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More on Thieves, Liars & Magpies

Posted by Peter Qvortrup - Audio Note (UK) Ltd. on January 24, 2000 at 08:50:12

More on Thieves, Liars & Magpies.

This is becoming interesting, I have just read Kondo-sans posting of January 20, 2000.

It seems that Kondo-san and I can agree on nothing at all these days, and with respect I think that his response speaks for itself, angry, vindictive, slanderous and destructive, sadly reminding me of the latter days of our communications of January – March 1998.

I am not going to let myself get dragged into the kind of debate that appears to be Mr. Kondo’s preferred style. Suffice to say that those who read Mr. Kondo’s simplistic and erratic statements will have to make up their own minds as to his frame of mind, quality of thought, intentions, high handed behaviour and general inability to appreciate a point any reasoning other than his own.

I credit most of you with the ability to draw your own conclusions from his comments.

To supplement, I shall comment on a couple of matters,

1.)The non-payment of goods delivered is nonsense, and Mr. Kondo knows that, orders not paid for were only the ones cancelled as part of the general realignment in purchases from AN-J, due to the downturn in business in South East Asia. The very matter that set the ball rolling as far as the breakdown in our relationship was concerned.
2.)It is correct that ANUK went through what is called a management buyout in August 1997. Many companies in the audio industry have gone through this type of financial engineering procedure, (in the US it is called Chapter 11), this is generally done to refinance the company, often after a strong period of growth. One of the main contributing reason for the shortfall in cash flow that created this situation was the very fact that we were being forced to buy more products from AN-J than we could sell.
3.)I named all the products, ONGAKU, KEGON, GAKU-ON etc. and I have the correspondence to prove this, we use Japanese names for the UK products as well, what more can I say?

In fact we still have a good portion of AN-J stock left, which I would like to sell soonest possible, so anyone seeking to buy an AN-J product at a good price can contact me at ANUK.

What Mr. Kondo needs to appreciate is that his actions have benefited no-one apart from our competitors by sowing the seeds of doubt about the long term viability of Audio Note as a brand.

He has also helped our detractors, mainly people who object to the presence of single-ended triodes and low power amplifiers, primarily because they do not like the fundamental historical revisionism represented by their mere market presence, let alone their sonic superiority. Primarily because progress dictates that older technologies must always be inferior to the ones they are replaced by, and this belief system does not take kindly to being proved wrong for the obvious reason that it tampers with the notion of each generation’s improvement of the previous generation’s achievements. Where would we be if we could not improve on our parents achievements?!

As the highest profile proponents of these technologies, the public arguments between Kondo-san and I are not helpful, as they detract the focus from the real issues and provide ammunition to people who for whatever reason do not like what we stand for.

It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that if Kondo-san really was as interested in pursuing his life long quest for audio excellence, I personally prefer the pursuit of musical excellence, but then, I am, as Mr. Kondo rightly says, not an engineer, then he would have put the interests of the greater purpose above his petty grievances and come to an agreement with ANUK, rather than have risked damaging the credibility that had been built around the revival of SE amplifiers, efficient speakers and all the other alternative technologies we all jointly pursue.

Instead his actions have deviated valuable time and resources from both of us to this meaningless and fruitless fight.

I despair when I hear our competitors’ laughter at our folly.

Peter Qvortrup
Audio Note UK Ltd.
24.01.2000.

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