What's the criteria used for determining shipping order for the Source or any other product for that matter?
I'm in for 1 Source SE, 1 Vi Tube DAC SE, 1 Wave Titanium and 2 Wave 64's. It's not an insignificant amount invested. I know a number of other "domestic" backers, who've also invested heavily who do frequent these boards and would have posted something had they received anything. They have been here on these and your own board, myself included, from the beginning, and I'm talking the first Geek Out on Kickstarter, and we haven't heard one word from any of them regarding the Source or Vi Tube DAC. Junker was the only one that received his Vi Tube DAC, quite a long time ago, and posted a great review of it. If you were in our position, how would you feel? It's extremely difficult to stay optimistic and maintain confidence in LH Labs based on performance to date.
I have no doubt I will receive the products but as I've stated before and will state again, give us honest, relevant (not vague) information as to when we might receive our product(s) and we might be a little more amenable. This diatribe is not directed at you personally nor is it a reflection on you. We can see you're attempting to work with the community but if LH Labs wants our trust again, earn it!
As everyone here should know, I'm one of you guys. I've been on this forum long before I ever thought about joining LH Labs. I just happen to be a fan, and I was worried about the state of the company, and the opportunity to join was there, so I jumped. And I get paid to work with an audio company. Pretty sweet deal. So I will always try to work with the community -- that's part of why I was hired. I was already in it.
That said, I understand absolutely everything you're saying and I understand the frustration. You guys have every right to be pissed. I've never tried to make excuses for previous bad behavior, even though it may come across that way to some people. But I do have to defer to LH when I'm trying to figure out what the actual story is behind several of these aspects. But again, I do press Larry to answer questions, I let him know what you guys are thinking, I explain to him the general vibe of the updates and community. I just spearheaded a very long, pretty intense discussion over LH changing some key internal structure points with Larry.
The problem I have and that Larry has, is that based on past (negative) LH history, it's very hard for him to come out into the forums because he gets beat up so much when he tries to explain or answer questions. So I guess the question that all these communities have to ask themselves is: do you/they want Larry to interact with you personally, and how are you going to treat him? Are you going to go for negative, personal attacks, or keep it somewhat professional and courteous (note: I'm not saying play softball). He's extremely gunshy and so I have to be out here instead. Just something to think about. I've asked him to come out and answer questions and encouraged him to be more involved. It's pretty hard though to do, and I'm not saying he's blameless --- but I think some of the (understandable) anger from some of the people is completely over the top and hurts discussions more than it helps.
I was even accused on IGG of planting false pictures of Vi Dac chassis units as a way of "deceiving" backers, which is absolutely insane crazy. Like I was sitting around, doing my best Barnaby from Babes in Toyland impression, scheming and plotting and putting a plan into action for tricking people. These types don't help anything, they just hurt relations.
Anyway, you can take my advice or not --- it's just my observation. And I think everyone involved has extremely fair points in this situation.
I have another list of questions for him, that I'm working on. I'm trying to get all those answers. Lots of (apparent) miscommunication (putting that lightly) happened within LH Labs before I got here, so I'm trying to clear up any stories or misconceptions or inaccurate information that was previous floating around. If anyone is wondering why it takes so long to get answers a lot of the times --- look, we're still working to change the culture around LHL itself, so there's still issues. Larry is also traveling all of the time, so there's a delay there. It's something I'm trying to work through, so I appreciate everyone's patience in these matters. And I'm talking to him about making the Q&A a more regular feature, hopefully.
There was also some concern (rightfully so) from backers over their warranties expiring before the tech team could work on them. I am actively working on something with Larry to address those concerns. I have a pretty good idea of what it will end up looking like but it's not 100% certain, so until I get total confirmation, don't anyone panic about existing warranties.