10-Mar-2020, 01:01
Hmmm. As an Aussie, he started to lose me when he mispronounced "Geelong", the address of the person asking the query.
Actually he started to lose me a bit before that, and I own PS Audio P12 which I'm really impressed with so I'm inclined to give Paul's comments a fair hearing though I often disagree with them. When people start off saying nice things and then go "but…" you know what comes after the "but" is never going to be nice. Starting off his comments wearing that mask was a lot like saying "…but…", I immediately got the impression that this wasn't going to be a positive assessment.
But then, the question is really not whether it was a positive assessment but rather whether it was an unbiased assessment and I don't think it was. Paul has quite strong biases, he's a manufacturer making and selling amplifiers, digital transports, and DACs, and about to bring a speaker to market. He's developing a server product. He's a competitor to Devialet in many ways and he would rather have customers buy his products than someone else's products so he's always going to frame comments about other products in a way that contrasts what he thinks are the other product's weaknesses compared to his products. He did make some positive comments, always with a "…but…" implied where it wasn't explicitly stated so his comments avoid being unfailingly negative and may even sound unbiased to some because of the positive remarks but it wasn't an unbiased assessment and that mask really came across as a really nasty comment in the end.
I don't mind a manufacturer having strong opinions about the virtues of doing something the way they do it and I don't mind them finding fault with a competitor's product because they're always going to recommend their own, but that mask reduced his comments from a biased but critical assessment to the level of ridicule in my view. You can express strongly critical views without stooping to ridicule and he needs to learn that. After all, he's got a great product line in his power plants, a product that a number of us Devialet owners also own, and I wouldn't be surprised if his approach in that video didn't end up turning some Devialet owners who were thinking of purchasing a PS Audio product off and sent them in the direction of a different manufacturer. You lose customers when you get nasty and ridicule is usually nasty.
Actually he started to lose me a bit before that, and I own PS Audio P12 which I'm really impressed with so I'm inclined to give Paul's comments a fair hearing though I often disagree with them. When people start off saying nice things and then go "but…" you know what comes after the "but" is never going to be nice. Starting off his comments wearing that mask was a lot like saying "…but…", I immediately got the impression that this wasn't going to be a positive assessment.
But then, the question is really not whether it was a positive assessment but rather whether it was an unbiased assessment and I don't think it was. Paul has quite strong biases, he's a manufacturer making and selling amplifiers, digital transports, and DACs, and about to bring a speaker to market. He's developing a server product. He's a competitor to Devialet in many ways and he would rather have customers buy his products than someone else's products so he's always going to frame comments about other products in a way that contrasts what he thinks are the other product's weaknesses compared to his products. He did make some positive comments, always with a "…but…" implied where it wasn't explicitly stated so his comments avoid being unfailingly negative and may even sound unbiased to some because of the positive remarks but it wasn't an unbiased assessment and that mask really came across as a really nasty comment in the end.
I don't mind a manufacturer having strong opinions about the virtues of doing something the way they do it and I don't mind them finding fault with a competitor's product because they're always going to recommend their own, but that mask reduced his comments from a biased but critical assessment to the level of ridicule in my view. You can express strongly critical views without stooping to ridicule and he needs to learn that. After all, he's got a great product line in his power plants, a product that a number of us Devialet owners also own, and I wouldn't be surprised if his approach in that video didn't end up turning some Devialet owners who were thinking of purchasing a PS Audio product off and sent them in the direction of a different manufacturer. You lose customers when you get nasty and ridicule is usually nasty.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
