Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/3/84; site teddy.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!teddy!rdp From: rdp@teddy.UUCP Newsgroups: net.audio Subject: Audio anecdote of the Message-ID: <1433@teddy.UUCP> Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 11:26:48 EDT Article-I.D.: teddy.1433 Posted: Tue Oct 15 11:26:48 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 17-Oct-85 20:02:01 EDT Distribution: net Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass. Lines: 95 As a service to the audio community at large (or at small), I am hereby taking the initiative to start a semi-regular feature while I have access to the net. True stories in the insanity of audi. Yes, it's Audio Anecdotes! For my own ground rules, the stories I present are true, and are selected not only to amuse and entertain, but to inform as well. Today's topic: Where oh where is the tome coming from. Back in the days when I was involved with a retail outlet, Nakamichi was just getting there US market going. At the time they had but a few products, the Nakamichi 1000, the 700, the 550 and the 500. Of interest to several musical type people was the 550, which was a portable, fairly high-quality casette unit with Dolby-B. One customer type bought one and, after a week or two, brought it back complaining that he could hear a faint tone in the backround during very quite passages. Well, after much fiddling and waiting for trucks to pass, yes we could, by straining wuite a bit, hear this tone. Into the lab I and the recorder went, where I proceeded to measure the S/N ratio. It was supposedly rated at 56db (or some such figure, the exact number is unimportant, just the relative values are). Well, there on the bench, it was cranking away at some 59 or 60 db S/N. ANd the scope showed no trace of any regular waveform in the noise. A call to Nakamichi generated an immediate request for the recorder, as they wanted to know what was going on. After a week or so, Nakamichi called back and said, "There is nothing wrong with the recorder, it meets spec." I asked, "Did you solve the problem?" "It meets spec", came the inappropriate response. "Did you find the tone?" I pushed. "It meets spec", came the obviously practised reply. "send it back and I'll check it out", I asked. A day or two later, back it came, and, by the looks of screw heads, it had never been opened. Back up on the bench it went, and it did, indeed meet spec, and out into the showrrom it went, and sure enough the tone was still there. AT this point we decided to give the customer a new unit and try to resolve the issue with Nakamichi. Unfortunately, the new unit, and all others in stock, suffered from exactly the same problem! Time to bring the heavy weaponry to bear! I fired up the HP narrow band spectrum analyzer! A spetral analysis of the noise revealed, in addition to the perfectly normal noise floor, a nice, sharp prominent peak at 400 Hz. Why 400 Hz? Well, it seems, that happened to be the frequency of the Dolby calibration oscillator. Seems that Nakamichi had designed the calibration oscillator so that when you turned it off, it was not turned off, but merely disconnected from the record amps. The rest of the time, it was oscillating happily away, generating enough cross-coupling to find it's way into the playback amps where it's micro-volt level was dutifully amplified to barely audible levels. Now, armed with real information, I was able to call Nakamichi service directly and tell them exactly what was wrong. The technicians were very interested in my description of the problems. However, Nakamichi as a corporate being said "If the noise", meaning, I guess, any extransous information, "is below the spec for signal to noise, then the unit is perfectly OK." Here, the customer and ourselves were left high and dry. We had a unit with a definite and identifiable design defect, and the manufacturer tells us in no uncertain terms that it is not interested in the problem. After several weeks of haggling, Nakamichi simply refused to provide any help in solving the problem. By this time, several units were returned, all complaining about the problem, so we had a multi-thousand dollar issue to deal with. At this point, we had several choices. 1) Tell the customers what Nakamichi told us, and tell them that life is tough all over, and keep their money, 2) Take the units back and give the customers a refund (which, under Massachusetts law they had the right to demand), and end up eating them, because Nakamichi wouldn't take back what it considered OK merchandise, or 3) try to solve the problem. The tack that we took involved part of #1 and all of #3, that is, relate to the customer the difficulties of trying to get Nakamichi to handle the problem, and, hoping that their sympathies would be in our favor, buy time to try to solve the problem. The solution was to re-wire the Dolby tone switch to disconnect the power from the oscillator, rather than disconnecting the oscillator from the rest of the recorder. This completely eliminated the tone problem, but gave rise to the issue that it took some 30 minutes to effect the repair, and the unit, thus modified, was unacceptable to Nakamichi for warranty service, even though we were a Nakamichi-authorized service station. The lesson to be learned here is manifold: 1) Just because a manufacturer might be highly regarded does not make him infallible. 2)Some of these manufacturers, when presented with what they might consider embarrasing information (as Nakamichi would later admit was the case), will stand fast and find anything to defend their position (I believe after MANY people complained, they finally incorporated my change into the product, but that took several YEARS!), 3) Much of the problem that customers have in trying to get these sorts of problems solved are due to the intransigence of the original manufacturer, not the dealer (although many dealers can be accused of complete incompetance in this area). Dick Pierce