Ed/si

Please bear in mind, Ben so ofetn goes to other forums, and in his own, and states "I'm bored". I fail to see his being busy typing that should overshadow the need to address these issues. :blink:

 

You had a rep class that taught you the complete history of eD, with driver failure numbers, preorder changes, and buildhouse problems. Maybe you'll need on amps and on drivers. It hasn't been one issue. It's been many. eD leavin' was a wake-up call to Josh. Does that mean everything that happened is untrue - NO. The reason for all this isn't because of icix - it just sparked it all.

How about you make up a new screen name to answer me. :ss: calling other people cowards

 

Well, my visit to eD wasn't a 'Ben is shady' one. I was actually at eD with Ben. We talked about a number of the drivers. Go read my first two posts in the thread on CA. Maybe you can say that about other people, but not me.

 

Yep. The entire West Coast was shut down for 3 weeks. And we told people what the delay was, and accepted all responsibility. Ultimately is is our responsibility for any problems - not the build house, not the shipper, not customs. People are buying our products not the build house's, not the shipper's, not customs'. We should be able to keep things together and get any of those day-to-day issues (and they do happen all the time) resolved so it does not affect the customer. If we can't do that, then we're not doing our job. And we have to take responsibility for that.

IMHO, the buck stops at the seller, not their suppliers. The supply chain may be the cause of the problem, but the seller is the ultimate answerable person.

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio

 

I've been in manufacturing/engineering/design for about 18 years now, and I can assure you that you can have a 100+% failure rate.

Happened on one particular product early on in my career (when I was a new engineer at Sundstrand Data Control). We did Flight Data Recorders/Fault Analyzers (FDRFAs). Basically they record all the information about the engine, pilot settings, environmental, etc. and try to - in real time - make a decision about any faults that arise. I did some of the embedded acquisition engine for rotor inputs.

The first batch that went out all came back over the first 8 months, from sand/dust problems (all were deployed in Gulf War I). That right there is a 100% failure rate. All were cleaned out, fixed up, and sent out again, only to have nearly all of them come back again.

A 100+% failure rate just means that you have had more returns than actual individual sales. You sell 10 drivers, and one guy sends one back 11 times, that's a 110% return rate for that product (11 returns, 10 sales). Or everyone sends it back once, except one person who returns it twice (11 returns, 10 sales).

Nothing meant by the post, just explaining a logical result (more than 100% return rate) in manufacturing.

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio

 

Umm, I've got a bit of experience with a few dozen build houses, and while there's only one Eminence (who even has the occasional problem - on the April order of DPL12s, we had an 80% reject rate, sent back to the factory) who gets 99.8% of the total volume of drivers right (in my experience), Destijl is really as good as anyone else. If drivers were failing at the rates some claim, it's because they have a poor design or selling it into the wrong crowd.

And yes, if I had those kinds of problems, I'd be with a different build house in a heartbeat. And so would many more large volume companies (you do know we run hundreds of drivers a month through Destijl, most being sold into the OEM market?).

In the OEM/ODM side of things, you don't stay in business long AT ALL if you have quality problems. It's a small enough community of actual engineers and build houses that word gets around REALLY fast, and you're quickly run into the ground (I've seen it happen several times, to companies that at one time were highly respected, but let things slip for as little at 6 months).

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio

 

i don't ever remember calling someone a coward :blink: maybe the people who trust you at icix under a different name should be made aware of your babble on the other forums? i ask for facts, and you try and start a personal war with me. doesn't help your side much

my point is simple, it the same as Michael's stated on page 2.

these views are mine, not eD's. not pointing the finger either way. just lay out some facts/proof. just because some one says "this is how it was, trust me i was there", doesn't mean it proves anything.


Seth, as far as Ben being honest on an open forum, i believe that is what he is doing at icix. he has yet to use his moderation powers, and i doubt he will. i have a few questions myself, the first one being about the K series drivers brought up by Brian.

 

Brian, I asked about the K series using the O motors.

this is the response i got from Ben....

No one who ordered those drivers recieved a lesser performing driver.

There was a unfortunate incident where a part vendor was about 6 months late, and then on a whim decided they'd just send us the wrong part, and bill us in total for it.

Few things. Yeah. It's BS. I was pissed to say the least.

Big thing though. The larger motor is really used to increase clearances and use a longer coil to increase xmax. The two different motors with the same coil / suspension essentially are the same speaker.

Anyone who wanted a different driver, or had mismatched drivers, we swapped them out, and took care of them one by one. The two different 'motor' drivers actually would work together just fine as they would exhibit about as much variance as drivers of the same motor used side by side. It's just a little funny to look at it is all.

Brian doesn't have any inside or private information. I openly discussed it with him in MY OWN shop, and OPENLY brought it up. There's no detective work and definatly zero anything that hasn't been addressed previously. If you do a search on here there was a customer with mismatching drivers who posted on here who we took care of. Nothing new.

This is basically a difference in physical outter dimension. and a inner depth that would increase a clearance, not the way the the rest of the speaker performs.

It was pretty unfortunate. We got shipped hundreds of the wrong parts, billed full price, 6 months late, and pretty much left to 'deal with it'. We chose the part vendor though, and this is the same person we rely on for the flat cone drivers (remember us telling people over and over we had to discontinue them becuase of part vendor problems. Well, them delivering wierd cone parts 6+ months late wasn't even all of it). But you'll still find some moron online with 'inside' info just saying it was a design flaw right?


as far as the pics and the dealings with Loyd....seems like Ben has alot to hide

Originally Posted by Infinity
So, Ben, what is Loyd's fascination with mucking you up? I understand that he had some bum K's (hell, I had 4 of them). Not like there was some secret where the busted spiders were whisked away and the owners never heard from again. Again, what is Loyd's agenda?

BTW, just for the record. I had 4 of the 'e' logoed 10k44's. Beautiful speaker. 1 of them had the spider detach after about 1 month. Ben replaced all 4 of my K's with the flat coned one's stating "I wouldn't feel good about selling them to anyone else, and I'd rather send you new drivers because it'll be fastre than repairing the one you have."

Does this sound like a guy who intentionally screws over customers? Hell, in those pics Loyd had at the other forum, I'm pretty sure that I could see the boxes from my personal drivers. I used tape from a professional shipping facility I worked for at the time


Infinity.

Not sure Honestly. I used to be friends with loyd to a extent.

Loyd ran 15K drivers back in the day as you know. 4 of them. I think that was all. Well. There was a inherent problem with some of the 15K's and all of the K's in general.

2 problems actually. All over the internet you probably noticed 2 things.
1. Spiders coming off of spider landings.
2. Tinsel slap.

Well there are 2 cuases of this.
1. Spiders coming off becuase they weren't glue'd to the basket correctly. They were glue'd on a incline so to speak to they weren't flat all the way around the entire spider landing. So there was less glue area as a result to this, and weak spot. Well, in a glue joint one weak spot will just over time become more and more obvious and eventually break. Unfortnuatly the company we paid to the do the assembly did a pretty poor job. We didn't catch this immediatly after a few hundred speakers were out there (keep in mind we didn't do the QC checks like we did now, we just got speakers from the manufacturer and shipped them. What can I say. I was green. Now I know better than to just trust people like that). The detach wouldn't happen instantly, it would happen after a little bit of use.

Now I don't know what pictures you've seen but I have pictures of HUNDREDS done wrong, that were shipped and came back, and flat out weren't shipped. Once I realized the problem I stopped shipping those drivers without a correcty glue'd spider landing when i learned how to diagnose it. Loyd already had his 15s, pulled the spiders off a few times just using them, and glue'd them back down. This wasn't even private information. You could go any forum online, anywhere, and find at least a few people who has K's with their spiders coming off. I replaced them all as best I could, one by one.

2. Tinsel slap. Well once I figured out the right length we found a large majority of the drivers were built with about .5-1" too long of a tinsel. So what did I do. Spent weeks late in the shop re-glueing and cutting tinsels before they left the shop, and throwing speakers with poorly done spider assemblies in the corner.

There is another question on that design of spider lockdown I can delve into that would aid in a 'let go' but I can delve into that another time if people would like. I've covered this numerous times before on numerous forums.

Now. Whatever pictures You've seen. I'm sure I can top it. I literally have TRUCK FULLS of pictures of drivers built wrong without the spider landing glue'd down right. Spiders pull off when this happens.

Now in terms of loyd itself. Not so sure.

It's pretty obvious not all the speakers had this problem (only the ones built wrong) so it wasn't a design flaw, a design that was mutually agreed upon by myself and the builders, so the design itself niether of us were at fualt, just the idiot who glue'd them together wrong, becuase as a solid testament to the design, there still are a number of 'e' series drivers out there people are enjoying, unfortunatly I had hundreds and hundreds come back to me or that i rejceted right out of the box. Unfortunatly some of the timing wasn't pristine.

That however was our secnod build facility. We moved on from them due to those issues. Keep in mind never once just getting online and placing blame on them. We still get those speakers back from time to time and even though we can't get parts to fix them, we replace them with whatever we have that will work well for the customer at our cost.

Again. Not so sure with Loyd. last time i saw him was MECA finals a few years ago. Last time I remember talking to him was I asked him if he was going to be at CES and if he wanted to get together for dinner.

I can't speak for loyd himself. But I do know his 15k's pulled apart time and time again from that basket landing, he fixed them, and eventually sold them off to some other folks. Where they are now I have no idea. I never saw them after MECA finals.

Ben

 

I've been in manufacturing/engineering/design for about 18 years now, and I can assure you that you can have a 100+% failure rate.

Happened on one particular product early on in my career (when I was a new engineer at Sundstrand Data Control). We did Flight Data Recorders/Fault Analyzers (FDRFAs). Basically they record all the information about the engine, pilot settings, environmental, etc. and try to - in real time - make a decision about any faults that arise. I did some of the embedded acquisition engine for rotor inputs.

The first batch that went out all came back over the first 8 months, from sand/dust problems (all were deployed in Gulf War I). That right there is a 100% failure rate. All were cleaned out, fixed up, and sent out again, only to have nearly all of them come back again.

A 100+% failure rate just means that you have had more returns than actual individual sales. You sell 10 drivers, and one guy sends one back 11 times, that's a 110% return rate for that product (11 returns, 10 sales). Or everyone sends it back once, except one person who returns it twice (11 returns, 10 sales).

Nothing meant by the post, just explaining a logical result (more than 100% return rate) in manufacturing.

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio [/b][/quote]
Dan,

That wasn't related to Sundstrand Aerospace, was it?

BTW, what delvryboy meant was that we know for a fact that not every eD flat coned A or non-flat coned A didn't fail, so that literally is an impossibility in this case.

 

Wait, you deal with buildhoses and don't point the finger at them for your line failures?

Unique way of doing buisness it seems.

The bottom line is the designs are flawed. There is alot of info floating around (and I don't mean from a few scorned friends, I am talking about info I heard way before this, not from Adire insiders either) about warnings by the buildhouse about problems that do, or would exist in driver lines, yet they go unheeded as all warnings seem to. Then, when the failure occurs, point the finger at the buildhouse!!!

Are you telling me that all this BS about:

"this buildhouse sucks, so we are going to that buildhouse that we investigated and found low failure rates"... then 6 months later "this buildhouse sucks, so we are going to that buildhouse that we investigated and found low failure rates", then 6 months later "this buildhouse sucks, so we are going to that buildhouse that we investigated and found low failure rates",

doesn't get old? Cmon man. A complete redesign every 6 months leaving customers out to dry and buildhouses being slammed because the company owner refuses to take advice offered then turns the table when failures occur isn't a bit suspect?

Chris, I consider you a friend, and I am sorry you are in this position. My intent is not to argue and call you a liar, as I don't believe you are. But I will not, no cannot sit back while misinformation is being delivered.

And finally, Brian and Chris... no calling names or attacking each others person please.

Chris,
Brian goes by his real name in several forums. While I am not sure that is his call on the eD propoganda forum, I am willing to bet it is. I have personally had an argument with him on another forum where he defended eD citing his recent visit to the factory. Apparently he saw enough evidence to change his tune, and he should not be bashed for it... maybe we should ask him what changed his tune he so vehemently argued with me about just a few weeks ago?

Brian,
Chris admitted his poor call and we should learn to forgive and forget. Let's try to stay cool. We are all friends here.

 

Cool

 

hmm, this has taken up too much of my time the last few days. I have yet another rebuild to complete. while my teammate is working his but off in the awesome 75 degree weather, i am sitting on the net looking out the window.

Brian, you live rather close, why not come to a show or 2? we(forum junkies) kick it all the time and really don't give 2 cents about the online BS. i spend time on AIM with some of the people claiming eD BS, but that doesn't sway our freindship, nor do we really talk nor care about it.


it's like this, i have a view on the matter and nothing i say is going to sway their opinion. others have a view on the matter, and nothing they say will sway my opinion. there will always be people on both sides of the fence. no sense in wasting my time trying to argue about something that cannot and will not be 'won'.

1 of 2 things are going to happen in the future...

1 - eD's new line of products are released, with no design flaws and no buildhouse errors. all the customers are happy. eD flourishes

2 - eD's new line of products follow their old path, and the 'haters' say " told you so", eD goes under.

untill one of these 2 things happens, and nobody brings me into this personally, i am staying out of these arguments from here on out.

in the mean time, if people have any questions regarding the new line of products, i will do what i signed on to do....answer them to the best of my ability :bye:

 

Wait, you deal with buildhoses and don't point the finger at them for your line failures?

Unique way of doing buisness it seems.

The bottom line is the designs are flawed. There is alot of info floating around (and I don't mean from a few scorned friends, I am talking about info I heard way before this, not from Adire insiders either) about warnings by the buildhouse about problems that do, or would exist in driver lines, yet they go unheeded as all warnings seem to. Then, when the failure occurs, point the finger at the buildhouse!!!

Are you telling me that all this BS about:

"this buildhouse sucks, so we are going to that buildhouse that we investigated and found low failure rates"... then 6 months later "this buildhouse sucks, so we are going to that buildhouse that we investigated and found low failure rates", then 6 months later "this buildhouse sucks, so we are going to that buildhouse that we investigated and found low failure rates",

doesn't get old? Cmon man. A complete redesign every 6 months leaving customers out to dry and buildhouses being slammed because the company owner refuses to take advice offered then turns the table when failures occur isn't a bit suspect?

Chris, I consider you a friend, and I am sorry you are in this position. My intent is not to argue and call you a liar, as I don't believe you are. But I will not, no cannot sit back while misinformation is being delivered.

And finally, Brian and Chris... no calling names or attacking each others person please.

Chris,
Brian goes by his real name in several forums. While I am not sure that is his call on the eD propoganda forum, I am willing to bet it is. I have personally had an argument with him on another forum where he defended eD citing his recent visit to the factory. Apparently he saw enough evidence to change his tune, and he should not be bashed for it... maybe we should ask him what changed his tune he so vehemently argued with me about just a few weeks ago?

Brian,
Chris admitted his poor call and we should learn to forgive and forget. Let's try to stay cool. We are all friends here. [/b][/quote]
Seth,

It's been more of a yearly thing, not every six months. That's actually not abnormal for companies to change their products that often, albeit it's not always quite as drastic as what eD has done. MTX, RF, and Kicker all have yearly changes to products.

 

A division of Sundstrand Corporation. Sold to Allied Signal, which later was bought by Honeywell...

As far as 100%, please re-read my post. It's possible to have a >100% failure rate even if not all the products come back. In most "manufacturing" talks about failure rates, it's the number of product returns divided by the number of shipped products. If you ship 10 products, and only one comes back 11 times, that's 11 returns for 10 shipments, not 1 failure for 10 shipments.

Also, it's typically calculated on number of rejects from a factory. Let's say you are company A selling product B manufactured by company C. You reject 50% of what comes from C, before even selling it. Then you have 25% of actual sales come back - 25% of B comes back to you, A. You have a total 75% failure rate of that product. Doesn't typically matter if it makes it to the end consumer or is "caught" in the line between manufacturer and consumer. It's a failure, and means you have to rework it. Whether A or C pays for the repair doesn't matter - on average, there's a 75% chance that a given product B will have a failure.

As such, it's entirely possible (and in some fields, such as mil/aero, not too uncommon) to have more than 100% failure rates. If 30% of the people return their drivers more than 3 times, you have over a 100% failure rate, even if the other 70% never return them.

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio

 

That seems so possible for any company it ain't even funny.

 

A division of Sundstrand Corporation. Sold to Allied Signal, which later was bought by Honeywell...

As far as 100%, please re-read my post. It's possible to have a >100% failure rate even if not all the products come back. In most "manufacturing" talks about failure rates, it's the number of product returns divided by the number of shipped products. If you ship 10 products, and only one comes back 11 times, that's 11 returns for 10 shipments, not 1 failure for 10 shipments.

Also, it's typically calculated on number of rejects from a factory. Let's say you are company A selling product B manufactured by company C. You reject 50% of what comes from C, before even selling it. Then you have 25% of actual sales come back - 25% of B comes back to you, A. You have a total 75% failure rate of that product. Doesn't typically matter if it makes it to the end consumer or is "caught" in the line between manufacturer and consumer. It's a failure, and means you have to rework it. Whether A or C pays for the repair doesn't matter - on average, there's a 75% chance that a given product B will have a failure.

As such, it's entirely possible (and in some fields, such as mil/aero, not too uncommon) to have more than 100% failure rates. If 30% of the people return their drivers more than 3 times, you have over a 100% failure rate, even if the other 70% never return them.

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio [/b][/quote]
Dan,

I'm well aware of what you meant, but what I mean is that we know for a fact that not that many drivers failed...the A series overall did very well. The 15a was pretty much the only one we ever heard about having a problem, and even that wasn't as bad as it may have seemed.

I cooped for Sundstrand Aerospace...small world. I worked in the Rockford plant...have quite a bit of family still working there, although they are now Hamilton Sundstrand, a Division of United Technologies.

Chad

 

Yep. The entire West Coast was shut down for 3 weeks. And we told people what the delay was, and accepted all responsibility. Ultimately is is our responsibility for any problems - not the build house, not the shipper, not customs. People are buying our products not the build house's, not the shipper's, not customs'. We should be able to keep things together and get any of those day-to-day issues (and they do happen all the time) resolved so it does not affect the customer. If we can't do that, then we're not doing our job. And we have to take responsibility for that.

IMHO, the buck stops at the seller, not their suppliers. The supply chain may be the cause of the problem, but the seller is the ultimate answerable person.

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio [/b][/quote]
And this is why I would do business with Adire and not ED.

They know they are responsible for their products and not the buildhouse. No matter who is at fault for the failures ED is the one selling the drivers and making a profit off it.

Say the buildhouse(s) are(were) at fault. They were then selling a driver built by a company that they new was not doing a good job building their drivers and then blaming them for it.

Exert from my post at CAF:

ED has had MANY faulty drivers. There have been quite a few DOA and blown Tsunami amps as well. I have experienced both. All business practices aside, ED does not provide a quality product IMO. They provide a cheap product.

You bring up the 15A being the only flat cone with a problem. There have been a few posting issues with their 12A as well. Albeit a smaller number of people and probably a smaller percentage failure rate than the 15A its still a problem. There is just too little of a surface for the glue to grab a hold of with a flat cone design. Combine that with the added stress with a T joint and it makes for a bad design if you ask me.

 

And this is why I would do business with Adire and not ED.

They know they are responsible for their products and not the buildhouse. No matter who is at fault for the failures ED is the one selling the drivers and making a profit off it.

Say the buildhouse(s) are(were) at fault. They were then selling a driver built by a company that they new was not doing a good job building their drivers and then blaming them for it.

Exert from my post at CAF:


ED has had MANY faulty drivers. There have been quite a few DOA and blown Tsunami amps as well. I have experienced both. All business practices aside, ED does not provide a quality product IMO. They provide a cheap product.

You bring up the 15A being the only flat cone with a problem. There have been a few posting issues with their 12A as well. Albeit a smaller number of people and probably a smaller percentage failure rate than the 15A its still a problem. There is just too little of a surface for the glue to grab a hold of with a flat cone design. Combine that with the added stress with a T joint and it makes for a bad design if you ask me. [/b][/quote]
So every driver that breaks is a design error or buildhouse error? Last time I checked the consumers are quite capable of causing drivers to fail as well...if they really were an issue, believe me, it would have been much more obvious than a few breaking.

 

Chris,

Woah!!! Let me put on the brakes. I read this ----> "Many of the anti-ED dudes in that thread are spineless. Only when Loyd or Josh Laine speak do they come out from hiding and speak "their opinions". Odd, since they claim to think independently of what others say or do."

As you. :unsure: Spineless = coward. That's where the coward comment came from. I'm sorry for that. I hope you could see where I might be ticked. I see why you were confused. (because I was) Again, please accept my apology. Now this is 100% my mistake

Concerning the different names. I had my name as mustatang and I wanted to be more honest with people. Over at Home Theater Talk and Home Theater Forum you need to use an actual name. I had lots of different names on different boards and I'm getting tired of having them all mixed up so I'm trying to go the HTF route with just a simple first and last name. Brian Tatnall. Simple...I kinda like knowing people's names and that way I don't forget who's who when one person is named Blck00 and another Black01 and another Blx00. For sellilng stuff, I'm not hiding my name either.

I PMed the admin at each forum asking for a change. Unfortunately, CA, CAF, and Here (CAT) (I PMed Michael) did nothing. There's nothing I can do about that. So the name change happened at some and not at others. The ones where it did happen, I put *formerly known as mustatang*. I was never mustatang at ICIX so there was no need to put it. Never was parading around as a different name before.

I'm don't have two names on any one board and I'm not hiding anything with it. Really tried to be more honest with it. You have my ACTUAL name. You don't have jeracho7. I'll put *mustatang if you demand it at ICIX, but I was never know as that there. I'd rather have the other places change. Maybe I'll try again.

Example = http://forum.soundillusions.net/showthread.php?t=34560

Also, I'm not on a side. I'm not an eD hater. I'm not in love with it either. Please don't group me in either. You'll notice in the CA thread I'm the one who wants eD to improve. I want world peace too. I hope for many things and I don't know if either of those will ever happen, but I'm not a hater and you don't see me in with an avatar with a red circle/slash.

On another note, in my trip to eD I noticed how many things people on the forums don't know. I don't think that they are informed enough honestly.

Seth,

It won't happen again concerning the name calling. It was a big misunderstanding on my part.

I addressed the name thing already. ICIX happened after I changed to my real name. So that is what it is. I tried on the others and here.

A clarification. I have not changed my tune. Our disagreement concerned the reason for the A redesign and drivers being backordered versus preordered. It is not the same issue here at all. The arguement can be found HERE

I can have opinions about different things eD does. I'm not in the completely bash eD camp. You just won't find me there. I like the company for many reasons. Something dissapoint me and some things don't. I don't have a completley one sided opinion towards them. Example, I like that Ben has opened a thread for answers on his forum. I hate that he won't go and defend it somewhere else if there is untruth. That is just unprofessional in my eyes when he has time to post on other forums about other things.

vehemently....I have a tendancy to come off very aggresive on the forums. Should never have taken a debate class.

<!--QuoteBegin-delvryboy
Brian, you live rather close, why not come to a show or 2?[/quote]

Give me some dates and places. I'd be happy to meet you. Way better than a forum.

 

Chris,

Thanks for the copy of the e-mail from Ben. I don't think that some of the customers actually know what they are getting when they buy. Which is a concern to me. I don't think it has been explained well enough. What you posted should be the norm not the exception.

Brian