Here are some thoughts on the subject of reviews...
For a number of years, we turned down requests for reviews. There were practical reasons for this.
First, we had rather limited production capabilities and always had a significant backlog of orders. We didn't want to hold up these orders producing pairs for review. It just didn't seem fair to paying customers.
Second, it didn't seem prudent to generate additional sales via a review when we could barely keep up with demand the way it was.
The SongTowers have changed the scenario somewhat. We have developed mass-production techniques that allow us to produce many more Song series speakers in a given period of time. So after first turning down requests, we finally sent a review pair to enjoythemusic.com and have been told that their December issue would feature a SongTower review.
Over the past couple of years, we have been approached by a number of other reviewers and may ship pairs of SongTowers to some of them as well.
As for the HT3's and other designs, that may or may not happen. I was contacted by a reviewer from The Absolute Sound who was very interested in doing an HT3 review. But this reviewer did not have the final decision. When we explored it further, the TAS Editor informed me that their policy was to review only speakers being sold at retail.
I think that policies like this are bound to change as ID distribution becomes more main stream. In fact, I would suspect that ID distribution will eventually become the norm as it eliminates about 40% of the cost of a pair of speakers.
But until that happens, main stream magazines like TAS, Stereophile and others will probably not be all that interested in reviewing products from smaller ID companies like ours. These magazines make money by selling ads to large volume manufacturers selling at retail. If the magazine publishes a very positive review about a product that delivers far more bang for the buck, that would not make their advertisers very happy. So I fully understand their position.
That leaves the online review sites and I would suspect we will eventually submit more products to these types of sites.
However, we do not currently have HT3's available for review. In fact, I have not had a personal pair myself for about six months. Of the last six pairs I have built for myself, one of them was in my home for 24 hours before it was sold. The others never made it that far and were sold before they were even finished. Until I have a personal pair for myself, I am certainly not interested in sending a pair out for a six-month review.
We are constantly working to increase our production capacity for this type of speaker. But even though we have made considerable progress, we still build them custom, one pair at a time. As such, we may not have spare pairs to submit to reviewers for a while.
As an alternative, for those interested in owner's experiences with these speakers, there are plenty of owner reviews and comments on our circle on audiocircle.com. In a way, these comments can be even more informative since these owners are actually living with the speakers.
And that is the latest status on reviews.
- Jim
. I will be around through the holidays. My son was a student at UMBC, it's about a 50 minute drive from the campus to my house.
