Now children, if you can't flame each other without frying the poor, helpless posters, we'll have to take your torches away! Now I bet you can start a lovely thread in the cave where y'all can engage in some sophomoric name-calling, and hold your breath until your faces turn blue, or you can increase your awareness that this is a forum, where people of diverse views can share information and express viewpoints.
Sometimes, people say things they would never write, and sometimes we can all fall into the trap of writing things we would never say. Because you have to wade through this bandwidth to get to each others' throats, you have to get my input. I was ignoring this until it became a 3-way.
Golly, Chessrock called the VTB-1 a piece of junk. That was untrue, and he apologized for it, I think, honestly. Alan, I've read your posts and done some business with you, and I think I understand in this case. The VTB-1 is one of your children, and the muscle bum just kicked sand in his face. This makes you mad, and you want to defend, and possibly even avenge this wrong.
Your child is all grown up now, and it must defend itself. I've read a lot of material, and your preamp has been described as a piece of junk, nothing special, and as a revolution in budget preamps that raises the bar for all the competition. Only the preamp can prove any of these statements true or false. Chessrock, you'd be a lot more helpful if you made design and feature suggestions that would make the preamp more attractive to you. I'm sure Alan would like nothing better than to sell you a preamp, except possibly having you come back and say that it was destined to be a studio staple and a classic.
Chessrock, Alan, and Tom, y'all need to think about how the things you write make people feel, just like things you say, because I believe you are all reasonable and competent people who could do better stuff by sharing your opinions and your knowledge than baiting each other. But this is about a preamp, isn't it? I believe the VTB-1, when the dust settles, will be found to be a useable pre that is competitive at it's price point, and is versatile, due to fairly well thought out hybrid (tewb) design. I'm betting it is cleaner and quieter than the M Audio unit. But Chessrock's right, of course. Only rigorous comparisons under controlled conditions with double-blind tests and adequate controls could ultimately yield the truth, but then one of you will screw it up by just liking the sound of one pre or another. Meanwhile, somebody with no axe to grind will have made all of these cheap pres better, and used them together to make great sound, while other people are fighting over marketing tactics.-Richie
For a minute there I thought you were trying to get personal. I don't go that way Mr. Cram, so maybe you should look elsewhere...
