Accugroove site update.....

[chucko58]

I know Mark Wright, and IMHO he's a really good guy. But he's not a technical guy at all. I doubt that he would actually intend to mislead people. I think this indicates that sales and marketing people and engineering people in a company need to keep well in touch with each other.

As of a year ago (haven't visited their shop recently), AccuGroove consisted of Mark and his business partner, and some hired help for assembly duties. (Some of the woodworking is contracted out.) I have frequently seen Mark assembling cabinets himself. So in that sense it's not a big enough operation that the "sales/marketing" types don't speak to the "engineering" types; they are the same two people.

My personal experience with Mark has been stellar. He definitely knows his speaker cabinets, and he's a real stand-up guy. The product speaks for itself. I'm still frankly puzzled by the AccuSwitch gaffe.

 

[billfitzmaurice]

As of a year ago AccuGroove consisted of Mark and his business partner, and some hired help for assembly duties...in that sense it's not a big enough operation that the "sales/marketing" types don't speak to the "engineering" types; they are the same two people. My personal experience with Mark has been stellar. He definitely knows his speaker cabinets, and he's a real stand-up guy. The product speaks for itself. I'm still frankly puzzled by the AccuSwitch gaffe.

It's been suggested before that whoever came up with the circuit simply did not have sufficient engineering background to realize that it was a bogus design. Perhaps the problem with AGs engineering department is that it doesn't exist.

 

[seamonkey]

Just a simple test of the cabinet would have prevented this whole issue. So it's a Quality Assurance issue.

 

[billfitzmaurice]

Just a simple test of the cabinet would have prevented this whole issue. So it's a Quality Assurance issue.

Absolutely, part of the testing process with any speaker design is to run both an SPL chart and an impedance sweep, which in this case should have included an impedance sweep with the switch in both positions. The results of the impedance sweeps that both Pete and Bassplayer ran showed that the switch doesn't work, so it begs the question as to whether AG ever ran an impedance sweep. The possibility that the in-house level of expertise at AG isn't sufficient to know the difference between DC resistance and impedance rather boggles the mind. But it's far from impossible, anyone with a middling understanding of loudspeakers and WinISD on their hard drive can come up with adequate loudspeaker cabinet designs despite not really knowing what they are doing, as the program does 90% of the work. Getting the last 10% right is where there's no substitute for experience.

 

[Petebass]

Getting the last 10% right is where there's no substitute for experience.

Amen!

 

[steveksux]

As of a year ago AccuGroove consisted of Mark and his business partner, and some hired help for assembly duties...in that sense it's not a big enough operation that the "sales/marketing" types don't speak to the "engineering" types; they are the same two people. My personal experience with Mark has been stellar. He definitely knows his speaker cabinets, and he's a real stand-up guy. The product speaks for itself. I'm still frankly puzzled by the AccuSwitch gaffe.

It's been suggested before that whoever came up with the circuit simply did not have sufficient engineering background to realize that it was a bogus design. Perhaps the problem with AGs engineering department is that it doesn't exist.

Just a simple test of the cabinet would have prevented this whole issue. So it's a Quality Assurance issue.

I'm going to dissent slightly here, you had a startup business, Mark and his business partner. Mark's the Accugroove engineering department. He's a speaker builder. Obviously. Not an electrical engineer. Obviously. You guys are talking about the AG engineering dept like its the electrical engineering dept. Two completely different things. As different as Resistance and Impedance as it turns out. It takes rather specialized equipment to run impedance sweeps, and results with an ohmmeter would seem to confirm that the switch works for someone not well versed in the difference, a pretty understandable mistake for someone who would think the switch design works in the first place.

So I chalk this up to not a lack of quality control, but to the old adage two sets of eyes are better than one. If you get someone else knowlegeable to check your work instead of trying to check it yourself, you get better results, more likely to find the errors, less likely to make the same assumptions/mistakes to arrive at the same wrong conclusion. Whoever made the mistake didn't know the difference between impedance and resistance, and did the testing not knowing that ohmmeters measure resistance, not impedance, hence they thought they confirmed that the switch would work, but the same blind spot that doomed the design doomed the testing process as well.

What happens when you try to find your own math error balancing your checkbook? How many times do you have to look at the same error you made and go "yup, 2+2=5", where's the error????

It boils down to the other adage I made up, which goes "You don't know what you don't know, you know?" Knowing your limitations is not always easy when you focus on what you DO know.

You can be a great speaker designer and be pretty ignorant of electrical engineering principles. Just know enough electronics to be dangerous but get by and create a crossover with a cookbook or program, then get overconfident and make a rookie mistake like this trying something fancy on your own. Whether it was Mark or someone that thought they knew more than they did and talked a good game to Mark, it was probably an honest, but dumb mistake.

Nobody puts their heart and soul into their own business, likely putting everything they own into it and at risk, would try to pull a cheap stunt, especially one so easily disproved, as this on purpose.

Randy

 

[BassIan]

I'm going to dissent slightly here, you had a startup business, Mark and his business partner. Mark's the Accugroove engineering department. He's a speaker builder. Obviously. Not an electrical engineer. Obviously. You guys are talking about the AG engineering dept like its the electrical engineering dept. Two completely different things. As different as Resistance and Impedance as it turns out. It takes rather specialized equipment to run impedance sweeps, and results with an ohmmeter would seem to confirm that the switch works for someone not well versed in the difference, a pretty understandable mistake for someone who would think the switch design works in the first place. So I chalk this up to not a lack of quality control, but to the old adage two sets of eyes are better than one. If you get someone else knowlegeable to check your work instead of trying to check it yourself, you get better results. What happens when to find your own math error balancing your checkbook? How many times do you have to look at the same error you made and go "yup, 2+2=5", where's the error????

It boils down to the other adage I made up, which goes "You don't know what you don't know, you know?" Knowing your limitations is not always easy when you focus on what you DO know.

You can be a great speaker designer and be pretty ignorant of electrical engineering principles. Just know enough electronics to be dangerous but get by and create a crossover with a cookbook or program, then get overconfident and make a rookie mistake like this trying something fancy on your own.

Randy

The equipment necessary to do impedance sweeps may be specialized for someone who is not in the field of electronics in any way. However, for anybody in audio, these are necessary tools. Even if nobody at Accugroove is educated in electrical engineering, it is clear that little or no research was done regarding impedance. Only enough was done to teach them that impedance is resistance, not any of the finer delicacies of that relationship.

Any way you slice this pie, it is a very serious and inexcusable design flaw. This is 1st and 2nd year undergraduate electrical engineering stuff - stuff that anybody with a high school diploma and a bit of motivation (such as a startup business and a desire for quality) can learn without needing an engineering degree. Even if they didn't get that far, they should have at least gotten to the "I don't know enough about this to understand it completely, so I won't try that until I know more" phase.

As a studying mechanical engineer, I see that this kind of behaviour deserves reprimand, not consolation. You can't excuse this by pleading ignorance. Ignorance CAUSED the problem. Ignorance IS the problem. Ignorance is NEVER an excuse.

Indeed they may have been on the path to production, knowing what they know and nothing else. That is understandible. However, the next step then is to have someone who is an expert look at your idea if you yourself are not the expert. Ask a 2nd year electrical engineering undergrad student if this will work, and he will answer correctly that it won't. He will be able to explain why, and back it up with calculations. He is not an expert in the field and he can provide the correct answer. There are hundreds of these people on any university campus. It is not hard to find someone to answer a question like "does this switch do what the multimeter says in real life?" It is not that much harder to learn to answer it yourself.

If this is someone's life passion, how can they not even develop an understanding of the basic driving principles?!

 

[Bassist30]

I'm going to dissent slightly here, you had a startup business, Mark and his business partner. Mark's the Accugroove engineering department. He's a speaker builder. Obviously. Not an electrical engineer. Obviously. You guys are talking about the AG engineering dept like its the electrical engineering dept. Two completely different things. As different as Resistance and Impedance as it turns out. It takes rather specialized equipment to run impedance sweeps, and results with an ohmmeter would seem to confirm that the switch works for someone not well versed in the difference, a pretty understandable mistake for someone who would think the switch design works in the first place.

So I chalk this up to not a lack of quality control, but to the old adage two sets of eyes are better than one. If you get someone else knowlegeable to check your work instead of trying to check it yourself, you get better results, more likely to find the errors, less likely to make the same assumptions/mistakes to arrive at the same wrong conclusion. Whoever made the mistake didn't know the difference between impedance and resistance, and did the testing not knowing that ohmmeters measure resistance, not impedance, hence they thought they confirmed that the switch would work, but the same blind spot that doomed the design doomed the testing process as well.

What happens when you try to find your own math error balancing your checkbook? How many times do you have to look at the same error you made and go "yup, 2+2=5", where's the error????

It boils down to the other adage I made up, which goes "You don't know what you don't know, you know?" Knowing your limitations is not always easy when you focus on what you DO know.

You can be a great speaker designer and be pretty ignorant of electrical engineering principles. Just know enough electronics to be dangerous but get by and create a crossover with a cookbook or program, then get overconfident and make a rookie mistake like this trying something fancy on your own. Whether it was Mark or someone that thought they knew more than they did and talked a good game to Mark, it was probably an honest, but dumb mistake.

Nobody puts their heart and soul into their own business, likely putting everything they own into it and at risk, would try to pull a cheap stunt, especially one so easily disproved, as this on purpose.

Randy

How do you know this is what happened.

 

[billfitzmaurice]

The equipment necessary to do impedance sweeps may be specialized for someone who is not in the field of electronics in any way. However, for anybody in audio, these are necessary tools.

Exactly. You cannot properly test a speaker without doing an impedance sweep. It is the only method by which you can test the tuning frequency of a vented box. Until fairly recently the only specialized piece of equipment required to measure impedance is a sine wave generator, about $200, though for the last few years computer software has been available for free.

You can be a great speaker designer and be pretty ignorant of electrical engineering principles.

No, you can't.

 

[seamonkey]

You can be a great speaker designer and make mistakes.
Software can make mistakes. There may be mistakes in entering the data.

If you don't have QA, you need to hire it out.

Just shipping it on your belief is not fair to your customers.

 

[BassIan]

You can be a great speaker designer and make mistakes.
Software can make mistakes. There may be mistakes in entering the data.

If you don't have QA, you need to hire it out.

Just shipping it on your belief is not fair to your customers.

If software is all you use to design your speakers, you are not a great speaker designer.

Software is a tool. That's it. It doesn't do the work for you.

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

If software is all you use to design your speakers, you are not a great speaker designer.

Software is a tool. That's it. It doesn't do the work for you.

True, although especially for instrument cabinets, the results of software-assisted trial-and-error might often be pretty decent. I wouldn't want that loose a process on, say, designing studio monitors, though.

 

[seamonkey]

If software is all you use to design your speakers, you are not a great speaker designer.

Software is a tool. That's it. It doesn't do the work for you.

I agree.

I expect that some designers just take the output, build a cab, run a bass through it, and stamp it done.
They don't take any measurements, otherwise, maybe they'd publish their measurements.

 

[GregHolmes]

Sorry to add to a thread that many seem to want to die, but my company and web site has been invoked several times on these threads.

The information on my web page is based on information from the folks at AccuGroove, not made up by me. Some posts here may not be clear enough about that. But should I remove info on the AccuSwitch? Without an explanation? Should I abandon Mark and company? I don't think so. There's got to be some faith here - no pun intended. Of course, I'd like to resolve this, but I'm giving AccuGroove time to work it out. From the reactions here, it's costing me, and that's hard. I'm just a nice guy working long hours, trying to help people. There's a good reason my company name includes "service", and it has done so for 23 years.

Thank you all for your time.

 

[SMASH]

In a previous post, SMASH mentioned that he got in touch with me. I recall replying to an e-mail [...] but I'm just the messenger in this situation, trying to keep a balance on things.

I'd guess I wasn't the only person that wrote you about it, and I recall receiving no reply or I'd have posted it.

Much respect, and good that you've set the record straight.

 

[GregHolmes]

SMASH, thanks for responding here. The note on my site about the switch is not my words, but those of AccuGroove as paraphrased by me. I will review them as a result of this controversy...

I received only one e-mail about the AccuSwitch, and my reply basically said to get in touch with Mark Wright at AccuGroove for the details.

I look forward to the time when this is all cleared up.

 

[prismacolor2]

I look forward to the time when this is all cleared up.

Yawn.

It is cleared up. The switch doesn't work. No one can scientifically explain the switch for this reason. I, personally, don't think it's a dealers responsibility to defend something that doesn't work. You certainly shouldn't come under fire. Sell it for what it is - a 4 Ohm cab and be done with the drama. People seem to buy them anyway. Whatever.

I think that not dealing with a crisis is not (even remotely) a good way to deal with a crisis. I think a lot of folks would have a much more favorable view of Accugroove had someone come forward, admitted the issue with the switch and took steps to make accuswitch-equipped cab owners ok with their cabs or take them back, take the hit and press on. I understand and commend you for supporting a friend but if accugroove doesn't even attempt to defend the switch...

 

[GregHolmes]

You certainly shouldn't come under fire

Obviously, I agree. I'd like to be fair to my suppliers, customers, and the bass-playing community at large (perhaps a balancing act in this case), so I've changed my page to, hopefully, better reflect the situation until more information is available.

 

[Shoreline_gold]

WOW! Ok, I only recently started logging on to TB and reading the forums, but on this subject, I have spend pert near 2 hours going over all the threads, since I own a Tri210L with a switch. 6 diet Dr. Thunders and half a box of Cheezits later, I still wondering if leaving the switch in any one position will really matter. I know that the AG now has the Tri210L as a 4 ohm cab, which is cool for me, but should I keep the switch on 4 ohms, or does it really matter? I appreciate all the tech info ( and actually understand most of it), but I am in need of a simple practical solution. Though the one thing I didnt find ( I might have overlooked it ) is does a cab with a switch sound different than the same model without, and if it does, is there a process to make mine a non switch unit? And thanks to everyone who has helped to enlighten me on this matter.

 

[Bassist30]

What I understand the switch is still not at all cleared up. I have read that accugroove is seeking a patent on it. I know of a few people from other thread's that were related to accugroove's claim on the switch defended him but not nearly as the one's trying to crucify him. I would wait. What I hear is they are still working on the patent and if all is good they will, at least I would think, reuse the switch in there cabinets. Now this will get a few of you upset and again there will be another 100 reasons why it doesn't, and couldn't and impossible to work. But as the owner of thunderfunk clearly fought for them and I respect that, stated that they are working on a patent. Some say that does not matter even if they get a patent. But I am hoping all will go right with Accugroove as to my ears they are one of the best sounding cabinets available. I have the Whoopo Jr. and I tried many many cabinets before buying it and I am still in love with its tone. Great sound and made well. Again wait and see what will happen. I am sure Accugrove will tell you if the switch does or does not work when the patent and its results are cleared. I take it that Accugroove will not make any statements until the results are final.