According to the vocal hordes on the Asylum and AudioCircle … nobody likes the New Audiogon [right now it is down, although you still can get to the forums if you are sneaky].

Having been on the receiving end of the ire of the same vocal hordes [e.g. w/r to Spintricity Magazine] seeing this happen to Audiogon is really fascinating. And we have also seen this backlash happen to Digg and Facebook, but not Twitter [which is bizarre because the Twitter UI changes by-and-large are non-intuitive, even after repeated use… much more like Facebook now, in fact]

It is fascinating because I think it allows us to rule out the validity of this or that particular feature and instead focus on the social dynamics of the situation.

Fact #1. Only techies like websites to change in any way

Many people claim to be techies, because they own a business that has a website, or they played with HTML some [and many have gotten paid for it!] , but really are not, are confused by web technology, and hate these kinds of changes. [This behavior really confused me for a long time]

Twitter is largely techies, so they got away with it. Digg, a counter example with supposedly a large techie population, has lots of people who, seriously, just like to be nasty and whine a lot.

Most of the home audio sites are horribly designed and implemented, but audiophiles love them because they are now used to them.

Rule #1. If you make a change to a site popular with non-techies, make it look exactly other sites they are comfortable with.

Stereophile changed its site to look just like an ordinary blog. This was largely accepted by audiophiles because they are now used to blogs. [I personally think it was nuts, they gave up their claim to fame - that of being a successful print magazine - to compete at the same level as 1M other blogs. Best thing they can do now is try to implement meta features like Engadget has done - but this will take time and be expensive].

When we recently changed Audio Federation, we copied a couple of other well-known luxury brochure sites as well as several very popular luxury shopping sites.

Audiogon is, unfortunately, making their site look like eBay - which is a quite unloved, albeit successful, site

Rule #2. Try to make a big change by making lots of itty bitty changes over time.

This is often extremely hard to do [i.e. very expensive], from a programming point of view.

Assuming Audiogon’s troubles go on for awhile, and even if they do not, I wonder if there is an opportunity here for a competitor to step in and break the Audiogon monopoly?

Opinions?

[Hmmm… that last post had a crazy title for awhile - sorry about that]

Next month’s issue will feature a ‘Best of’ section.

Now, this is not the roll the dice, smoke-filled back room, KMA, what-were-they-thinking kind of best of the year kind of section. You can see those elsewhere. In fact there’s an epidemic of those.

The people most harmed by those types of lists are the people who buy gear every 5 to 10 years and look at these lists to decide what to buy [been there, done that].

And it is not even going to be a REAL Best Sounding Gear of The Year feature - which we could do but, seriously, the people who really care about good sound already know what sounds good. The may not be able to afford it [right now] but they pretty much know what to listen for and to.

No, our list will answer questions like:

Who has the coolest remote control?
Who has the fattest cables?

… and many more

You are invited to vote on these important questions, and many more - and add questions of your own - just post your votes or questions in a comment to this post.

Enjoy!

… mixing the subjective and objective…

Essentially it uses a subjective analysis of objective aspects of the sound of a component.

Even more essentially, the listener gives it the old ‘college try’ and guestimates how good a component is in several pre-determined and STANDARDIZED categories.

See, if the categories are well-chosen and are standardized, and a number from 1 to 10, say, is assigned, then components can be compared.

Anyway, in the most recent Spintricity article:

Towards a Hybrid Subjective Objective Review Process

… we attempt to come up with some categories that we, at least, use here [tho in the past we have not been so disciplined as to assign a number to score a component’s performance in each category]

The idea is to create a list that we can print out and then enter or circle a number of something so that the review process can be raised up out of the muck and mire.

As you all know, Spintricity is a more modern magazine than your typical audiophile fare… Here is the latest chart, posted this Halloween, which makes it clear why we recommend all browsers EXCEPT Internet Explorer.

We still support IE, but we figure that everybody will have a fast browser soon [and IE may catch up eventually], just like we were the first [and still only?] site to put large photos in our show reports, figuring that most people were going to have broadband sooner or later and most of us want to SEE what is in the photo, not just get a hint or two.

And with the magazine, we figure people want to ENJOY their audiophile addiction, not just research it to death reading long-winded treatises trying to find the one or two WORDS about how it sounds and the subtle HINTS embedded here and there about any problems encountered…

I’m just saying

Not that there are any Audiophile magazines out there like this.

Nope.

;-)

Somebody told me a few days ago that they saw each and every page of the 1800 page RMAF report. He uses the Google Chrome browser. I figure it takes about 10 minutes to cruise the entire report, less time than it takes to cruise most other reports: where you have to click on a page, scroll down down to the bottom, click on the link to the next page, wait, wait wait for it to load, scroll down down down to the bottom, click on the link to the next page…. of many other reports.

Since it only takes him 10 minutes, he can stop and zoom in on a photo, click on a link to visit a particular manufacturer’s site, and enjoy the process of seeing EVERYTHING that was at the show [course, this will make it take LONGER than 10 minutes to get through the report, but this will be spending that time the way HE wants to spend it].

Personally, I use FireFox most of the time, and sometimes Safari and Opera, sometimes Chrome. But IE? Might as well go back to dial up!

For those of you with a monitor wider than 530 pixels…

Emm Labs XDS1 CD/SACD Player

Audio Note PALLAS interconnect

Several videos from CEDIA 2009

Milan Show coverage by Audiophile Bob

Milan Show coverage of Audio Note by Dave Cope

Our first exhibitor in the Online Audiophiles Show: Kevin’s Place

(we will put up the ‘turned on’ series of Emm labs XDS1 photos and some Nordost ODIN photos in the next day or two. And then it is off to RMAF!)

One of the things I like doing the most is helping promote the hobby. I especially enjoy helping smaller manufacturers - in particular those that make less expensive but good sounding equipment for the money - get attention from the audiophile community [one of my favorite things about the show reports].

We have been offering people the opportunity to publish their press releases, for free, for the last few weeks - but press releases are hard to come up with, especially if you, like me, cannot tell the difference between press releases and advertising. Many people do not want to offend us sending us a advertisement when we asked for press releases only.

So we are going to fix that.

And, as we all know, the economy sucks [unless you are a bank, insurance company, or wall-street firm - or lobbyist or news channel for the same].

Now that the magazine is [almost ] usable we could go out and pound the pavement signing up advertisers just like all those other rags. But then we would just get the same ole same ole advertisers who can afford to pay for advertising and the other 98% of the industry would be left out of the party.

Well, that kind of small potatoes party is just not what Spintricity, who brings you 3000+ photo / 2200 page show reports, had in mind. We want 1000s of of brands to be able to present their products, services and story. Well, we want a lot anyway.

To that end, dear reader, we are trying to get everybody in our high-end audio wonderland to pony up one FULL-PAGE ad, which we will publish for free in each issue of Spintricity.

In this way we want to turn each issue of Spintricity into a show report-like cornucopia, a bonanza, a sh*t load if you will, of equipment, and information and photos about equipment - in addition to articles on the lives, times, and adventures in audiophiledom.

For those companies that can afford to do more, we will offer the ability to purchase additional pages, to purchase attention getters for their ads, and to purchase special ‘live webpage’ ads.

To assist with ads, you manufacturers who cannot afford to hire a graphics design firm, and don’t want to go completely bald [yes, you women too] trying to learn photoshop, you can select a photo from one of our show reports [or send us one of yours], send us some (small amount please!) text and we will make an ad for you.

This will be the policy for Spintricity for the forseeable future, and forever if things work out as we expect.

——————————

One last thing. A show report is coming right up. You know it. We know it. [Oh boy do we know it].

OK, yes, that would be RMAF 2009 [that is Rocky Mountain Audio Fest you search engine, you].

We create a separate, linkable article for each room at the show. In the article is several pages of photos. In amongst those photos we will run industry ads, for free, for products in that room. This will allow visitors to show report pages for the room to see tech spec sheets, ads, backgrounders, other products from the same brand, whatever.

This allows you, the reader, to see lots more (accurate and appealing) information about the equipment displayed in the room.

We will run 1 fullpage ad/spec sheet/whatever for each brand listed on the sign of the room. Exhibitors can purchase additional pages.

For those who can’t exhibit at the show - we will run your ad in the show report as per a normal issue. Not sure where we will put these if your equipment is not on display, but we’ll figure something out.

[I know I am talking to two different audiences in this post, the industry and audiophiles - and I am switching back and forth faster than a switching power supply - but, well, sorry about that].

Many in the industry read this blog - and we will be sending out emails to the others. But who reads emails [about 20%]? So you audiophiles need to coerce your favorite manufacturers to come up with an ad to publish in Spintricity. Remember: FULL-PAGE [any format] and lots of juicy take-no-prisoners graphics.

Enjoy!

Email ad submissions to: industry@spintricity.com

Both features are now up in Spintricity, along with a lot of photos

It really was a lot of fun doing these two features, and we invite other manufacturers to take advantage of this opportunity to get some up-close-and-personal exposure in Spintriicty this way.

We are on Twitter at:

http://twitter.com/spintricity

This will allow us to keep people up to date about Spintricity more frequently than here on the blog - and it will be more broadly focused as well.

We are also on FaceBook at:

Spintricity’s Group on FaceBook

We also have a Page over there - but the FaceBook software is so buggy, it is still kind of mucked up. Eventually we should be able to have each Spintricity article appear over there simultaneously [more or less] with its publication in the magazine.

Spintricity’s Page on FaceBook

A major upgrade, especially for Internet Explorer users, should help things move along even faster than before.

The table of contents is now displayed in a sidebar - but it looks better without it, so once you get comfortable [which most of YOU already are] then I suggest closing it and using the popup version [now looking like an eyeball icon in the toolbar].

Please let us know if you have any feedback.

In a few weeks we’ll be doing another upgrade, and that upgrade will improve the text formatting engine so that it will be closer in appearance to the print magazines [and make it easier for me to create fancier articles, allowing me to concentrate more on the actual writing while looking better at the same time]

… at Audio Federation / Spintricity.

Studio Electric brought [an old pair of] their T3 speakers and EA4 hybrid amplifier and we listened and talked and moved things around hither and thither.

We drove the speakers with the Audio Note Kegon and Studio Electric EA4 amps, We used both the Nordost Valhalla and Jorma Design No. 1 speaker cables, we used the Nordost ODIN and Valhalla power cords, in addition to Belden and Acrolink power cords. We also put the amp on the Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers.

Too much fun.

We are going to write this up - but not in a shootout fashion, and not in a review format, and not in a show report manner either, though probably closest to this than the other two. Probably most like the Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy.

We want to let people know what the goals of Studio Electric are, how they are going about achieving them, and in general describe the story behind the people and equipment so that you, or your customer, can get a good idea if this is the kind of speaker and amp you should be putting on your short list.

Oh. Yeah. There will be some photos too.

This should appear in a week or two in Spintricity.