Bromo33333

I think LH did it, and there was a spectacular failure in the realm of headphones, too, that rocked crowdfuding. I was talking to someone who is developing something really cool, and doesn't want to touch crowdfunding with a 10 foot pole since he thinks it could hurt him quite a bit.

Ah ok makes perfect sense. I can't see how crowdfunding could help except as exposure/marketing when you had a product. I have considered doing it a couple of times for some non audio related things, but always backed off. Stoddard is a great entrepreneur. I think his take on bootstrapping is invaluable!

I am not sure how this relates to LH Labs and crowdfunding disappointments, but yeah, there are a number of young companies that are doing good work. And agree, the book is fascinating.

Yep my wife was one of those backers that got left out in the cold. I think the main lesson should be: Get your product into limited production and use Kickstarter to get preorders once your major risks and costs are behind you. It should be a way of promoting you, not a source of seed money. LH Labs with the VI DAC is basically in the same boat as the Coolest Cooler. IN the case o fthe Cooler, though, they are personally on the hook for it, and have worked out fulfillment plans as settlements in numerous lawsuits. The terms of the money in LH Labs doesn't include consumer protections, so it ends up being Caveat Emptor. If I were to do a kickstarter like project, I'd show a picture of 50% or more of the premiums ready to go, and will inform them with the contract manufacturer or what not, would order and buy with the rest of it.

I am in a few grand as well. Caveat Emptor. I think they increased the mix too high, created a lot of confusion, and didn't do enough up front development on the projects to prove feasibility. When their updates were talking about prototype boards, I was thinking "Oh, boy ... I think this may not happen." The payments several years later I would bet are all burned up in overhead, and development costs. I think even if they had a strong desire to issue refunds, they probably do not have the funds to cover it. I think they got so excited about the possibilities of booking orders, they lost their sense of managing risk in making crowdfunding campaigns, and didn't do enough up front work to de-risk their development. I am sure it was a painful lesson for them. Given the changes in personnell, I wonder about their stability at the moment.

The Thiel story is a long an tragic one tipped off by the death of Jim Thiel, who was the main technical light of the place. The company struggled for years with his wife doing a terrific job in trying to keep the line moving, but eventually sold the business to a company that wanted to carry it forward. That company made a couple of moves that ignored the Thiel "secret sauce" and the business imploded. To be fair, it is rare that a company can outlive its founder. LH Labs is struggling with making the easy-to-make mistake of going to Crowdfunding without a product to sell, just a promise to develop one. And they ran into some serious design and production problems that got passed onto their customers.

You make a good point, though he did sell a large amount of his inventory to Amazon which was eventually discounted to the amount pledged by the early pledges. It's a bad situation all around. But yeah, he chose to be honest, which is better than not, I guess. LH Labs is just doing delay after delay with no "whelp, we can't fill these orders"

The back end of it is always the same when large campaigns end and the companies are small - they run out of cash, and can't afford to fill the orders, so try to "organically" get the money to ship products from ongoing sales. For a tale of woe every bit as big if not bigger (at the risk of going off topic) dig into "The Coolest Cooler"

I had a little of that, too. I am waiting for the Waive, too. (like the term) One thing is it cured me of Crowdfunding for anything other than very low cost/low risk things.

Wow - color me jealous!

"I am still waiting for my Vi Dac Tube even though I am number 25 on the list for this DAC, which is very depressing." I have no idea where I am in the queue, but I haven't heard from them about the VI Tube DAC for me either. I opened a ticket today to ask them how they were getting on, but frankly, I've lost confidence. Caveat Emptor and all of that, these were the risks, but it still makes it frustrating. Glad I already have/had a decent DAC.

My LMS stopped working over the past weekend, and I decided to bite the bullet and try Roon. I had to take my Squeezebox and put it in "stock" format, and have been running SPDIF out of it (as I always do). I was/am a big fan of LMS. It recently stopped running on my server (mac mini running OSX10.11) - and I have a fairly large library of music from MP3 through 24/192. I don't own any DSD as my DAC doesn't decode it. What can I say? I'm a convert. Here's why: 1. It found and cataloged my library in about 10 minutes initially. It updates INSTANTLY when I change anything. 2. Building a playlist or diving into your catalog is easy - you can search by tag (very thin-sliced sub genres, you can also tag your own), a decent serach or "similar artists" 3. It integrates seamlessly with TIDAL (I like Tidal, but it's not necessary unless you want to feel like your library also includes a ton) 4. Building a playlist is actually easier than in LMS (which I loved, BTW) supercharged since you can go and discover music you even forgot you had. (As I am the family "DJ" in the evenings, this is HUGE!) 5. I have a few HDCD's I ripped back in the day, and my DAC will decode them (Berkely Audio) - and unlike with LMS, the HDCD light came on! 6. For whatever reason I would have to periodically reboot LMS and the Mac Mini to get the best possible sound, but with Roon, I don't ave to do this. It seems like it's more authoritative and detailed, but that could just be me, or the server is more stable? I don't know. What I don't like? 1. I have a single Squeezebox Touch, and a few Airplay devices throughout the house. I can send music to any of them, no problem, but I cannot get Airplay and the SBT to synch into a single zone. 2. $120/year or $500/lifetime seems to me to be a lot of money for server software. I will say that it certainly justifies the price to me. I'd be reluctant to pay "Lifetime Prices" at this point since the network audio space is changing so much! 3. I have a Sonos system to do whole house audio, and it doesn't work with Roon. I would gladly replace it with similar product that was Roon Ready aside from Airplay (which tends to drop out in my house for whatever reason) - Where is Roonos?! :-) 4. There aren't yet enough ethernet/network devices that are Roon ready for me to expand it much more than it is - my dream would be to have a Plinius Tiki "Roon Ready" as I would love for that to be my next DAC, 5. The only streaming services are TIDAL (though the URL based radio stuff is nice, for this to be "one stop" we'd need Google Music, too for the "radio stations") I have used UPnP and found the finding, and sending of filed to be clunky and inelegant - while there are tons that work OK with it, but I have never had one of those peak experiences where the software, servers and hardware get out of the way and let me just play music. For reference, I am not a fan of JRiver due to its complexity. I liked LMS due to its simplicity. I like the Sonos UI, but don't like the instability I see when linking to my libraries of ALAC at home, and the fact it won't play 24/192 is a long term dealbreaker for me as long as I find something suitable to replace it - my family loves the streaming services on it, so they won't give that up!) Hope that helps. Caveat: I am only about a week into the "free trial" so things could change. Also features like synchronized zone playing I just may not understand how to do yet, too.

The Plinius Tiki is a Ethernet based DAC. IN fact, it's only input is Ethernet. Sounds good, too.

Meta-studies are interesting and are normed for the effect of "hidden negative results" in most circumstances. I'm glad that is is showing that people who know what to listen for can tell Hi Rez from regular more than 50% of the time.

I view myself as more of a music lover rather than an objectivist or subjectivist! ;-)