The Hi-Fi Five Episode 33: Axiss Lawsuit

The HiFi Five Episode 33:  Axiss Lawsuit

Guests:

Chad Crawley -- audiophile hobbyist

Erin Hardison -- Erin's Audio Corner

Kerry Harvey -- commercial transactions attorney who has litigated dozens of cases and served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and audiophile hobbyist

Doug Schneider -- founder of SoundStage!

Steven Stone -- Senior Reviewer at The Absolute Sound

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome to the 33rd episode of the Hi-Fi Five. Tonight, with five guests, it's actually the High Five Six. Please like this video and subscribe to the channel. Tonight's guests, Chad Carley is an audiophile hobbyist. Aaron Hardison runs the popular YouTube channel, Aaron's Audio Corner. Carrie Harvey is a commercial transactions attorney who has litigated dozens of cases in federal court and served as the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He's also an avid audiophile. Doug Schneider is the founder of Soundstage, the world's largest group of audio and music websites. Stephen Stone is a decades-long professional senior writer and veteran of the audio industry and is a senior reviewer at the Absolute Sound. Good evening, everybody.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Hello.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Hello, this past Thursday, Access Audio, a distributor, sued the following people and companies. The defendants are Mike Bovaird, who's the owner of Suncoast Audio, a dealer, and also the owner of Luxury Hi-Fi Distribution, a distributor, and Michael Gefties, also known as the Greek Audio Geek, a YouTube influencer, and Clarices Audio and Florian Vigand, for false statements, defamation, and prayers for actual and punitive damages. Axis alleged a conspiracy among these guys to defame Axis and Solution and to damage their businesses. Axis also alleged an undisclosed payment scheme pursuant to which Suncoast compensated Mike Gifties in payments or in free or heavily discounted components in return for favorable reviews and promotions of Suncoast brands. Topic number one.

SPEAKER_05 1:55

Well, my first reaction was upon reading, I read through all the court papers, and I'm glad I'm not a lawyer like my father was. My second reaction was this is a big fluster clock. Um, it lets critics of the high-end audio industry kind of feed on our soft white underbelly. And everyone, as far as I can tell, everyone who was involved has some degree of culpability from the customer who couldn't wait two weeks for the dealer to set up the gear, to the dealer who couldn't figure out how to send one guy out to satisfy his customer, to the distributor who didn't communicate with the dealer and bothered to send a product without communicating well enough to figure out that it was going to sit someplace for two weeks. And finally to a blogger who never bothered to check his facts before he started to blog about things. That's what I saw.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Doug, what was your very first reaction?

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Well, anybody who's friends with me on Facebook knows I like to get up in the morning and say, hey, what kind of conversation can I stoke up? Let's let's see what people's opinions are. That morning I couldn't come up with something better than that. So I just deferred to your wall. That was my first thought.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Carrie, what was your reaction?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Uh my first reaction upon reading the complaint is that this is a serious lawsuit. It's a well-written complaint. I'm familiar with the firm that filed the complaint. They're well regarded in the Nashville legal community. But with that said, I think we should note at the outset the fact that the complaint tells a good story doesn't mean that it's true. There's not a bit of proof in the case yet. So I think we should we should say at the outset that our discussion here should not, we I don't think any of us mean to imply that we uh are on one side or another, or we think one side or another is going to prevail. We don't know that. It's too early yet. But I also thought all these guys are gonna be living with each other for a long time because when you file a lawsuit, I used to always tell my clients we are taking the first step on a very long, uncertain, and probably unhappy journey. So these folks are gonna be living with one another for a while. Chad, what was your first reaction?

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Well, you know, as a hobbyist, I I tend to watch a lot of the YouTube channels, follow a lot of the Facebook things. So I really wasn't that surprised based off previous content. Again, these are just allegations. Um I don't think there's anything unique about the hi-fi industry. You can say, you can say the blank industry, and anytime there is something where there's competition for customers and money is involved, people are always going to be looking for an edge. And I've yet to be surprised by anything, um, whether it be like I'm an orthopedic surgeon, so I see it in the medical field. And anytime that you know, you see it with reps, you see it with hi-fi, you see it with with it could be car dealerships that are looking for an advantage. So I I wasn't really surprised at all once I saw this. I think this has kind of been as YouTube's gotten bigger and bigger in social media. I think this is just going to become somewhat of the norm as you hear these things.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Aaron, what was your first reserve reaction?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah, so I don't know anything about the gentlemen, uh, the guys who make the plaints. I don't really know anything about any of these parties involved, right? When I saw this, the first thing I saw was YouTube reviewer and that he's being sued, right? That's the part that I saw. And as somebody who reviews product on YouTube and has been threatened with litigation a couple times before, my ears perked up. So I went and started doing some research on that. Um, it's kind of scary, but I'm also very interested to see what proof there is that's going to be brought forward. And as Carrie said earlier, I think the keyword here, at least for myself, is always going to be allegedly. So anything I say, just assume that I said allegedly in front of it as I go further.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Topic two is this simply another industry's dispute that it'll blow over in the public mind at some point, or does it represent a more watershed moment in the history of the high-end audio industry? Doug?

SPEAKER_02 6:17

I don't know if it's watershed, but I don't think it'll be forgotten for a long time because it has gotten a lot of traction. And just before we got on to here, we were just having discussions about decades old lawsuits. So I could see this lasting for quite a while, at least in people's minds. I don't know if watershed that big, but it'll be on people's minds.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

Chad.

SPEAKER_04 6:38

Um, you know, with today's social media, I mean, what's news on Friday? The next Friday, it's it's a totally different news. So I think I think it's watershed for these groups of people, because like Carrie said, they're going to be living with each other and it's watershed for them, and it's going to stick with them. Um, but I I don't know if it's going to be a watershed moment for everyone else because maybe it is in the hi-fi community, the audio file community, because it's we're not we're not as big of a community as maybe we think we are. So that's that's the one thing that it may, I think it will stick somewhat uh because of that, but it's gonna be watershed for these people involved.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Carrie. Um I doubt that it will be uh a watershed moment. I I think uh it won't soon be forgotten. I think it'll be somewhere in between. It may be as the proof comes out, and it will eventually, uh, an educational opportunity for consumers to know how to be on guard and to know how to receive some of the information that's out there. I think for people who do reviews and that sort of thing, it may be an educational opportunity for those folks, and particularly along the lines, if if you're gonna throw sharp elbows, uh that may be a good thing. It may be in service of a good cause if if what you're saying is true. But if you're going to play hardball, uh you better walk with the angels when it comes to having your facts down.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

And with these kinds of things, it may go quiet for weeks and months, and then there'll be some development, and then we'll talk about it again at that moment.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Erin.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Uh yeah, I agree with the already been said.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Stephen, and please speak a little bit louder if you can, please.

SPEAKER_05 8:26

I'll try to speak up louder. Yeah, I it's it's undoubtedly an industry uh dispute as to whether it has further implications or reverberations. Well, yeah, that really depends on who gets the football, who decides to pick up the football and run with it. So, but right now it's probably primarily an industry dispute.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Yes. Carrie, in layman's terms, what are the most significant allegations?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Uh the most significant allegations in the complaint are that the defendants, all the people that have been sued, conspired together to uh damage Axis business by spreading false and disparaging information, in particular about Axis' response to the circumstances involving this particular customer and a particular solution amplifier. Uh, it's also alleged that the defamatory statements were widely published in the audiophile community, primarily through these YouTube and Facebook channels, and that that did, in fact, damage Axis, and they calculate their damages to be, I think, around $1.8 million at the moment, but continuing to add up. In addition to reputational damages, their claim is that Axis's business reputation has been damaged. It seeks both compensatory and punitive damages. And I think it's significant that they allege a conspiracy between all of these defendants, which means that they alleged the defendants got together either explicitly or implicitly and agreed to all engage in this course of conduct to harm Axis. And that's significant because if you read the complaint, the the uh the folks that the Suncoast people spoke to uh about this these matters, it's a pretty small group of people. So you didn't have wide publication by Suncoast, but when you have a conspiracy, many times one conspirator is liable for the bad acts of all the other conspirators. And the wide publication here would be the Facebook and the YouTube and that sort of thing. And so I think the conspiracy is alleged to try to hook all the defendants into that because that will uh increase the damages exponentially if they can prove their case.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

Would anybody else like to respond to the question about what they felt was the most significant allegations?

SPEAKER_02 11:01

I won't because I don't know enough about it.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

Okay. Uh then Carrie, let's continue with you. Defamation claims we know are notoriously difficult to prove. What must the plaintiff actually prove, to prove, prove, uh they are difficult to prove.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

I've had a lot of clients uh contact me. We have some reverbs somewhere, but uh I've had a lot of clients contact me.

SPEAKER_06 11:27

Uh feedback.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Um let me um uh perhaps if everybody else can mute when carry's on. Okay. Try it again.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

They are very difficult cases to prove. Essentially, the plaintiff has to prove that the defendants communicated false information to third parties, misrepresentation of facts. Stating derogatory opinions is is not enough. You can state a derogatory opinion and that's not actionable. It has to be a misreputation of a misrepresentation of facts, and then you have to prove that that damaged your business, that that costs you economic and uh reputational damages. That can be uh very difficult. Again, expressing unflattering opinions is not enough. And you in proving damages, you know, they've alleged that their sales went down, but they have to then convince the fact finder that their sales went down because of these misrepresentations. And that's a that's a pretty slippery concept, and that that can be very difficult to prove. Uh, and in terms of the conspiracy uh that's alleged, they have to prove that all of these people did in fact uh act in concert uh and with an intent to harm Axis business. It's you have a different case if all these people just happen to coincidentally act independently, which I'm sure the defendants will claim.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

So is it incumbent upon Axis to prove that they defendants got together and said, this is what we're going to do, um, this is our plan, or is it enough to show that the defendants who did the paying and the defendants who did the receiving knew what they were getting money for and paying money for, but never sat around in table and said, we are going to defame Axis.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah, I don't think it has to be typically, it doesn't have to be that explicit. It has to be that they acted in concert toward a common purpose. And and in this case, the common purpose would be to damage uh Axis uh business reputation. It doesn't have to be that we where we the the six of us get together and I say, Ron, you're gonna do this, Stephen, you're gonna do that. It can, but we do have to act in concert toward a common uh purpose. So it could the conspiracy can be implied. It doesn't necessarily have to be um explicit.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Topic five, what do you think the defenses will be? What do you think Mike Bovard's defenses will be?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Uh the well, I the general of Private defended a few defamation cases, and and generally what you would like to do to defend a case if you have supporting facts is to say to the plaintiff, I didn't say what you said I said, but if I did say it, it was substantially true, or at least it was just my opinion, uh, and not misstating a fact. But if I did say it and it wasn't true, you can't prove that you lost any sales because of what I said, and you can't prove that your reputation suffered because your reputation is already so much in the sewer that it couldn't be any worse. And so I think we will see some version of that uh sort of defense, which I have uh oversimplified. There could be some other uh unique aspects of this case. Uh, there may be some claim that Axis is a limited purpose public figure, uh, because Axis seeks to publicize its products in the uh audio community. Uh that seems a stretch to me, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that claim, and that's important because uh if they're deemed to be a public figure for this purpose, there's it's much harder to prove those cases. You have to prove actual uh malice. Um that's that's the defenses that you typically see in a nutshell. In this particular case, it'll be interesting to see if they agree that there's jurisdiction in Tennessee. That's that's always a little bit up in the air.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

What do you think will be Matt Gefty's defenses?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

I I think he'll argue all of the things that I just mentioned. In addition, he may have some uh other arguments available to him. He may argue that he is some sort of journalist who properly investigated the information that he published by relying on what he was told by others, specifically the Suncoast defendants, and that he was entitled to rely on what uh they told him. That sometimes gets interesting when you have multiple defendants because a lot of times defendants will start out being in lockstep with one another, but uh as things get a little a little hot, sometimes they reach a fork in the road and their defenses become inconsistent. So that's a potential uh defense that he could have. I think they would probably all argue against the conspiracy allegations. They would uh they would probably claim that they acted independently and uh and not in concert. And then there will be a big brawl about damages. The the defendants will undoubtedly argue that if there was a drop in sales, it wasn't because of anything that the defendant said or did. They will point to some of the information that's been out there, I think, about uh this particular incident uh and and also more generally about this solution amplifier. And I think there's been some um thought, I don't know if it's true or not, that maybe the amplifier was brought to the market before it was ready. But they will argue that whatever drop in sales Axis may have uh encountered, it was either due to how Axis treated this customer or some of the chatter about this particular amplifier.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

I was going to ask you what is the underlying predicate? What is a court going to expect to see to prove that $1.8 million damage claim? And we know we we know high-end audio is a very fickle industry.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

And yeah, and and that is proving damages in these cases is very tough because they they'll be able to show uh with probably mathematical precision the drop in their sales, but then you have to connect that causally to the actions of of these defendants. And so there's a lot of ways you can prove that. One of one of the ways you prove that is you you get a bunch of uh audiophiles and potential customers together, the kind of people that are watching this show, and you put them under oath and say, Well, did you hear what uh uh what Gift has said? Did you hear you know what the Suncoast people said? And if you heard that, did that what did that uh make you think of Axis? Did that lower your opinion of Axis? So you you can have that kind of proof, you can do market surveys, you know, the proof can be very sophisticated if there's enough money involved. But but that kind of um that's always a little bit of a squishy part of the case because proving the drop in sales won't be difficult. Proving what caused the drop in sales is as I say, there'll be a big brawl over that.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Do you expect either or both sides to come up with a group of whom whomever they identify as prominent audiophiles to ask those kinds of questions in deposition?

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Uh I certainly would. I I would try to find people who uh either are uh solution owners or people who would identify as prospects for high-end amplifiers and and uh ask them, do you know about this? Did you hear about what was said? Did you hear about the incident with this customer? How did that make you view access? How did that make you view solution? Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if uh if you don't go down that road.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Topic six. What do you think is likely to be the next actual step in the dispute? Do you uh of course um the defendants will file an answer? Uh, but do you think as a practical matter, the attorney for uh Mr. Bovard and uh Mr. Gefties are going to call up, or their separate attorneys are gonna call up the attorney for Axis and say, what do you guys really want here? Or what do you think is the next actual step?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, that's that's possible. Just in terms of the legal process, and I'll try to keep this brief because I'm sure there's a lot of eyes glazing over with all this legal stuff, but uh uh there will be a responsive pleading filed, which could be a motion to dismiss, or it could be an answer. The answer will be interesting for people who are following this as spectators, because an answer is simply a document you file in court that takes the complaint one paragraph at a time and says, we as the defendant, we admit what's in this paragraph, we deny what's in this paragraph. So, example, and as an example with Geftis, there's all these allegations that he has received compensation in the form of money or equipment to do these reviews, to do favorable reviews. He's gonna have to, when he answers, he's gonna have to answer whether that's true or whether he denies that. And that'll have real implications potentially for his YouTube business and his Facebook business because he's been he's been very vocal, um, very vocal in his criticism of of that sort of conduct. So um if he is forced to admit those allegations, that's going to be tough for him, but it may not be true, and he may be able to deny it. But that's the next thing that will happen, then eventually the court will enter a scheduling order. The parties will be able to take discovery, which means you can require the other side to give you all the documents they have that are relevant to the case. And in this case, you could have everything from accounting documents to tax returns to lots of emails. Emails and lots of text messages and all kinds of private communications that people probably would never want to be made public. And then you start putting witnesses under oath and take depositions. Ultimately, if there's no resolution, there's a trial and then an appeal. But to answer your question, Ron, I think it's it's possible that that could happen because this is going to be trench warfare. It's going to be very expensive, and there was a lot of benefit in finding a way for everybody to resolve this. But but I think a sticking point in this kind of case can often be what I alluded to earlier. Axis seems to be very serious about claiming these reputational damages. The only way they're going to get their reputation back here to rehabilitate those damages is uh, of course, money. The greenback poultice always cures some ills, but what they're going to need to publicly prevail in a trial or get a public apology and retraction from these defendants. That would rehabilitate the Axis reputation. But uh you can imagine that these defendants are gonna they're gonna choke on that. You know, they're not gonna be anxious to go on high five five and say, well, yeah, you know, everything we said about this was wrong, and we apologize because that'll have consequences for them. So that that'll be uh aside from just the money, that can be a real sticking point in these kind of cases.

SPEAKER_03 23:37

Thank you, Carrie. Topic seven. And Ron, is it?

SPEAKER_04 23:41

I don't I want to ask Carrie a question about you just went over the process. This is going to be so it's gonna be in federal court in Nashville. Uh and you talked about discovery and you talked up, you talked about depositions. Since it's in federal court, will those depositions be those will be public record where people can see those unless they've been sealed, I assume, by the judge, but they will be public record, won't they?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Well, under the federal rules, it's it's a little odd. They are public record, they used to all be filed in the court file. Discovery material is no longer actually physically filed in the court file, and I think they changed the rule just because the the way cases are now, you have volumes and volumes of the stuff. So you'd have court reporters, for example, who take the who transcribe the depositions, hear the testimony, put it in a transcript, and they act as custodians of the records. So it's a public record, but you'd have to do a little more work than just going on to the court filings to actually see the depositions. But when that happens, people will be able to access the testimony.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Any other questions for Carrie? Topic seven. Is it common for products to fail, Doug?

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Yeah, I've we've had a couple of failures over, you know, we've been in business a lot of years, but it happens. Um, stuff happens. We had an amplifier blow up in the 90s, and ironically, the reviewer was a lawyer and he wanted to sue the company because it took out his speakers and he wasn't happy the way they were fixed, but they got it resolved. And I had an amplifier blow up, uh, a part in it failed, and that took out a tiny pair of speakers. And I always assume that there is the potential for failure. Stuff comes from us all over the world. Things get banged and shipped and that sort of thing. So maybe there's a design flaw, but maybe there's just a problem. Um, you know, and so whenever I hook up an amplifier, I've got a cheap pair of speakers that I don't care explode. Now I'll always hook up an amplifier to a very low-cost pair of speakers and play them for a while to see that nothing went wrong. I'll also shake components a little bit. Did anything come loose in shipping? I've seen that. I've seen crossovers break off, I've seen pieces floating around. So it's not common, but it's not uncommon that something could happen. And I've seen it myself. And it does lead me to believe that there's a bigger implication in all this. It's not hard to blow up a pair of speakers, it's really not. And you can do with too much power, um, a volume control that gets ramped up to 100, which is why I'm the hugest proponent of volume control limiting on components. The thing it's not hard, and I think it's it's negligent of a manufacturer of a speaker to make it extremely difficult to fix the speaker. And I've seen those where it's nearly impossible for the user to replace a tweet or a mid-range or whatever, because shit happens. Things happen all the time, and the part the product that gets taken out is usually a pair of speakers, and so it does happen. And I think the broader implication here is what happens after it happens.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Chad, have you ever had a component blow up in your personal system?

SPEAKER_04 27:03

No, you know, I've never gone through that, but it's it's something that scares me. And I think as a consumer, not a reviewer, nothing like that, not as a dealer, you you really have to be careful, you know, who you're gonna who you're gonna get in bed with. I mean, these these are things you're gonna have for for 10, 15, sometimes longer than that. So you you besides just knowing what you like the sound of, you want to pick companies that have a track record of standing behind their customers, companies that have been around for a while. You know, some of these companies you can call and the owner answers the phone. I mean, talk to you got to talk to other people that's that's had these the these type of uh speakers or or components and what kind of what kind of customer service have they got. So you have to assume everything's gonna fail, but it's it's like I said, I always go back to my field and orthopedics. It's it's you know, I choose implants that I know work, I know if there's a problem that specific company's going to back this up, and that's important.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

Steven, you've probably had more components run through your hands than any of us. Have you ever had a component fail?

SPEAKER_05 28:12

In 40 years, I have only had one situation that similar to what's in this lawsuit, and that was um a Kinnergetics power amp, which uh I pulled out of uh, I guess I hadn't been using it for a while, pulled it back out uh to and hooked it up to a newly acquired pair of BW loudspeakers, and immediately noticed that the BW loudspeakers to the tweeters weren't working. I thought, you know, that happens, new products shipped in, wires uh as Doug mentioned, they get shook around. And so I called up who sent me call and said I need a pair of speakers that works, and she's arranged that. And then I hooked up a second set of speakers with the Kinergetics, a set of speakers that I owned. Um and they too had no tweeters, and I immediately went, golly gee, maybe it's the amplifier. I shipped the amplifier back to Kinergetics, and sure enough, it was passing enough DC to fry any tweeter in existence. Um in the case of this of the solution amplifiers, however, they were tested back by Axis for was it 50 hours of continuous use, and they were within spec that entire time. Which I have never had an amplifier that's in spec destroy a loudspeaker that human error was not involved in.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

That's all I have to say about that. Carrie, in your system, have you ever had a component malfunction?

SPEAKER_00 29:53

No, I haven't. I once managed to blow up the speakers in my 1969 Plymouth Fury when I was trying to see how loud Mississippi Queen would play through my A-Track tape player, but uh that was a personal tragedy, but I don't consider that an equipment failure.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Aaron, what has been your um component reliability experience?

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Unmute my mic. There we go. All right, yeah. As far as being a regular user, a non-reviewer, hardly anything. Um, the last time I can recall actually having a product failure was around 2008 with a car audio DSP. Sent DC to my tweeters and blew them, but they replaced them. Um, as far as being a reviewer, I have fried a couple amplifiers, but that's on me because I'm stress testing the piss out of them. And as a reviewer, I kind of think that's what our job is to do. Is like, let's not necessarily try to break it, but you know, if we really use this thing and beat up on it like somebody might, how likely is it to have an issue? And as long as it doesn't, then we're good. And and Doug will appreciate this. This is why I keep these things on hand. You never know.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

You never know. Actually, Diego's our measurement guy, he keeps that on hand too.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah, no, I figured, you know, you got to. This one, I can swear by this thing, this is the best thing ever. Um, and then other reviewers just this is the other thing, is other reviewers just really improperly packaging something. And I get it, and it looks like it's just been beat the hell, you know, crossover components are rattling inside. But yeah, no, as far as this being a common thing for high-end audio components to fail, no.

SPEAKER_03 31:33

We know that the the very early solution amplifiers had some issue and a bunch of them were examined and some of those were were fixed or worked on. We know that the tweeters and the speaker got fried. What is the investigatory obligation of the defendants who said who made the connection who publicly said the amplifiers fried the tweeters and the Lyras? What uh obligation attaches to somebody saying that? Does Mike Gefties have to have confirmed himself the causal link between the amplifier and the speaker? Is is he in the clear if he simply has a reasonable belief of that connection? Let's focus on that for a moment.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Yeah, I think the key to it is you is is the reasonable belief part because he obviously had no firsthand knowledge of this. Uh who knows where this amplifier is now. And so I I think that he had some duty to uh investigate this before he said, and and if you look at the things that he posted, he said um very strongly, I know the circumstances. He didn't say, you know, this is what might have happened or this is my opinion. As I recall from these exhibits, he said, I know the circumstances. So I think it will it will uh come down to, you know, sometimes we know things that aren't true. That's happened to me before, and then it will come down to whether or not he engaged in some sort of reasonable investigation to to have a reasonable belief that what he was saying is true. And that my my guess is that what he's gonna uh uh it seems that about the most likely way that he would say that is that he was told this by the Suncoast people. And again, that's where uh at some point he might say, hey, this is uh if this was wrong, uh I relied on other people for information. Now there's a question that that the plaintiffs will uh push very strongly about whether that reliance alone would be sufficient since there were other people. You know, Axis is well known. Did he ever contact Axis? Did he ever contact Solution? Did he ever contact the customer involved? So uh there'll be a full exploration of all of those facts. But um, you know, I you you can't just say that you know something with absolutely no basis. Now, uh whether or not he had a solid basis, I don't know, but that will be fully explored.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Now on the Axis side, Axis says we took those very amplifiers back, we played them for X number of hours, we happened to have the same loudspeakers as that client, and the amplifiers did nothing wrong. How dispositive is Axis' own investigation in terms of probative value for establishing the truth?

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah, if I was their attorney, I I would be a little bit sad about that. Of course, when all this was happening, these parties are trying to solve a problem. I mean, there's no doubt. I'm sure they were all trying to solve this problem. They weren't thinking about building a case for litigation. But the problem they're gonna run into there is, yeah, Axis did this testing, but the defendants are gonna say, well, you did the testing, you you had a very strong interest in reaching a certain outcome. And so it would be uh uh what would truly be dispositive would be if some independent expert had done the testing. Uh absent that, uh, what Axis did is certainly proof, and and it's there are inferences that could be drawn from that that would be favorable to Axis, but it's not dispositive, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

Topic eight. Do you think this case, whatever its outcome, will result in any practical rules or guidelines regarding the disclosure of compensation to YouTube influencers for the manufacturers, distributors, dealing dealers doing the paying of such compensation, or for the YouTube influencers receiving such compensation, Aaron?

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah, that's already in effect. That's FTC has already set that out. I mean, I don't know how long this has been effect for, but there's a there's specific FTC guidelines where I'm gonna read it right now. Um says disclose when you have any financial, employment, personal, or family relationship with a brand. And then it goes on to give you a little bit more details on that, but that's already there. The problem is getting people to stick by it. Um, so I don't know the Greek audio geek, but this is kind of where I come in with my own experience. I'm sent emails all the time from brands from wherever to more well-known brands. Um, and these are sent to different YouTube people or reviewers. Very rarely is money brought up, but occasionally some dumbass reviewer will reply back and hit CC all and he'll say, I want $10,000 or I want $20,000. And then I'm like, oh well, now I know who's taking money, right? Unfortunately, it's not my really my place to go out and say who these people are. Um, but it happens, and it happens more often than I'd care for it to. And it's disappointing because, as I said, there are already FTC regulations in place for this specific kind of thing. Where if somebody's taking money or there's any kind of financial benefit at all to either party, then it's supposed to be disclosed.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

Chad.

SPEAKER_04 37:22

I don't, you know, I don't know the intricacies of you know, YouTube's always safe because you can't really sue the platform or or anything like that. So I don't think there's they need content. So as long as there's content, they're gonna, you know, do status quo. It's kind of like Aaron said, I mean, people people have to police themselves and historically people will be people. And um I just I don't know the chair we're gonna see until people's there's gonna it can't be just one lawsuit. A lot of people's gonna have to get hammered to see real change.

SPEAKER_03 37:55

Stephen, what do you think?

SPEAKER_05 37:58

Uh well, I'd like to think that it will help make viewers more critical and uh respond to those um content creators that are more transparent about their commercial contacts. And the the people I tend to follow when they have a product that they've been paid to promote will say that at the beginning of their their promo of their video, at which point I can choose to watch it or not watch it depending on if the product interests me, which I feel is perfectly legitimate. Um a couple of actually, I once watched a video where a YouTuber broke down exactly how much money they made from a particular video that was viewed by one million viewers, and what they made from YouTube, and what they made from Facebook, and what they made from each site, what they had made, and it was very enlightening to see that a successfully done video can can be $10 or $15,000 at a pop. So yeah, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

Doug, what effect do you think it'll have on the uh in social media aspect of the industry?

SPEAKER_02 39:07

I think it's gonna have an effect right now in Hi-Fi. And I think, as you know, about uh several days before this, I put a post up not knowing that this was gonna come out about you know, uh paid-off YouTube reviewers, let's call it like it is, right? And people don't like it. And uh Ron and you and I have had this talk that when you can't describe your business transparently, then you got a problem. Big problem, right? And I had a couple, you know, guys come onto the wall, you know, 99% are like, no, Doug, you're right. You paid off YouTube. No, old man, you don't know how it works. This is a new world, the rules have changed, you know, we're we've got this handled. Well, no, some old rules do apply. You're getting paid to do a review, and you're not willing to say, yeah, the manufacturer forked over hundreds or thousands of dollars. And what are you gonna say? Hey, are you gonna review my amp and I'll give you five grand? You're gonna tell people it's lousy? Is the company ever gonna come back to you? So, this type of thing where people are getting paid off, I'm glad it got exposed. Like, remember the first time Amazon the high five five and you guys put me on the spot, you know, what do these video tours look like? And I think it was gonna be an expose, and I say, look, they come out of our ad revenues. 99.9% of Soundstage's revenues are ad revenues. I only put 0.1% because maybe we get money from pop models or something. But the point is we get money from ad revenues. That's the business model. If you don't like it, well, that's how we operate. But if you're a YouTuber and you are getting paid, and you're well, how much are you getting paid? I asked one guy. Well, there was no answer. Well, you're not that transparent, are you? Are you getting paid? Yes, no. So this will help in the hi-fi space. I think those YouTubers who think the world has changed and moved on from traditional models don't estimate that certain old school rules do apply. People like transparency, they like honesty, they like forthrightness, that you can answer your question. And they don't really like it that you're getting paid to review the product. Because honestly, what are you going to say about a product if you're getting paid to review it? You know, I bought a pool um cleaner that's really mediocre based on the reviews. And then I went and looked at all the reviews, and they were all generally positive from people who had been given free ones. It's a mediocre product, but they all said it was good. What's a YouTuber who gets hundreds or thousands of dollars gonna say?

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Carrie, do you think this will change the risk analysis of social media people and um I would hope so, but I think that may be the triumph of hope over experience. And and and I've come at this from a consumer standpoint because you know, folks like Chad and I all this exists because we put our money into this. And to me, if we watch a uh YouTuber or read a magazine review that expresses subjective opinions, we should be able to rely on the fact that that is an honest opinion being expressed. It may not be a smart opinion, but that it's not paid for unless that's disclosed. And so when you have this un this undisclosed kind of conduct, there's an element of deceit in that. There's no question about that in my mind. And it's also when you look at the conduct alleged in the complaint, and again, I'm not saying it's true, but the stuff that's in this complaint is really pretty tawdry. It's pretty distasteful stuff. And it struck me, I'd never thought of it this way before, but the manufacturers are in an interesting position. In one sense, they're almost perpetrators because they're facilitating these dishonest paid-for reviews, but they're also victims because what's described in the complaint gets pretty close to extortion. So it's, I don't know. It seems it the the if there's going to be positive change, it's gonna come from a few of the leading manufacturers and maybe a few of the leading uh um media types getting together and saying, let's make some improvements here. We don't have to change the whole world, but we can establish some voluntary guidelines that will clean this up and enhance the credibility for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 43:28

And what you said there about extortion is a good way to put it because I've talked to manufacturers who think things operate a certain way because they dealt with people who operate that way. So they think, well, they must all operate that way. And it doesn't necessarily, I think I talked to you, Ron, yeah uh months ago when I said that you know, there was a lot of assumptions on how magazines work that maybe weren't true, you know, among a panel. And, you know, I'll give a good example. What I always like to do with an unknown company, don't talk to us about advertising. Send the product. Let's see what you got. Is it a good product or not? Don't bring up advertising. Let's not cloud the issue. I want to know if you're doing a good job because we've got enough products coming in that we don't desperate for them and we deal with enough companies. And I hopefully maybe this message is it doesn't have to be like an extortion thing, that not everybody operates like that.

SPEAKER_03 44:24

My hope is that at least YouTube influencers in the future will be much more circumspect about looking into the camera and baldly lying to their subscribers, saying I do this out of the goodness of my heart, and I'm not getting compensated when in fact they know they are getting secretly paid by manufacturers, distributors, and dealers who promote products. So I hope at the very least this will have some interorum value to make people think twice before they look into the camera and say something they know isn't true.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah, I'll throw in something on that too. Um, this is a passion of mine. YouTube ad revenue pays very, very little. And I have no problem sharing that. I've sent it out to my public plenty of times. I mean, maybe a hundred bucks, maybe 150 bucks per video. When you factor in the number of hours, you break it down as a per hour rate, I'm making like three to five dollars an hour, right? So, what I tell my audience every time of my videos is there are three ways, and I'm not going to do it all here, but there are three ways that I generate income. One is ad revenue, one is Patreon, and one is affiliate links. The problem with affiliate links, so this is a this is a touchy subject for a lot of people, and it was for me for a long time, is if you're directly linking a product through an affiliate seller, Crutchville in the US, Amazon, and whoever else is out there, um people are wary of that. So let's say, oh, well, you're hyping this product up just because you know you get some kickback on the sale of it. Sure, but I also review things negatively, so it can go either way. What I found for myself, and this is only me saying this to other people who are out there who may want to come into this space and try to be honest as best you possibly can, is to simply say, Hey, I'm going to use generic affiliate links, or you can send me over a couple bucks via this PayPal donation. The truth of the matter is, if you're trying to be a reviewer in the audio space, this is my opinion, right? You're not going to make any money if you're trying to be a reviewer. If you're trying to be an influencer, there's where you make your money. And there's they are totally different. And I despise one of them and I really laud the other one.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

And I just want to add in something about the affiliate links. So we've, I guess, opposed affiliate links for 30 years, but this is where it flips back on the manufacturers. This started in the early 2000s. There were some manufacturers that would come to us and say, Well, we'll only do an affiliate type thing, or we'll only pay you ad revenues on sale. No, then don't advertise with us because we're not going to be putting your ad there to sell your product only, because that puts us in a compromise spot. So it can flip back to the manufacturer kind of trying to coerce the publication.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

But when it comes to reviewers coercing the manufacturer, that's a pretty bad thing.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

That's a different thing altogether. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:14

Topic nine. What does this dispute mean for the magazines, the absolute sound and stereophile, uh, traditional legacy media? Steven.

SPEAKER_05 47:24

Well, depending on how good a story it turns into, it might fill a couple pages. Um, I can't really see how it's going to change the way we do business. I mean, it's interesting. When I first joined the Absolute Sound back in the Harry Pearson days, back in the mid-80s, reviewers were not allowed to even talk with manufacturers. Any questions we had had to go through the office and then it went to them because Harry felt that if reviewers got too close to manufacturers, they might be influenced unduly and favorable, or depending on the manufacturer's uh habits, unfavorable ways, so that it was better and he would get more honesty if there was no interactions at all. In those days, we didn't go to audio shows, and no TAS writers went to audio shows. Obviously, that's changed over the years, and to the point that now, yeah, I get inquiries that go, yeah, um, do you have to advertise? And it's like, no, again, I just want to see if you're if I like your product. If your product does something that I think consumers need or can use or is special or or is different in some ways, or just is fun, that's something I want to write about. You know, I think any journalist who's worth their salt, they should write about the things that interest them. So yeah. Doug?

SPEAKER_02 48:49

Yeah, I remember when that kind of rule was in place for the magazines, don't talk to manufacturers. I always oppose that because that's a good way to um convey bad information. Oftentimes you have to talk to the manufacturer to get the proper information. And I tell our guys, hey, if you have a question, just go ask the manufacturer. Don't go through a PR person or anything. Things get diluted. Um, I don't know. It will, we operate like stereophile in the absolute sound, a traditional model, even though I've never been in print. I think it won't really change anything. What I think it will change is many of those people who are trying to find ways to make money, new alternative ways to make money, are gonna figure out some of the old ways do have some legitimacy. I do like the Patreon idea a lot. That is a really good idea because then you got consumers, kind of like funding, like almost like a subscription. And that that's a really kind of honest way to do that. But I think these guys who think that it's a new world are gonna find out, they're gonna learn from the old world that some things do work better and they were put in place for a reason. So I don't think it'll change the magazines. They're gonna be getting more and more online. Let's face it, people consume via video like us right now. That's how people consume things. So that is gonna have to adapt, and the magazines will adapt more to that, but the whole business models will adapt.

SPEAKER_01 50:10

Aaron. Um, yeah, so I I agree there with Doug about especially about the end about people, the magazines getting on online. Um, sorry, I just had a brain fart and I was reading over somebody else's comment before. Um, you know, I don't really have any insight into how the magazines work. What I do want to comment on is the aspect about talking to the manufacturer. So as somebody who just does this on his own, this is not my job, like my day job. I I've made two videos in the last four or five months. This is not my income. Um I try to do the right thing, and sometimes the right thing to me may not be the right thing to someone else. But let's say I get a product in from a manufacturer and maybe it came in from a reviewer who had it before me, and this thing was obviously busted. I'm going to reach out to the manufacturer. I'm not going to test it that way and do a review on it because that's stupid, right? You got to have some common sense. There are other cases too where I reviewed things and maybe it didn't sound quite right. And then I'm I did some quick measurements just as a sanity check and yet, yeah, something's not right here. I might reach out to the manufacturer. There are other cases though, where if as far as I can tell, this is what the manufacturer intended to put out there, then I'll go ahead and do the review. The one thing I do not do though is I do not let anybody see the review before it goes out the door. Most of the time, the manufacturer sees the review when the public sees it. I send them a link. Hey, here it is. Send me a prepaid shipping label and then I'll ship it back to you. And I'll go ahead and add this. This is something that I wanted to mention because I think a lot of people try to assume the worst about reviewers in general. And it's a slippery slope, especially when you you review lower cost stuff. I don't want to use the word cheap, but lower cost things. I can't tell you the number of things that I've gotten into review that maybe cost $100 to $200 for a set of little desktop speakers. I'll email the manufacturer back and say, Hey, I'm done. What do you want me to do with this? And they'll say, Well, we don't want it back. Like it's no use to us. You keep it. So what I try to do is I try to go to my YouTube page and tell everybody, hey, I kept it. But I'll be honest, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I set that to the side and I forget about it and forget it's there. And that's the concern when I see other people commenting about, oh, everybody's in it for free gear. Guys, if you want to come to my house and get these cheap $99 speakers, please feel free. But sometimes we just we just don't care and we forget about it. I try to give them away to my Patreon, and I don't want this to turn into a he does protest too much kind of example here. But I just want to make it clear that there are good people in the review industry who get stuff sent to them and they don't want it. They don't care if they're giving it for free, but they're kind of stuck with it. So what are they going to do with it? They can give it to a friend, take it to Goodwill or something like that. But that doesn't mean that everybody that is reviewing has nefarious intentions.

SPEAKER_03 53:01

Well, I think the cost of the item matters in the eyes of the public. If it's a hundred dollar item, that's one thing. If it's a hundred thousand dollar item, it's another.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

No, no, that's a very good point. And that is true, but there are some people who say that's your slippery slope. Oh, if you're taking a $200 thing, then you know, here's here's where you go wrong.

SPEAKER_02 53:19

It's easy to 100% up 100% back you up on that errand. I have stuff all over the place that I can't get rid of and you can't sell it. I had a Serwin Vega speaker. I'll just tell you a quick story. And Johnny and Thing, it's sitting there, they don't want them shipped back to wherever Serwin Vega is. So finally a guy took, I said, you can never sell them. He's like, Don't worry, I'll never sell them. A week later, he sent me a picture, he cut them and made them into table and shelves.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

He used the wood. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 53:49

But there is stuff that just never goes back because the manufacturer does it, it's too expensive and stuff. But when something and it isn't a slippery slope, you can tell those people, Aaron, it isn't a slippery slope because once it gets up to a certain price, it should be going back. Simple as that. You know, there is no reason.

SPEAKER_03 54:06

But what's that number, Doug? That's I think the way in which Aaron referred to slippery slope. Where how do you divide it? How do you set an arbitrary number?

SPEAKER_02 54:14

Above shipping, I don't know, but let's say above a thousand dollars. Thousand bucks is like, okay, look, I got, you know, let's say we get something from Europe or something, it's less than a thousand bucks. They're like, oh my God, to get it back there, or or even Canada, US is difficult. Now, within reason, you got to kind of look as we get this thing back, it's gonna cost us more in shipping. We can't sell it as new. So it kind of adds up pretty low, I would say. 1500 bucks. If you want a number, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 54:43

Right. Anecdotally, I think the most expensive thing I've been told to keep, like as in you can keep it, we don't care what you do with it. Uh, maybe a few hundred bucks. There, there have been some examples where I've reached out to the manufacturer and said, I'm done with this review. Do you want me to send it back to you? If you want to let me buy it at you know, a discounted rate that you would normally otherwise sell it at, I can do that and I can pass that on to one of my Patreon members. So there's been lots of cases where on my Patreon I'll say, Hey, uh, so-and-so sent me this thing to review. They said I can buy it from them for 50%, right? So I'll say, if anybody wants it, I'll basically just transfer the money to them and then I'll ship it to you from my house. And and that works out well too. Having said that, I could also see where somebody's like, gotcha, you know, so it's it's tough. You try to do the best thing that you think is the best thing to do at that moment in time, um, and just hope that your audience sees that your your intentions are uh positive, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 55:41

And the slippery slope is avoided simply, Ron, on that, by saying, assume it's all going back.

SPEAKER_05 55:46

That's that's all going back.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

Now, if suddenly somebody's left with a very expensive product, then the questions get asked.

SPEAKER_05 55:54

You know, also it's a question of shipping weight from a manufacturer's point of view. There's a certain point, like subwoofers. Yeah, like how many subwoofers do you want to have lying around your house? Uh oh my god, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

Yeah, I got a big giant one from SVS that weighs 125 pounds, but unfortunately it's going back, and I gotta box it up.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

I get excited when I get to settle back.

SPEAKER_02 56:17

125 pounds and those dense things. So assume it's going back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:24

Topic 10. How will this dispute affect how audiophile hobbyists view the ethics and responsibilities of manufacturers, distributors, dealers, YouTube influencers? Chad.

SPEAKER_04 56:39

You know, we we're talking about um we're talking about YouTube reviewers, we're talking about audiophile magazines and everything. If there's not consumers, this though none of those exist. If people aren't buying it, then it doesn't matter. There is no stereophile, there's no Aaron's audio corner. I mean, nobody if nobody's buying anything. So everything we're talking about is on the reviewers, these YouTube influencers on the magazines. There's responsibility that falls on the consumer. And and here's why I say this and and give me kind of a little leeway with this. We uh tend to try to do things the easiest way. I want to get some speakers, so this YouTube guy said these are the best, so that's what I'm gonna get. And this guy, this is awesome, that's what I'm gonna get. And and but that's that's really not the way we should be doing it. It's we should be doing it the hard way. Now, I know there's people that don't have access to people, they don't have access to going to shows or listening to these speakers. But at the end of the day, I when I went into this, I went into it like a physician. I said, okay, what's the sound characteristics I like? I like dynamics, I like bass control, I like uh resolution. And then I worked from there. Now, now I was super lucky. I had a gentleman that was a mentor to me. I reached out to him, he became my mentor, he became one of my best friends, and he really trained me and helped train my ears. And and he kind of taught me, don't worry about what other people are saying, worry about what your ears are and use these other things as guides. So I've gone on Aaron's show and I've learned about you know measurements and John Atkinson measurements, but at the beginning of the day, I learned what sonic characteristics I like, and then I started weeding out other things, and then I've only used the YouTube reviews and the magazines to kind of help me like, well, maybe this is something I should look at. But we have a role as consumers, it's our money, it's our dollars. And if you're going to spend it unwisely, that's on us, that's on the consumer. And so you gotta you gotta stop, we gotta stop being in such a hurry. I mean, what did people in 1980 do? What did somebody in 1990 do? How did they determine what do I want? Well, they determine what they like. They're like, Man, I really like to blast Boston, and and I like the dynamics, or I like jazz, or I like this, and they learn what they like, and I and the same thing happens with people changing gear all the time. Again, my mentor taught me don't change your gear, don't don't burn in, don't do this. Listen to the way your gear changes, your ears change, your room changes. Enjoy the ride. It's it's fun, it's not just for the next step, you know, and sometimes we we forget about that.

SPEAKER_03 59:21

Well, back in the 80s, we may have relied excessively on the small format absolute sound that we all read.

SPEAKER_06 59:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:28

Uh Carrie, what do you as an audiophile hobbyist? What do you think? How do you feel about this event in terms of how you think about the responsibilities and ethics of the industry participants involved?

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Well, and there's a couple of layers to that, I think. And in terms of the uh the specific incident that led to all of this, I mean, my heart goes out to the fellow who had this problem, and he apparently was a real gentleman about it. So kudos to him. But I know uh if if if I buy a $200,000 set of speakers from Stephen and they were distributed by Chad and manufactured by Aaron, and I get them within the warranty period and they malfunction and they don't work, I don't care what problems you guys have. I want you to fix my problem, and I should be entitled to that. And then you all should work it out later. And the first person I'm looking to is the dealer. And I that now they may be wrong. I'm not saying that's the law, but I'm looking for my dealer to be my advocate if I have a problem, because that's that's what he's getting paid to do, in my opinion. And the next uh level that I'm looking to is the manufacturer because they made the stuff. I may not even know who the distributor is and may not care. So I I think that, and I and I think most dealers, the dealers I've had the pleasure of dealing with are they they are the customer's advocate. Uh, but this makes the point that they should be, and this little uh uh internacene warfare between these levels of distribution is of no interest to the consumers, and the consumers should never even be aware of it. They should just fix the problem. In terms of the ethics of the of the reviewers and the YouTubers and that sort of thing, uh it's it's just you know, it's it's just basic honesty. I don't care if somebody gets paid a million dollars to do a review, I don't care what they get paid. Just be transparent about it. Put it out there, be truthful about what the circumstances of the review are uh would be, and then trust consumers and readers and subscribers to draw their own conclusions about how that affects the credibility of the review. If if we just go on that basis, uh everybody's happy. But the the YouTube stuff uh seems to be the wild west, and I know there's a school of thought and a lot of truth to it that, well, consumers need to protect themselves. You ought to know better than to rely on these reviews. But I I would just say that consumers are not monolithic. You know, there's a group of people that watch this show and that subscribe to WBF and buy $500,000 systems, and they tend to be much more sophisticated and much more in the know and probably protect themselves better. But I think about the much larger group of consumers that probably never darkened the door of WBF or uh they're they're not that sophisticated. Maybe they're buying a $5,000 set of speakers, and the fact that they they don't know as much doesn't mean it's okay to take advantage of them. So I think there needs to be just some basic honesty. And if somebody's getting paid for a review and they don't disclose that, uh I mean, I think it's horrible, it's deceitful, it's dishonest, and it ought to be stopped. Greg.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

I'll I I it's more about the consumers. I want to, and I I like what you said there, Carrie. I want to ask Chad and Kerry because you wanted a consumer point of view. Did anything us three, Aaron, Steve, and and me, say today surprise you? Like you're kind of seeing this inside baseball aspect, the way we talk versus you talk. So that's that I'd like to just throw it back to them.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:20

Um, you know, no, I mean, I'll be honest with you. Uh I've I've listened to a lot of Aaron's videos a lot. I kind of gravitated towards him because I felt he went at it as like a scientist, and that kind of appeals to me. Uh, you know, when I was talking when I was talking about when I was looking at speakers, one of the reasons I actually looked at Kef was some of his reviews, but they were based off scientific measurements. Um I I think that you're gonna find you you need to you need to be able to kind of have some judgment of people's character. And so the things that y'all were saying today are are kind of things that I would expect out of you guys. And some of the things that I see on YouTube and on Facebook are kind of what I expect out of those guys. So nothing really shocks me anymore in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

Dr. Jack Oakley Brown of KF will be happy you said that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:11

I I would say I I don't think uh no, nothing was a a a big surprise to me. Uh there was not too long ago. I mean, I think I always knew about the loans and discounts and that sort of thing. Uh, if it is truly widespread that that uh there are reviewers that say if you don't pay me, you're not gonna get a good review. I guess I I shouldn't be naive. I put thousands of people in prison, dealt with a lot of really bad people, but uh they're not too long ago, it would not have occurred to me that that would have happened on a widespread basis. And if it does happen on a widespread basis, it's just it's just very disappointing. I mean, I I don't I don't know how you sleep at night.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:53

I think from the consumer's point of view, it's really comes down to the expression, who do you trust? And trust is a very delicate thing that once abused, you can never get back. Um, in the case of this suit to kind of loop it around back to there. Certainly trust issue is one of the central elements in this entire suit of entities deciding not to trust each other. And again, coming back to consumers, consumers need to look at uh their media sources, whether it's prints or videos or YouTube or tea leaves or whatever, and decide how trustworthy they are based on their truthiness and the amount of information they furnish that is useful to them.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:45

And what you said there is the way I see things. I don't see YouTube and and print and websites as different. Like they don't have different rules. Some common rules remain the same. And what you said, Gary, transparency.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

Do you have any additional thoughts on how uh this will influence the ethics and responsibilities of the various industry participants?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:07

Right. So as a as a consumer, I don't know that I would care, honestly. As just an average everyday consumer, as a reviewer, it has implications on me because now I get lumped into these kind of things that are being implied. Um, and that's why I'm here. That's why I was a little bit concerned. There's a lot of things going on too, you know. A lot of this in the comment section, Ron, when you posted this on your Facebook wall recently, yesterday, the day before, uh, people were saying YouTubers, YouTubers, YouTubers, right? Well, it was magazines before that, or you know, newsletters or zines at one point, even uh, and then it was forums, right? And now it's YouTube because YouTube is the most popular medium. But in between that, magazine and the YouTube was forums. People were doing the same thing on forums, they were just hiding their faces at the time. So now you see my face, and if you I don't know, if I say something that you don't like or you go buy a speaker that you think sucks, and I sound I said sounded great. I mean, you could punch me in my face because you know what I look like. Now it's it's not a screen name. I hope you don't do that. Have a lot of work here, but you could theoretically do that. So, as far as you know, just me being a consumer, I don't know that I don't know how much I care, but as a reviewer, it bothers me. Uh, very much in line with what Steve said here is uh once you lose your integrity, you can't get it back. And I try really hard to maintain my integrity. And when I see these kind of things come out, I start thinking immediately, well, what are all the things that I've done? Oh man, that one set of edifier speakers that cost 130 bucks for an Amazon and shit. I think I forgot to tell everybody that they told me I can keep those. You know what I mean? Like it's it's stuff like that. And I'm like, oh my God, you know, you try really hard to do the right thing. I keep saying this. You try really hard to keep doing the right thing, and when stuff like this happens, everybody wants to put you into the box. And I'm trying to help people understand that, yeah, there are some bad actors. Luckily, most of them are not bad actors, and the ones who are putting the little promotion label at the top or hashtag ad or hashtag sponsored, those are the ones who are being honest with you. You may not like that they're taking money, but at least they're telling you that they're taking money.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:15

That's that YouTube functionality where the person who creates the video can select for the little promotion flag to appear at the front of the video. Yep. That's you almost you almost never see those.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:29

Uh you almost never see it. And oh god, yeah. So there are, yeah, there are cases where I've seen email traffic come through where somebody said, You pay me $5,000, I'll review the CD player for you. Three weeks later, you see that CD player being reviewed, and it's like, oh man, you know, and I want to put them on blast. I'm not going to. Uh honestly, I'm a little bit scared and I just don't want to deal with all the stress that goes along with it, but I see it happen too. And that's unfortunate. But luckily, like I said, that's very few and far in between. I think a lot of people that are trying to be or that are on YouTube really just want to be influencers and they don't need to call themselves reviewers, they just need to call themselves hobbyists or passionate or whatever. But don't call yourself a reviewer unless you have technical prowess or some means of backing up what you say. Good point.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:15

I can imagine that manufacturers may look at the access allegations and think to themselves, well, wait a second, I engaged a distributor. I had no idea the distributor was doing these kinds of things with people to whom my products were being loaned for review. I can imagine additional provisions in contracts between manufacturers and distributors that either prohibit this kind of thing or restrict it or require disclosure.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:48

I agree. Good point. Good point.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:50

Topic 11. What do y'all predict will be the outcome of this case, Carrie?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:55

Um, you know, I've been a degenerate horse player for about 50 years, and I think I I'm not that bad at picking the winner of a horse race, but I don't know how to predict the winner of a lawsuit. I've won cases that uh I thought only a genius could win. I've lost cases that I thought only an idiot could lose. And so we're at the beginning of a very long road. I I would not predict a winner or loser. The things that I would predict with with a certain amount of uh confidence is that uh this is going to be, this will be a brawl, this will be very personal because of the nature of the allegations, it will be uh trench warfare, uh, it will be a miserable experience for these people and the lawyers involved uh when we get down the road, if it goes all the way, they may be customers for these new Wilson speakers we've heard so much about.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:51

Stephen. Yeah, um I don't do tea leaves, I only drink coffee at this point, so I have no idea. Um it's gonna whatever is gonna happen is gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:05

Aaron, any prediction you care to make?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:07

No, I have no prediction, but I do have a question for Carrie. So I was reading through the documentation here. Um, and and the one thing that I noticed is, and I don't know any other way to say it, but some of the claims I guess that were set out by Axis, I hate to say it, but they seem kind of childish. Like it was almost like, well, he said this thing about me, and and everybody knows that he's talking about me, right? Is that normal? Like, I mean, it just it you're reading through this stuff and it's supposed to be professional, and then it gets into like some third grade like stuff. And uh so is that normal to see that kind of scriptural?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:42

Well, yeah, I I think in terms of a defamation suit, that it there are some particular uh legal rules uh involved with that, because you you can defame somebody without actually calling their name, but if you claim that happened to you, that you were defamed without being called by name, you have to plead and prove that even though you weren't called by name, anybody hearing that could only have concluded that you were the subject of that defamatory statement. So they I think those they made those allegations to sort of plead some specific legal requirements for their client.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:24

Okay. Thanks. Chad, any prediction from you?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:28

You know, I don't I don't know what's gonna happen out of this, except the attorneys are gonna make a lot of money. Um I I think that if here's the thing, if this isn't the power of a study, if this is an end of one, if this is the only lawsuit, then two or three years from now it won't matter. But if this leads to uh a precedence where there's future lawsuits with other things, and then kind of the curtains been pulled back on these paid reviews and these affiliations with reviewers or influencers or what have you. If if it leads to real change and and kind of pulls everything back and scares some people, then yeah, I think it's a, as you said earlier, a watershed moment, or it's it's it's gonna lead to lead to kind of how people act. But if it's the only one and it's a one-off in two years, we will be like, remember when that was at one lawsuit, and we won't there'll be a new news cycle. So it's got to lead to other, it's it's almost has to lead to more lawsuits and and open more people up to being interrogated for what they're doing. And it and it has to make it, I tell you what, there it has to make it easier. You know, Aaron talked about how he's seen these these these cases where people are getting paid. It you I hate to say this, uh, I wouldn't survive in jail, but it's got to make it easier to be a whistleblower. There's got to be ways to to expose people that are doing these things. It's wrong. It's like Carrie said, there's people that, like I said, I had a mentor. There's people that don't have a mentor, and they rely on these. And there's people that save for a long time to buy a $5,000 system, and they rely on influencers or reviewers, and that's all they have. That's it. This is important to them. This is stuff that they've saved for for a long time. And we just kind of blow over sometimes a $20,000 amp or what have you. It matters, and and we need to do better. We need to do better, and we need to make it easier to make people do better.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:23

So, Doug, what do you think the lasting effect of this will be?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:27

Well, I gotta thank um Carrie and Chad. I I agree a hundred percent. You know, this is important for people, and that was a really good thing. And Carrie, I think uh Ron, it was great to have Carrie on because I listened to everything you said, Carrie, and it was long legal stuff, and all I could think the entire time was, man, I wouldn't want to be on either side of that. And I can only think that my prediction is somehow if they're wise, they'll make it go away, whether that is. So that's my prediction. I I I I can't imagine anybody wanting to drag that out.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:00

On a much lighter note, does anybody have any music recommendations tonight?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

I do. Oh, we'll let Steve go first. He was he was going, but go, Steve.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:08

Cindy Cindy Lauper, money changes everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:17

So okay, well, now I guess it's mine. So I watched the movie Michael with my family, and it's a greatly flawed biopic, hugely entertaining, and I think it should win an Academy Award for sound because if you watch the stadium thing with human nature, they made it sound like a stadium. They made realism out of that. I was shocked, but that's not my music recommendation. So I was looking up and speaking of legal things, they had to leave a lot of legal things out, but including Diana Ross, Michael's um affiliations with Diana Ross. So I was playing for my one of my sons some Diana Ross in the car, and I played the theme from Mahogany, which makes everybody cry. And then I played I'm Coming Out. Go look that up. Some old people are gonna, it's 1980. That drum track is unbelievable. I guess it was Tony Thompson, it's lauded as possibly the greatest intro, and there's a high-res version on the streaming service, and it sounds fantastic. It really jumped out. I was like, whoa, I gotta listen to this when we get home because this is this is really something.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:24

So um, Ron, I have two artists, uh, but four albums. So I love this artist right here. This is Jeff Parker, uh, ETA Ivy um Ivy Tet. It's a jazz, it's a kind of a small composition, it's really dynamic. Uh, this none such. They do great recordings. Uh, the reason I bought this one because they did one a couple of years ago that's probably one of my favorite kind of new modern jazz albums, and it's the same group and it's called The Way Out of Easy. Uh, I would highly suggest getting this. Listen to the track, and it's it's two LPs and it's one with one track per side. They're all like it's it's like 18 minutes a track. And I would listen to Chrome Dome, it'll really kind of make you listen to your system, uh, especially the dynamics and bass control. So these two on this artist, and then probably my favorites favorite artist that nobody really talks about is this is a new art, new uh release, and it's called The City Is Coming to Erase It All. The artist is Fink, F-I-N-K, phenomenal. He is if you have tubes and you love mid-range vocals, this is incredible. You gotta get this album. It just came out, it's amazing. Because where I got my start with him was this album right here that Fink did, and he did uh he did uh uh his own version of Black Hole Sun, crazy good, and he also did, I believe, David Bowie's uh Modern Love. I mean, if you like David Bowie and you like modern love, you can stream this, you can you can buy this album. It's a little bit pricier now, but and then Soundgarden, Black Hole Sun. I'm telling you, you can thank me later, thank Ron, whoever. But I would all four of those are phenomenal, both of those artists. That's my recommendation. And then one last thing is I don't get it. I got them, yeah. I don't get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:21

I don't get it either.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:23

Sorry, that's great, Chad. Thank you. Anyone else for music recommendations?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:27

I I do if you have time. Yes. Have uh Nat King Cole at the Blue Note Chicago, if you can see that. And uh there's a neat story behind that. This was uh Nat King Cole did a week at this uh little Blue Note Chicago jazz club in 1953. The owner of the club, who was a friend of Mr. Cole's, uh, was just a hobbyist, and he had a Scotch uh reel-to-reel recorder, put a couple of microphones up, just recorded some of those shows, and then those reel-to-reel tapes went in the drawer for decades. He died. His son inherited those tapes. His son happens to live in Lexington, Kentucky, and many decades later, 60, 70 years later, um, he realized these tapes, you know, were something special. And so he went to work on this. And I think they worked for years getting the rights straightened out. They finally got the tapes restored by some really smart people. They cut this album. Uh, the lacquers are by Kevin Gray, so you know it sounds good. It's incredible to me how good it sounds, uh, given the provenance of these tapes. And so the music is great, of course. But what I love about this is when you put this record on and you sit down, you're sitting in the Blue Note Jazz Club in Chicago in 1953, and you hear the crowd interactions and interacting with the crowd, and it and it just uh it gives me chills. Uh the next one is Roots by Jimmy Witherspoon and uh Ben Webster, probably the favorite uh album in my collection. It was made in 1962. It's uh kind of jazz-inflected blues and and just uh just uh wonderful. And uh then the last one, uh Rouge Ftob. I'm probably not saying that correctly because that's not a Kentucky name. Um but uh she is a number artist, it's very uh atmospheric music, great music for a dark room late at night, and some good Kentucky bourbon, and of course, all Kentucky bourbon is good, so highly recommended. And then just as a bonus, uh the very underrated genius, Warren Z Vaughn. Um this one's important for tonight because it has lawyers, guns, and money. Um what's the name of that album? Excitable Boy, his second album, I think. Terrific.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:01

Uh any final thoughts, gentlemen?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:04

Oh, I got I got a song for you. Private dancer, Tina Turner. Awesome kick drum at the very beginning.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:09

Written by Mark Knoffler, yeah, dude, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:12

That's crazy, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:14

She sings better, it sounds better singing it than he would.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:17

Yeah, no, she definitely does. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:19

Is it is there a better drum intro, though, than uh Ben Halen 1984? What is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:25

Uh Husky Two So the Sticks, like uh the snare, that's fine. There's not enough, there's not enough guttural kick for me for that song, though. I just like I want more gutter, you know. There's a great video on it.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:35

Have you seen that, Aaron? The video about you know, some people thought it was like a motorcycle, some people thought there's a video on how he really actually did it.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:43

And uh no, I don't think I've seen that. It's not a Rick Beato video, is it?

SPEAKER_04 1:21:47

No, no, this is this was something else in the history of that song, and there's so many conspiracies about how it really came about, but it is a great, like 18-minute video to watch. But okay, I love that intro.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:59

Gentlemen, thank you very much for discussing this complex issue with us tonight. Great job. We will see you this coming Wednesday for the regularly scheduled Hi Fi5 episode, July 8th. Have a great evening. Bye bye. Bye bye, bye.