When ever two humans try to communicate using the same language and words, there can be miscommunication over the meaning of certain words—encoding a meaning by the sender and the decoding of a different meaning by the receiver. My intended purpose was to empathize with Gene’s position and present where that position helps us in the long term.
Not to irritate the less naive among us.
The reason why @
clone1008 replied to you with a hint of sarcasm is not because there was misunderstanding. Your earlier post
#2,370 was multifaceted and complex, and the reply was focused on one aspect of it. Both of you made valuable points to explore. In order to understand your thoughts from that post, it needs to be broken down, as there are several layers of ideas to unpack. Here it is:
"Accusing Gene of being on Yamaha’s payroll because he isn’t releasing potentially bad bench measurements is short sighted."
- It would be useful to clarify what is holding the publication. Is it Christmas buying season, and therefore minimizing damage? Lack of time? Waiting for more information? You name it. Clarity is always welcomed, especially for devices that did not have a fortunate start, to put it mildly, last year. If there is no clarity and in timely fashion, questions naturally multiply.
"As I mentioned earlier he serves as a valuable bridge between industry and hobbyist consumers. We all need a robust industry designing and competing for our purchases."
- I am with you, absolutely. Unfortunately, competitiveness and robustness have not been great recently on several fronts. The industry is in the state of flux. You can blame Covid, incompetence of some engineers, pushy product managers without imagination about how devices in consumer electronics market should work together in 2020/2021, lack of accurate communication between teams of people from AVR vendors and sourcing companies, etc. There are multiple problems. I wonder have they learnt lessons from what has been going on? The industry is everything but robust at the moment. It's fragile in my analysis.
"Finding an “Aha” flaw and then publishing that right away could do unnecessary harm to that company. "
- No one has put any pressure on Gene to publish it right away. He gave us a few short updates. There is nothing wrong in asking about timeline. One member did ask a few days ago, in another thread. No clear answer at the moment. The concept of "unnecessary harm" is complex and needs to be balanced out against the interest of consumers, not only companies. After all, devices are not made for museums, but for consumers. So, if you want to have a robust industry, the scrutiny needs to be robust and honest too. Gene said that, paraphrasing, "the thing is a hot mess". Well, that does not sound optimistic, does it? That's another reason why people are curious about various measurements.
"As he is doing and has done in the past, he brings their engineers into his findings allowing them time to formulate a corrective software or a perhaps firmware fix. "
- Yes, that's fine. We also know, and this has been repeated several times on the thread, that Yamaha responded to him that there was no firmware fix for this problem, whatever the problem(s) is/are. Perhaps new production line. It's not clear if even then.
"There are not that many companies producing the products we purchase. He needs them to produce products, then advertise (preferably on this website) and thus become a source of interest to recruit our readership and membership. "
- Of course we need this. We also need companies to be more honest about specs of their products and tell us more openly what is behind marketing. This is not always the case and some vendors bring self-inflicted harm upon themselves because they do not communicate openly with the public, unless put under pressure.
"We all need a healthy competitive industry. We all need gene’s website."
- Of course we do. We need people who have courage to ask more difficult questions. The only way to keep the industry competitive is to hold it accountable for they do. If nobody asks uncomfortable questions, complacency and mediocrity could crop up. The peculiar position Gene finds himself in is when to ask those questions and how uncomfortable would it be for companies to reply in public. Being a promoter of the industry and reviewer at the same time inevitably brings conflicting roles and situations. Can you slap a hand that feeds you and when you want to? How hard can you slap it? Whether those two roles could be done properly jointly is a matter of debate. This is probably what @
clone1008 had on his mind in his reply, but I developed it here.
Seeing what was happening last and this year with AVRs across the board, he desperately wanted to promote big time new gen of Yamaha's AVRs, and he now knows in his heart that he cannot do it, to preserve integrity. It's not an easy position to be in.
