear about that. I heard they got into some legal dispute for bashing one of our cable advertisers and decided to ban that company name from their website. Due to the popularity of one of our cable articles that features a particular cable from the company in question many of the Spot forum members continually referenced content within that article. That is unfortunate because we like the Spot and they could have benefited by working with us through the Hometheateralliance which has now become the LARGEST hometheater organization in the world.

 

[Unregistered]

I think all the criticism is rather unfounded. I just noticed this thread because it has new posts and read the Sunfire review. I don't really see what all the fuss is about.

If one owned a Sunfire and also has very thin skin, I could see how they might take offense to describing the sound as 'piss' (didn't see that in the revised version). But to take offense because it was described as 'muddy'? Give me a break. That's not a very damning criticism. Besides the perception of sound quality can be very subjective as we all know. I would take the descriptions of sound quality with a grain of salt and compare the AH conclusion with others; if lots of other reviewers have similar sentiments then it is probably true. That's as far as I take subjective evaluations of audio gear - I try to listen for myself if I am interested in a particular receiver.

Now what IS extremely valuable is the descriptions of all the 'useability' faults. Lights that mean nothing and stay on all the time, quirks with the auto-sense feature, etc. I think those comments are spot on. I am a programmer and I know it's tough to get everything right on the first try, but for $3500 I too would expect it to be nearly flawless! I personally don't understand how there can be so many relatively high priced pre-pros on the market that can't get even basic useability features right and yet still sell well (Oh yeah, its the 'sound quality'). My $300 low-end Onkyo is absolutely flawless in that respect. How can a low-end receiver get it right for 1/10 the price and yet the high-end can't? As you go up the line, the sound quality approaches the big boys, IMO and yet retain the useability features.

Please keep giving us reviews that give the whole picture, but maybe learn to be more 'politically correct' so you don't offend those people who are just looking for an excuse to dismiss your opinions. [In my business we need to say things are 'challenging' instead of 'totally impossible to do' in order to appear 'optimistic' - rather than tell it like it is - sadly, that might be required for audio reviewers too].

 

[Unregistered]

Post #63 is from Mikeyb as is this one.

To the previous unregistered guest: You make some good comments, however you obviously missed the first edition of the review in question. The subsequent discussions have revolved around whether the folks at Audioholics were genuine in their motivation for posting such a crude initial review (and not driven by some unknown agenda). Yes, they have cleaned it up rather nicely. But they have yet to explain their (perceived) motivation of making such nasty comments in the first published review. And they gave a bogus explanation of how that review "missed" their normal checks and balances. I challanged them on that, and Gene's response was one of his more stellar efforts. ~ his comment didn't amount to much other than to show he skirted the question ~

As for using the term muddy, what do you imagine a typical person would perceive as being muddy? Sloppy? Slow? Incomprehesible? Something less then even adequite? The TGIII may very well not perform as well as any pre-pro on the market at any price. But there's nothing "muddy" about any characteristic of the TGIII. I claimed the term muddy was not appropriate because it did not apply to the TGIII. The staff at Audioholics must have agreed. They removed it from the review. Not because of anything I did. They figured that one out all by themselves. And rightly so.

One last thing: My so called obsession with Audioholics does not stem from the TGIII review alone. There was an entire separate debaucle a couple years before this. It involved their review of Monitor Audio's Silver 5 speaker (speaker face off II I believe). They seemed to recommend it in its first rendition. It has been revised slightly since yet they don't show a revision date. They also placed a disclaimer at the end of that review only a year ago....some 2-3 YEARS after the article first was published. There was another article called Speaker Gimmicks or some such nonsense where they ripped apart Monitor Audio. I challanged them at that time as to why the inconsistency of the two articles. I sent them numerous emails. They were never able to explain it, and subsequently edited the review in the speaker face-off article and REMOVED the Gimmick article. Draw your own conclusions.

These guys have a history of being shady. I have called them on it several times. They don't like it. When I first challanged them, it was all done privately. They became arrogant and then finally non-responsive. I posted nothing but the truth when making posts on other internet forums. Audio/Video is a passionate hobby of mine, and I hate to see unscrupulous people abuse their power by publishing articles that may be agenda driven. It's not fair to the entire audio/video community. I made numerous challanges. It has gotten ugly at times. I have tried to be fair. I have asked fair questions. Many responses I get are accusitory and mean-spirited. I have snapped back with comments that may be just as mean-spirited. It's not one-sided though as Gene would have you believe.

 

[Rob Babcock]

What I don't get, Mikeyb, is just why you feel the need to hang around. Clearly you have an axe to grind, and you seem to feel persecuted. Then why do you keep coming back? You know you're unwelcome here, the Admin has made this clear. It's a free country, but they own this site, and they dictate it's usage.

I doubt my post will influence you at all given your long antagonism with Gene & Co, but at least I have the sense to know where I'm not wanted.

 

[Audioholics]

One last thing: My so called obsession with Audioholics does not stem from the TGIII review alone. There was an entire separate debaucle a couple years before this. It involved their review of Monitor Audio's Silver 5 speaker...

OK, so your obsession has to do with two articles that infuriated you. That's fine. I'll actually go so far as to apologize for offending you. But realize that this is not personal - it's a professional business, and one we spend a lot of time on for very little return.

Also realize that I cannot allow you to come to OUR forums and bad mouth us. It's not violating your freedom of speech - it's simply not being stupid enough to pay for you to have a forum to lie about what has transpired and speak out against the injustices of AH criticizing gear you happen to love (we don't ever hear from you on the remaining 99.97% of our articles).

So with that, realize that you are banned. We just don't have the time to rehash years-old articles for the 13th time and present a forum for you to write a fictional novel about how mean and unreasonable we are.

Enjoy the music. Just not here, please - we can do with a bit more civility.