New Raven Audio CeLest Monitor coming this fall.

Since my initial post, I received a nastygram text message from James Connell at Raven where he goes so far as to question my integrity and even my military service. It is really quite unfortunate, but it only serves to confirm my summation of his character

Hey everyone, this is James Connell with Raven Audio. Firstly, I want everyone to know that Raven Audio is extremely pro-Military. Both of Dave Thompson’s (Raven Audio Founder) parents were military. My father was Airforce, my uncle was as well, and many of my extended family members are and were in the Military. Two of my closest lifelong friends were Arm and Navy. As many know I have been involved in music production my whole life, but I have also owned a television production firm as well. About ten years ago I hosted a dinner in Dallas honoring WWII veterans and prior to that filmed them telling their stories. This was one of the most meaningful things I feel like I have ever done. If anyone is interested, message me and I will send you links to these wonderful men’s stories I produced. I am delving into this information because I want everyone out there to know how much I personally love and respect the military and people who have served.

As a company, Raven Audio gets many solicitations every day via email and phone for all sorts of scams. Occasionally, the stories are by claimed Military members. I am in a constant state of hyperawareness of these issues because we are bombarded every day and week with various scams. Having said that, I do believe that Erik was most likely representing himself as serving in the Military even though through all the communications he offered no proof of it. This communication was over a several-month period. I never at any point told him we would not honor the discount on the amplifier. The problem was over a new speaker that we are coming out with that I wanted to be a surprise to the public. We have had several versions of the prototype. When we first spoke, I mentioned I could sell him the prototype for s specific price. A couple of months passed before Erik called me. During that time we rethought the speaker. The first version was a small bookshelf. We wound up with a larger bookshelf that we believe is more marketable because it has enough authoritative low bass to not need a subwoofer. When Erik called me a week ago and said he was ready to go, and mentioned the prices I could not sell him the newer version for the price quoted two months before. That is how this got started, It was not until after the call that I put it all together in my own mind. I deal with twenty to fifty customer phone calls per week and we discuss many things. Many people talk about buying and then do not call me for several months and I have to be reminded of what we talked about. Sometimes things change during those spans of time and we are not able to do what we could have done when I made the original offer. When Erik sent me an email listing out what we had talked about, I was simply acknowledging that what I had told him initially was true. When he called me last week, the conversation went sideways when he told me he was a lawyer and gave me a lecture on a verbal contract and then threatened to smear us on social media. Within a day I was getting emails from fake email accounts accusing me of being a “Liberal Activist” and dishonoring military veterans. I then started getting emails showing long diatribes being posted on all our videos on YouTube, of course, I deleted them because I feel like this is a ridiculous and dishonorable way to handle this situation. If Erik would have simply taken my phone calls the evening that this happened, I was prepared to sell him the speakers at our loss after thinking it through because once I put myself in his position, I could understand why he was frustrated. I still will sell him the amp with the discount and the original smaller bookshelf speakers that we discussed and I showed him via FaceTime a couple of months ago. I am open to suggestions.

Erik, If you want to have a reset, call me and we can put this behind ourselves and work something out to make you happy.

All the best,
James