Bobo said:

So unless you think dave weil plotted out a devious strategy for
getting trotsky to send him the speakers, intending all along to
trash their performance, you need to rethink your analysis. And this
is not an occasion calling for a snippet of "If the cameras were
rolling...." fiction.

I am inclined to believe that Weil's judgment will unintentionally give the
speakers more quality than they deserve, for two reasons:
1. There is the "novelty" effect, whereby an anomaly can sound interesting
at first, or until one is committed by purchase.

If you think that, you don't know anything about weil's background.

2. Weil, unlike me, may have scruples about hurting Greg Singh in a material
way.

I'd say that's irrelevant because trotsky asked for a public
evaluation. I expect weil's evaluation to be as clinical as he can
make it and as lacking in, ah, colorations as possible.


George, you have the information on cliques at your fingertips.
Who among us trust Weil enough to accept his observation as even mildly
definitive?

"Definitive"? Where on earth did you get that from? Nobody should
expect that and no reasonable person would use it to describe any one
opinion.

Put aside your histrionics. What you can get from an experienced,
knowledgeable observer (a description that fits weil, in my view) is
an informed opinion. From the way you and Obie (and duh-Mikey) have
been squawking, one would think it's a million-to-one shot that the
speakers won't sound terrible. If you have to generalize to meet some
bizarre need of yours, I think what you'll get from weil is a ballpark
evaluation. E.g., if he says they're "above average for clarity and
imaging" or "muddy sounding in the bass", won't that give you some
idea? How about "stellar performers on most music" or "a horrible
nightmare of a garage experiment"? Those should put you in the
ballpark too. It's just one guy's opinion.


Do you mean people who can actually be named, or lurkers rarely heard from?
Either represent a valid assertion, but I would appreciate just a little
clarification.

If you're referring to my "most of the group" assertion, the only ones
I consciously excluded were the 'borgs and a few obstreperous
trotsky-haters. I dislike the little toad also, you will note, but I
don't prejudge his speakers. See the difference?

Another way to put this, dispensing with my customary delicacy, is to
say that you've gone way past any reasonable position on this issue.
The issue you've fixated on -- trotsky's slapdash "design" procedure
-- is irrelevant to most audio consumers. Obie's fixation is equally
strained. When he insists that every consumer will behave the way he
himself does, that puts him outside the bounds of reasonable
assumptions. Consumers buy stuff for all kinds of reasons, and it's
certainly false that they will all compare the Jupiter speakers to
those from established companies. If trotsky were gunning for a major
share of the audiophile speaker market, say 1%, he would need a
marketing warchest that no garage operator has. His actual plan,
assuming it's formulated, is probably to sell 25 sets in the first
year. And some consumers in the audiophile segment don't do critical
listening, you know. Some want speakers that a dealer or other audio
authority figure tells them are "good". Some want speakers that are
cool looking, or different (exclusivity), or perceived as avant-garde.

I do understand your feeling that because the established experts in
speaker design are much more knowledgeable and accomplished than
trots, it's an insult to their efforts for him to offer a home-brewed
box that arose through a process even less sophisticated than Wadia or
Levinson used. But I don't understand why you would get so exercised
about one little guy, even an obnoxious little twerp, trying to sell
25 pairs of speakers a year.