[Yoga]

I agree that in many cases end-users are prone to snake oil advertising, and in the case of the async advertising issue, it hasn't done both party any favours.

 

[axw]

Svyr, 
 
you are very right that somebody made a mistake here: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/resonessence/4.html
 
but aren't you exaggerating as to the rest of your conclusions? I went through their Burson review long before your revelations and had an impression that it was USB implementation that was mostly criticized. If I read things like, it is not clear what these folks (Burson) can bring to the digital table and great deliberation not to broadcast details of its implementation -- this tells me 6moons is very cautious, perhaps even suspicious, of what Burson did (not) with USB. There's no claim that 160D has async USB here: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/burson5/1.html
 
 

 

[wushuliu]

Meh, this is a tempest in a teapot and an excuse to stand on a soapbox to declare that all lemmings should now follow a different piper. If someone is suspicious of the relationship between a product being covered/review/displayed and an advertiser I suggest they avoid all movies, television, magazines, and the internet; for all our sakes I suggest starting with the latter.

 

[svyr]

Svyr, 
 
you are very right that somebody made a mistake here: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/resonessence/4.html
 
but aren't you exaggerating as to the rest of your conclusions? I went through their Burson review long before your revelations and had an impression that it was USB implementation that was mostly criticized. If I read things like, it is not clear what these folks (Burson) can bring to the digital table and great deliberation not to broadcast details of its implementation -- this tells me 6moons is very cautious, perhaps even suspicious, of what Burson did (not) with USB. There's no claim that 160D has async USB here: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/burson5/1.html
 
 

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/burson5/5.html

Yea, nooo, they did call it asynchronous... Be nice and follow all the links/read the whole reviews and thread, lol... No mistake. Especially considering they just removed the showcase ad with asynchronous usb in red lol... Definitely no mistake.

Final comments & suggestions: The HA160D can develop hum with unshielded interconnects which won't be a ground loop and can be remedied with properly shielded cables. By request Burson can lower the output impedance and overall circuit gain to adapt the machine to specific applications. Overall circuit gain is fully sufficient to stand in for active preamps and drive amplifiers directly. During the review period, my OSX 10.6.4 iMac could not recognize the 24/96 potential of the asynchronous USB input.

and the other DAC compared to burson:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/resonessence/4.html

Burson Audio HA160D. With a twin-toroid linear power supply, discrete custom voltage regulators, discrete op amps, a stepped resistor volume control, 10V max output, BB1793 DAC, 24/96 async USB and rich class A bias, this underdog with no street cred proved so strong on 'analog' values that none of the digitally perhaps more advanced challengers could reset my lust button.

Both still clearly refer to it as having async USB ... This is not suspicion from 6moons, this is misleading advertising

Meh, this is a tempest in a teapot and an excuse to stand on a soapbox to declare that all lemmings should now follow a different piper. If someone is suspicious of the relationship between a product being covered/review/displayed and an advertiser I suggest they avoid all movies, television, magazines, and the internet; for all our sakes I suggest starting with the latter.

citing the general case and proclaiming it absurd, does not make the specific case here and the audio industry any less suss. Not tos say TV/Movie industry isn't somewhat too

 

[bfwiat]

I contacted Burson 2 days ago asking what their USB implementation was, and received this response :
 
 
"Our USB input is control via Tenor TE7022L chip set. It works in adaptive mode with its own low jitter clock. It will detect and correct any jitter error sent along via the main USB bus. This process will ensure better signal integrity compare to the traditional Synchronous USB mode."
 
 
So I do not feel that Burson is misleading customers, in fact that seems like a technically accurate description of the technology implemented by Burson in the HA160D.
I do agree that 6moons certainly published incorrect information, which as you say is being rectified. . . 
 
Perhaps you should edit the title of this thread to :
6Moons was naughty about the Burson

 
 

 

[svyr]

I contacted Burson 2 days ago asking what their USB implementation was, and received this response :
 
 
"Our USB input is control via Tenor TE7022L chip set. It works in adaptive mode with its own low jitter clock. It will detect and correct any jitter error sent along via the main USB bus. This process will ensure better signal integrity compare to the traditional Synchronous USB mode."
 
 
So I do not feel that Burson is misleading customers, in fact that seems like a technically accurate description of the technology implemented by Burson in the HA160D.
I do agree that 6moons certainly published incorrect information, which as you say is being rectified. . . 
 
Perhaps you should edit the title of this thread to :
6Moons was naughty about the Burson

 
 

Currently - maybe not, the question is were they to begin with? Stating it's TE7022L and adaptive mode when it's been mulled over for a long time is expected... Would've been nice in published form on their site/product page when it was released.

Doesn't explain why burson earlier replied that it was async, or the ad they purchased(?) on 6moons that was saying it was async in red (I somehow doubt it was a free ad 6moons decided to make because they want to make babies with burson). Those things certainly lead me to believe they intended to mislead and did indeed succeed for some. Perhaps they'd like to explain, instead of hiding behind agreeable fans defending them?

 

[Bostonears]

 

 
I happen to trust the guys at 6 Moons, they are a group of enthusiasts who have been following their passion for years (like many on this forum, HeadphoneAddict and project86 spring to mind), and are hence independent (they all work, money from the site is most likely incidental). It's not like What Hi-Fi, or other mainstream magazines, who have wages, office space, staff insurance, bonuses and the tax man (and the rest) to pay each month.

 

 
You're missing the point; having a business model that depends (heavily) on the income stream of advertising (i.e. mainstream magazines) is entirely different from getting some help with hosting/maintenance costs of an enthusiast website, who's contributors have independent personal income streams.
 
In the terms of the business finance model, we're talking a large corporation vs. a personal website. The difference is night and day, seriously. No comparison whatsoever.
 
Hence, one should not quickly jump on the bandwagon and judge the enthusiast site with the assumptions attached/associated with profit-driven corporations in the same industry.

Srajan Ebaen, who reviewed the Burson 160D, is the sole OWNER of 6moons. Ultimately, he is the recipient of the advertising revenue. The 6moons site even states that Srajan "currently derives his sole income from ad sponsor support on 6moons. " If ever there was a potential conflict of interest, it's right there. In most well-respected publications, there is a firewall between the editorial and advertising departments. Clearly, that's not the case at 6moons. Make no mistake, Srajan is in the audio business, he is not an enthusiast customer looking in from the outside.
 
However, I don't believe for one second that Srajan would have written such good things about the product if he didn't really love the way it sounds. And I don't have reason to think that Burson "bought" the review per se. More likely that Burson decided to advertise on the site because it contains good reviews of its equipment. Nevertheless, the situation poses valid concerns about editorial independence.

 

[wushuliu]

The irony of this thread is ridiculous.

 

[Bostonears]

 

The irony of this thread is ridiculous.

I agree, given that it's on a web site that posts reviews and takes ad revenue.

 

[n3rdling]

Except we don't profit from generating page views. 

 

[svyr]

 
 

Srajan Ebaen, who reviewed the Burson 160D, is the sole OWNER of 6moons. Ultimately, he is the recipient of the advertising revenue. The 6moons site even states that Srajan "currently derives his sole income from ad sponsor support on 6moons. " If ever there was a potential conflict of interest, it's right there. In most well-respected publications, there is a firewall between the editorial and advertising departments. Clearly, that's not the case at 6moons. Make no mistake, Srajan is in the audio business, he is not an enthusiast customer looking in from the outside.
 
However, I don't believe for one second that Srajan would have written such good things about the product if he didn't really love the way it sounds. And I don't have reason to think that Burson "bought" the review per se. More likely that Burson decided to advertise on the site because it contains good reviews of its equipment. Nevertheless, the situation poses valid concerns about editorial independence.

bought - probably not, sanctioned incorrect facts in it by linking to it from the product page - maybe. Further sanctioned it and cast doubt on both 6moons and its own credibility by buying a showcase ad with the incorrect facts in red as a marketing point - even more so...I don't think Burson is clean in this case either.

 

[Yoga]

Quote:

Srajan Ebaen, who reviewed the Burson 160D, is the sole OWNER of 6moons. Ultimately, he is the recipient of the advertising revenue. The 6moons site even states that Srajan "currently derives his sole income from ad sponsor support on 6moons. " If ever there was a potential conflict of interest, it's right there. In most well-respected publications, there is a firewall between the editorial and advertising departments. Clearly, that's not the case at 6moons. Make no mistake, Srajan is in the audio business, he is not an enthusiast customer looking in from the outside.
 
However, I don't believe for one second that Srajan would have written such good things about the product if he didn't really love the way it sounds. And I don't have reason to think that Burson "bought" the review per se. More likely that Burson decided to advertise on the site because it contains good reviews of its equipment. Nevertheless, the situation poses valid concerns about editorial independence.

I stand corrected, thank you for the clarification, in which I agree.
 

 

[bfwiat]

I agree with the conflict of interest . . .however, welcome to 2011 . . .
 
APPLE gives away hundreds, if not thousands of free iPads to newspaper and magazine journalists to then review and keep . . .it's called marketing (and I hate it).
 
So 6Moons definitely has a vested interest in deriving money from sponsors . ..
 . .. . so do most on-line sites, as do a lot (if not nearly all of the HiFi magazines) . . .can anyone say  What HiFi ?
 
 
However, I do believe that Srajan really does think highly of the Burson, and I do believe it is a great product (perhaps not a Zodiac beater . . but none the less pretty solid for it's price.
. . .by the way, another headphone site also quite often mentions the Burson (and indeed reccomends it).  
review is here : (http://www.headfonia.com/burson-ha-160d-review/) . 
 
 
 
Also, just to be complete about the quote from the 6Moons website :
 
Srajan Ebaen: Prior to launching 6moons, Srajan worked in audio retail, then as national sales manager for Mesa Engineering's hifi division, Meadowlark Audio and Soliloquy Loudspeaker Company. 6moons is wholly owned by him. He currently derives his sole income from ad sponsor support on 6moons. If such ad sponsors lack their own graphic department, their ad contracts include free banner and ad generation on this site. They provide copy and images, 6moons builds their banners and HTML page ads for this site. 
 
 
 

 

[Bostonears]

 

Except we don't profit from generating page views. 

Depends on who you mean by "we". Jude evidently does profit from the advertising here. Not to imply that he has any bad intentions (this is purely a hypothetical situation), but if he were to write a glowing review of a product made by an advertiser, and that review turned out to contain factual errors (perhaps even because the manufacturer supplied him with erroneous info), and the review didn't get corrected even after the error was pointed out, and the advertiser continued to highlight the erroneous info in its ads on the site and link to the erroneous review from its own web page,... it would basically be a similar situation as what happened at 6moons. Similar, but not identical, because Head-fi is mostly a forum site, so only a tiny portion of all the page views come from Jude's reviews, whereas 6moons if first and foremost a review site, and Srajan is clearly its most high profile reviewer. Nevertheless, it would raise some concerns if it happened here. Any review site is only as good as the credibility of its reviewers.
 

 

[Bostonears]

 

 
APPLE gives away hundreds, if not thousands of free iPads to newspaper and magazine journalists to then review and keep . . .it's called marketing (and I hate it).

To maintain journalistic integrity, many newspaper publishers and some magazines have policies that prohibit their journalists from keeping products provided for review or even accepting anything at all of value.
 
With many (perhaps most) audio products, reviewers are not given the products for free, but the reviewers are frequently offered the opportunity to purchase their review units at reduced prices. Audio magazines (unlike newspapers) typically permit their reviewers to accept such discounts, partly because a lot of the equipment is really expensive stuff (neither the reviewer nor the magazine could afford to purchase every piece of gear they review at full price), and partly because it benefits the publication for the reviewers to keep a lot of equipment on hand for comparison when they are producing reviews of other products. (Of course, that begs the question about why the equipment is so expensive to begin with, but that's another story.) The arrangement obviously benefits the manufacturers too, and that's exactly why many audiophiles are suspicious of glowing reviews of products that are advertised in the publications doing the reviewing.