Dunlavy SC IV or Merlin VSM M

I think it would be great if more manufacturers commented about their products. Manufacturers know more about their products than reviewers, users, or even dealers. Do manufacturers have an agenda? Sure, but it is an obvious bias that is easily understood. Forum participants are capable of figuring out when they are being hyped. Objective opinions, if that is what the truly are, are great, but highly informed opinions are at least as valuable.

I totally agree with onhwy. It wouldn't bother me one bit if the owner /passion behind a product was so in touch with their customers that they answered one of my threads about their product, especially if it was used and they weren't making a profit of the sale.

Bravo, Bobby. I had my eye on those same merlins, money permitting I may have bought them myself; after seeing your customer service and passion about your product, that sold me a little more on Merlins.

For those of you criticizing Bobby, would you rather an owner of a company just not participate in threads regarding their products? Would you rather they just sit behind a desk, punching numbers worrying about bottom lines? Are you upset with George because he actively participates in one of the longest threads here on Audiogon about one of the best preamps / bargains in hi-fi? I'm not, and quite honestly, I choose to only do business from here on out with people like Bobby from Merlin, George from lightspeed, Frank at Signal cable, Paul from Clear Day. These are all people who stand behind, and care about their products AND customers. Call a company like audioquest, or b&w, see who answers the phone. The owner / president? I think not. They're too "busy" drinking daiquiris on the beach.

rrog, what does it feel like to shoot yourself in the foot?
does it hurt?

"I'm not sure what is so genius about a simple 2 way speaker costing more than $13,000."

how is the op ever going to get an "objective opinion" from you when you feel this way? the op clearly mentioned that the footprint of the d was too large and they were out of business and that is why he bought the merlins. he said he enjoyed my input but it was not my input that made him purchase the vsms.

at least with me you can either take what i say or leave it. but when a supposed comsumer comes loaded with a hidden agenda, who is to know.

have you ever heard the master vsm? you haven't even got the slightest idea of why i have worked on it for the last 20 years do you?

there are one ways and two ways that sell for over double the master vsm's cost. pick on them as well.

and some of the simplest (as you call it) things on this planet are the most difficult to engineer. but when finished they are stellar performers because of their lack of complication.

bobby

Okay, there's the 'I'm Bobby Palkovic and you're not' tone. This thread is officially over.

Bobby said:

some of the simplest (as you call it) things on this planet are the most difficult to engineer. but when finished they are stellar performers because of their lack of complication.

which is very much in the same vein as a quotation attributed to Einstein from a lecture ca. 1933:

"It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." or as it is often paraphrased:
"make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler"

A similar thought is found in a quote often attributed to Mark Twain:

"I'm sorry that this letter is so long but I didn't have time to write a shorter one."

but which apparently was first recorded as from Pascal ca 1630; translated into english as:

"I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter."

Time to give it a rest, rrog. The Merlins are very good products and many of us here really like the fact that we can get feedback from designers and manufacturers. As others have noted, there is clearly no "hidden" agenda when they post and w the expanding prevalence of the direct to consumer model, it's a very valuable source of information. FWIW, I own a pair but they have been supplanted in my main rig. The Merlins replaced the more complicated Vandy 3A sigs, and were in turn replaced by higher eff "cross-overless" speakers that are even simpler (and more expensive) than the Merlins. YMMV.