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Whatever happened to REAL "owners manuals" ???

Remember the "good old days" when products actually came with an owner's manual? You know what i'm talking about, an actual "booklet" that was filled with facts, figures, ideas and explanations as to why the product was built and designed the way that it was. Some of the info included in these manuals was actually very informative and educational to say the least. Most of the products that i see nowadays come with a few sheets ( if that ) that read like advertising copy and a registration form for warranty purposes. The products that do come with manuals ( Pre-Pro's, etc... ) are sometimes so poorly written that you have to read them 5+ times before you can figure out how to do something. Obviously, the "art" of writing a good manual has been lost from what i can tell.

With that in mind, what companies and products still offer high quality manuals with good info and background on the products? To make this interesting and possibly give some of the "old timers" a chance to reminisce about some of their favourites from yester-year, let's include older gear that had really outstanding manuals. I'll start off with a few that come to mind.

The first one isn't really a manual so much as it was the "flyers" that came with the unit when purchased AND the sales literature that you could get at the dealer. It is the old Audio General Incorporated ( AGI ) 511 preamp. If you read these "glossy flyers", you new exactly how & why every component was selected and why David went with the circuit design that he did. You also knew exactly what the spec's were and why the designer wanted to achieve that specific level of performance in each given area. To be quite honest, this piece of gear and the associated literature that AGI put out back in the 70's was HIGHLY influential to my way of thinking aka my "audio thought process". To this day, i still consider it a good and educational piece of reading material.

The second that comes to mind is the owners manual for the Acoustic Research model 9 floorstanding speaker. Not only does AR go into depth as to how the speaker works and why it was designed the specific way that it was, they even provide comparative graphs for various room placements. Not only are spec's provided using the common "audiophile" standards for the USA, they also provided spec's for DIN standards. These are quite different from what we here in the USA are used to seeing. Not only did they put a lot of effort into designing this 48 page manual, AR put forth a HUGE amount of effort into designing this speaker. If you read the July 04 Stereophile, they make mention of AR's "seminal study" of cabinet research and radiation characteristics in the article entitled "Cutting Corners" by Keith Howard. Much of the data that AR gathered while doing that research went into the design of these speakers and can be found in very condensed and simplified form in this manual. Even with 25 years on the clock, these speakers are still HIGHLY influential and this manual is still HIGHLY educational. As influential as this design was, it's too bad that many of the manufacturers try to copy certain aspects of the design without doing the associated research. If they did, they would see that the way that they impliment some of the aspects that they copied is not true to the original and is actually detrimental to performance.

My third contribution is going to be the owners manual for the Eminent Technologies ET II tonearm and the along with the additional booklet for their optional fluid damping system. Bruce included gobs of background and technical info interspersed with the basic installation and notes on how to use the product, making it both user friendly and educational. Between these two "manuals", you end up with about 75 pages of information about tonearm operation.

My fourth and last "nomination" is for early Perreaux products. While not the most "adventurous" in terms of information included, they gave background on what specific specs were, what those spec's meant and why Peter strived to achieve the design goals that he chose.

Any comments or additions from the peanut gallery??? : ) Sean
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sean
inpepinnovations1e75
395 posts
 
Since audiophiles are selecting their equipment according to how they sound, what good would properly written manuals containing facts and specifications be? And, who is going to understand that stuff? When manuals are supplied, they are mostly to help the purchaser justify his/her purchase.
CROWN produced excellent manuals, but then its equipment didn't sound good, did it. :-)
rcprince
3,073 posts
 
1. Duntech speakers--at least when I got mine back in the late 80s, they had a manual with graphs, and a text similar to John Dunlavy's manual for the Dunlavy speakers.

2. Audio Logic has a very good manual for its DACs.

3. Day Sequerra has/had a very good manual with plenty of information about the FM broadcast medium, a white paper and a bunch of other items.

Manual writing does seem like a lost art these days, though, in what seems to be the majority of cases.

Nice to see you back, Sean!

Marco, come on now, you plug one end of the interconnect into the output jack of the item sending the signal, and one into the input jack of the component receiving the signal. You use the box to store cigars, rare coins, stamps, whatever sex toys you want... Who needs a stinkin' manual for that??? :^)
fatparrot
1,314 posts
 
Have you seen the manuals for Mid-fi AV receivers? Remember, most of the people buying this equipment are not audio gurus, and the instruction manuals read like an advanced calculus math book! I helped my brother set up his home theater, and I was plowing through the manuals for 2-3 hours reading instructions trying to integrate everything properly, and troubleshoot some glitches. Probably 70% of the features offered on his AV amp (Yamaha) won't be used by most purchasers. And programming the remote was a project in itself!

I have also noticed that many Japanese products have manuals with confusing, and horribly laid out operating sequences (programming flow charts) written with very poor English syntax. If I had a multi-billion dollar corporation that exported a large market share to English speaking countries, I would make sure that I had translators fluent with the subtleties of both the English and Japanese language! I would also divide the instruction manual into three parts: basic, intermediate, and advanced operations. I would also make sure that my index was complete and ACCURATE!
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Crown to my knowlege provides enough information for the consumer to figure out its sound at different conditions whether it sounds good or not...
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
I've realy always wondered why in US almost impossible to buy an iron pan: anywhere you go to shop for kitchen goods you can only see different kinds of teflon coated and "stick-free" ones!
Well, I hate even the taste(certainly compared to the iron pan) of anything cooked on the teflon surface whether it's stick-proof or not. It's near-impossible to prepare a good steak inside your kitchen if you have teflon coated one...

An iron pan for average US consumer would be a disaster if no proper manual is applied preferably 20...30 pages on how maintain an iron pan so nothing is sticking on its surface duing cooking and even despite all measures taken they will still return back to the customer service with money-back requests... Hence, they're only for sale by the warehouses that supply restaurant equipment.

Why spend extra for manuals? Most of a consumer will not read them thus the market on such products will not grow sufficiently among the non-professional buyers.

Do most of high-fi consumers do the homework before assembling an equipment: matching speaker impedance curve(s), efficiency/sencitivity to an amp, matching input/output amp/preamp/source? I guess a few out of many...
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