Ties? My God, I've probably got "ties" to almost everybody in this industry: ART Digitech, JBL, Oberheim, Gibson, Peavey, Fender, Jackson, Charvel, Akai, Weber, FMR, Great River, Manley, Rickenbacker,St. Louis Music, Eminence, Roland, Morley, - I could keep going for a lot longer.
Yeah, we did bang heads when I first got here, but I recognized that you weren't trashing the RNC, but I didn't feel you had all the facts right about it either. I would have been just as stubborn about
the dbX 166 if someone starting hitting on that, or comparing it to a 3630.
It had nothing to do with ties to any company - it was just that I really put the RNC thru its paces on a borrowed Neutrik test rig when I first bought it, and it exceeded its specs by a ridiculously wide margin.
But I don't work for any company these days - I'm pretty much retired. So if I comment on something, my paycheck ain't hanging in the balance.
When I tested the stuff from the Sound Room, I found some Oktava that really sucked and said so, along with their highly touted Elation line, but I'm still friends with Taylor Johnson. When I tested the Marshall stuff, I found two mics in their whole line that I thought were amazing values, two mics that flat out sucked, and the rest were ok, but I'm still friends with Brent Casey.
Right now, I'm looking at the Studio Projects mics, and I'll post my impressions of them shortly. But the big difference is, I don't work for any of these people. And I don't do reviews for a living or for magazines.
You work 40 hours+ a week for dbx. I don't work for Mark. I'm rewriting his manual (for free) for two reasons; cuz it sucks; and cuz he doesn't have the time to do it, nor does he have the extra money to hire someone to write it. And I'm gonna point out why it's stereo only, not dual mono, and why it doesn't have noise gates. Mark can use that, or delete it - it's his company, but at least I have the freedom to write it as I see it. I'm also helping Russ (at audioMIDI) redo his website - for free. He's an old friend from my Acoustic Control days.
Fortunately, at my age, I no longer hafta be all that careful anymore. But at the same time, I have some confidences I can't betray. After so many years in manufacturing, I can usually guess (within a couple of bucks) what it costs someone to ship something out the door, so I'm privy to a lot of actual parts and labor cost information, which most consumers just wouldn't understand, since there's so much more involved in marketing a product. Parts and labor is just a part of the actual costs.
As far as you doing a review of a dbx product, I have no problem with that, since I know you to be honest and ethical, and because you work for dbx, you are unable to really comment harshly on things that may piss you off about some part of the unit. But, in general, I know you'll point out the things you really like, and it's my responsablity to read between the lines to see what areas you skipped over, or avoided direct comment on.
We'd LOVE ya for an MP and RNMP comparison of the new DBX 
