Wmcmanus

Here's an update on what has been happening in the Koss fraud. Probably not too interesting unless you're a legal or accounting geek. Bottom line is that she got 11 years, and they're doing what they can to recover as many of the assets as possible (sold her house; continue to auction off all of the expensive dresses she bought; grabbed whatever was in her retirement account, etc.). Meanwhile, the SEC needed to slap Koss, Jr. on the wrist for allowing all of this to happen under his watch (while he was -- inexplicably -- the CEO, CFO, and COO all at the same time), but for whatever reasons, they haven't done a thing to pursue Grant Thornton (the auditors) who were equally complicit IMO for allowing Koss to operate with such antiquated systems. http://www.apogeeconsulting.biz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=618:update-on-fraud-at-headphone-maker-koss&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=55 http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/1/regulation_sec-settlements-under-dispute-koss-sachdeva Most telling in this video is the explanation given in terms of falsely building up the cost structure from year to year. This makes a lot of sense to me. In order to slip it by the auditors, what you would have to do is create the illusion that raw materials costs were gradually increasing over time. Nearly everything that auditors do in their testing methodology is based on materiality thresholds, which makes incremental fraud nearly impossible to detect. So she steals $1m the first year (using cashiers checks and wire transfers on the outgoing end, thus bypassing the normal accounts payable system, as well as Koss, Jr.'s review) and hides it on the incoming end (at least as the theory goes) by falsifying some of the documentation concerning raw materials that were purchased during the year. The auditors buy into it. It's a very simple notion: input prices and/or quantities naturally increase over time! Not exactly a "hard sell". But the auditors negligently don't even bother to get confirmations of price/quantity from the vendors. So in year two when she steals $3m, she only has $2 million to explain because the first $1 million was built into the auditors expectations from last year, and is already documented in their work papers as being "reasonable" and within materiality constraints. $1 million more can be passed off as further price/quantity increases in year two, and this is entirely plausible relative to $20-$30m per year in cost of goods sold. She then gets a little braver and fudges some more figures to make it all tie together. Meanwhile, Koss Jr. is out golfing with the Grant Thornton partner.

Anyway, great idea for a thread, Dinny. It will be nice to have a designated place to collect "industry news." Hopefully it won't always be about catering to the "headphones as accessories / fashion statement / jewelry" market segments. But it is what it is, I suppose.

Perhaps a tad bit disingenuous, Noel? "Noel Lee, Head Monster, Monster: First, sonic performance for us is the key to why consumers buy Monster products. The expectation of a superior sound experience is the No. 1 reason why people select a headphone. We've shown that if we provide a superior sonic experience they will pay the money to achieve that. Our focus will be to build even higher sonic performance in coming years, building on our consumers' expectations of high sound quality, but at the same time looking for advances in manufacturing so we can keep the prices within reach. It's not sound quality at any cost; it's premium sound quality at a fair price. We think the consumer still values sound quality as the Number One criterion for selecting a headphone."

^ I dunno, crapster. I think most people here know you well enough to realize that it was posted merely for the "wtf factor" as you so aptly put it. Random and utterly stupid, yes. But a lapse in judgement on your part to point out to ordinary, normal, and rational people (just like yourself) that this sort of ugly nonsense still exists in 2012 and has it's own space on the net? Nah. Had I run across it before you did, I'd have been tempted to post it here as well (for the wtf factor)... and I can definitely see how you wouldn't even know how to begin to know what to say about it. In other words, there's no need to feel any shame or guilt for merely pointing out something that exists through no fault of your own. No different than if you linked to a site that showed horrid Holocaust pictures.

Ric, I agree that exposure is the key, and kids today (and even kids from 10, 15 and 20 years ago) simply won't ever have a proper frame of reference in terms of what is possible (or even what existed routinely when we were kids) unless they wander into the audio "hobby" by some stroke of good luck (err, good luck, other than the potential wallet and brain damage that can come with the hobby if you take it or yourself too seriously). Agree also that Neil's percentages are a bit jazzed and overly dramatic. The real message needs to be simply that audio quality has been terribly compromised, both at the recording level and the playback level (both sides of the donkey, or goat, or whatever the fuck he was talking about). His message was spot on, though, when he talked about the fact that the technology is there. It's just a matter of whether the market is there, and to the extent that it's not (at present), how does one spread the message to help create that market? Marketing is all about perceived needs; identifying them and/or helping to create them! If young people have never heard high quality recordings played back through reasonably good equipment, then it will be hard to sell them on the idea that they're missing something and thus that they deserve to have better choices made available to them, and at affordable prices. At the end of the day, it's not really an analog versus digital war. That war has long since been lost, at least to the masses. But it doesn't really matter anyway, because high resolution audio (whether analog or digital) cannot escape the ear. They'll know it when they hear it! Neil's central argument seems to be that we owe it to them to provide a choice, and in this day and age, there's no technological reason for that choice not to exist. It can be done; it's just a matter of who will step forward with the kind of player he's talking about that will bring high res back to the ears of the masses and at a reasonable price point. bhjazz, as for my nephew, he considers himself "lucky" to have heard what is possible and now talks a lot about it to his friends and calls me to ask about headphones and such (alternatives to the Beats). I'm steering him to the new Phillips line, especially the L1 (even though I haven't heard them myself, but knowing that they'll serve him well in terms of the value proposition). But word of mouth is a slow process. You only have so many nephews...

^ True, but seeing this video gives some context to the problem that the few people like Neil are facing. If even a Mossberg type can be so dismissive, imagine where that leaves the kids of today's generation that have never had an opportunity to hear the difference. It's funny, because speaking of Neil Young, one of my brothers and his family visited me here in Cayman about a year ago. Doug (my brother) is a big Neil Young fan, so that was the first stuff he grabbed when he walked in the house and immediately wanted to do some listening. I've been telling him about my MBL system for years, and this was his chance. His son, who is now 16 (so he would have been 14 or 15 at the time) was completely transfixed. He couldn't move, and this went on for hours. Didn't matter if it was vinyl or SACD or high res CD. He was hearing things in familiar recordings he had never heard before, and that's even before moving on to headphones which didn't happen until the next day. Ok, so no big surprise. That should be the case. But when I saw him this Christmas, he still couldn't stop talking about it. He kept murmuring, "Look out mamma, there's a white boat coming up the river... with a big red beacon and a gun and a man on the rails..." and you could just see in his eyes that he was still hearing it in his head the way he did that first night, and that he was moved by it! That's what music is supposed to do, but sadly, until he had that opportunity to hear it in it's full glory, he had no idea what he had always been missing. None of them have a clue, simply because they haven't been exposed to it. That's the saddest part.

"Love the fur on her muff." <--- Innocent comment made today by one the Mrs. Claus ladies at ClausNet.com (the Santa forum I frequent). Made me chuckle. Then there's this:

I don't see it as an either/or proposition. I think the availability of a relatively affordable portable device from a company like Apple that could handle larger files more effectively and pushed sound quality as it's core marketing message would be a good thing. It would at least encourage a reawakening among music industry professionals to the issues that are important to all of us in terms of how recordings are captured/mastered to begin with. As it is, the creative process is often terribly compromised (with much musical goodness left on the table) for sake of making recordings that will sound "good" on the radio and/or iPods (and like devices). To the extent that a company like Apple might be willing to stand up and make some noise about sound quality issues (pun intended), others would take notice and support those efforts on both ends (better captured source material, and devices that better support such recordings). Just don't think it will happen.

I agree that it's hard to say what to make of this, except that Neil Young has been fighting for better sound quality for many years, so I don't doubt that he would have approached Apple at some point, and that Jobs would have at least agreed to meet with him. Just don't think that the numbers would support this kind of move on Apple's part.

From that viewing distance, you would think they would go with a Pany VT30 plasma or a Sony LED LCD.

Neil Young: Steve Jobs and I were working on new iPod Singer tells technology conference he and the late Apple boss planned audiophile successor to iPod with high-resolution audio Sean Michaels · guardian.co.uk Read by 404 people Remove from timeline New adventures in hi-fi … Neil Young and Steve Jobs were working on audiophile iPod. Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images/Sipa Press/Rex Features Neil Young has claimed he was working with the late Apple boss Steve Jobs on a follow-up to the iPod. Young said he and Jobs were developing a new device for listening to "high-resolution audio", which would download content "while you're sleeping". "Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music, but when he went home he listened to vinyl," Young said during an interview at the D: Dive Into Media technology conference. He and Jobs were apparently both concerned with the dearth of high-quality listening formats for audiophiles, and the two men met to work on new hardware that could store the large music files Young prefers. Since Jobs's death in October, Young complained, there is "not much going on". Young is a notorious opponent of MP3s and other compressed music formats. He even criticises CDs, which he claims offer only 15% of the audio information contained on master recordings. "What everybody gets [on an MP3] is 5% of what we originally make in the studio," he said. "We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it's degrading our music, not improving." The 66-year-old singer called on his audience to improve standards for high-fidelity audio and new consumer-friendly playback devices. The main obstacle to better quality recordings is file size: audiophile-quality songs can take as long as 30 minutes to download, Young said, and current players can store no more than about 30 albums. "I have to believe if [Jobs] lived long enough he would have tried to do what I'm trying to do." While Young attacked the internet's effect on audio standards, he acknowledged its utility as a promotional tool. "I look at [the] internet as the new radio," he explained. "Radio [is] gone. Piracy is the new radio; it's how music gets around." Young is currently working on two new albums with his long-time on-off backing band Crazy Horse. He recently updated his website with an epic, 37-minute jam, thought to be taken from these sessions.

"Understanding Women" is now out in paperback. /

No "e" in Santa Claus. Sorry, dumb pet peeve of mine.

Don't forget the Ultrapriced.

As if I don't have a hard enough time explaining why I hang out with a bunch of headphone geeks (and that I'm one of them):

This has prolly been posted here before, but... it's pretty amazing if you like orange bikes. http://www.youtube.c...amp%3bvq=medium

Here's another one of the human trumpet girl. Pretty amazing.

Ya, me too.

Well, except that 99% of all people here are out of touch with what's new in the $100-$200 market. Most people here have been in the hobby a long time, and many of the people here don't really listen to headphones all that often any more. When they do, they're listening to whatever they've chosen over time after a lot of trial and error. For most people here, that either means custom IEMs like the JH-13, or medium to high priced headphones. That's not to say you won't get a handful of good suggestions, it's just not a market that people here keep a close eye on at this point in their journey. Now, if you want to know about $100-$200 scotch, knives, or luggage, that's a different story.

I'd be tempted to try something from the new Phillips lineup as well. I've never really heard any $100-$200 headphones that have 'done it' for me, although many of them are pretty decent.

Hang in there Fitzie. Life has it's ups and downs. Come to Florida in March and drink heavily.

Willie Nelson in 1965.