The Kickstarter Ride Is Almost Over

This is probably the last chance I’ll get to pitch to any hold out readers about the Kickstarter campaign for “Music and Audio: A User Guide To Better Sound”. It’s been an amazing ride. The whole crowd-sourcing world is so new and exciting. Watching the campaign announce each new backer and seeing the funding amount steadily rising over the first few days was pretty encouraging…and the remaining weeks have continued that trend at a steady if slower pace. I admit that I keep my iPhone pretty close throughout the day to track progress. I’ve heard from a large number of friends and associates offering congratulations. After this initial campaign is over and the book/Blu-ray finished and delivered, I could see using the mechanism to fund some new recordings…and I know a large number of you are hoping for new AIX Records releases.

So if for whatever reason, you’ve been holding out until the last possible moment, now is the time to step up. I learned that Leo Laporte’s interview with me will air today at 5 pm PDT. Here’s the link that they supplied “Triangulation Episode 221“.

And I’m particularly pleased that the campaign made its funding goal. Others that I’ve been watching have not been so successful. There is the “Site:1 Handmade, Customizable, Bluetooth, Speaker” being built in Princeton, Wisconsin that had to extend their Indiegogo campaign another 30 days to reach their $50K goal…yes, they made their goal but just barely and the number of backers has stalled at 207 every since.

Then there’s the “Audiophile USB & SPDIF DAC with Low Jitter Reclocker” also being pitched at Indiegogo. The gentleman is taking us back to the past by building an “Audiophile DAC” using “the pure performance of the last built non-oversampling true 16-bit TDA1543 DAC from Philips…the TDA1543 16-bit DAC”. His approach to achieving “analog sound from ALL your digital sources” is to ignore all of the improvements that have been made over the past 30 years in DAC technology and revert to technologies employed when PCM digital was almost new. I didn’t bother to watch the entire 19 minutes “pitch” video but I did make it through enough to learn that his approach is seriously flawed. His campaign is stuck at 7 backers and hasn’t moved in days. I guess the idea of looking to the 16-bit past doesn’t have great appeal.

Then there are campaigns that took off like a rocket and attained ridiculous amounts of funding. There have been lots of well funded KS and Indiegogo campaigns for DACs, wireless speakers, and custom headphones. Remember the variations on the Geek products? Just how many of these products developments were actually delivered to the backers, I don’t know. I ran into a gentleman at the RMAF who told me he’s backed a whole bunch of crowd sourced efforts and was “out hundreds of dollars” because nothing was ever completed.

If you’re a backer of the “Music and Audio” guide, I can make this commitment to you. I will have this book and the accompanying Blu-ray (or USB files) ready for delivery by March or April at the latest. I don’t want anyone getting frustrated because of unexpected delays or other circumstances. I spend a lot of time writing and this production will simply be another associated effort that requires daily attention.

Thanks again. Please stop by the KS page if you’re considering becoming a backer. Click Here.