Jul 27, 2017 9:58:37 GMT 12 guitardude said:

We're not heavy, just a little overweight....

I think Garfield had it right.. not overweight, just under tall...

Never play Leapfrog with a Unicorn.

Short Overweight and Fat - SOFT

Aug 6, 2017 17:49:28 GMT 12 gorden said:

Meanwhile the contributing membership of DTV dropped off to a trickle, All the SNA moderation team took over the running of DTV. And surprise,surprise, Rushton has just announced that DTV will no longer exist, and be swallowed up by SNA. Membership from DTV will be incorporated into the SNA listings. SNA has a huge banned list [ and still growing], How this will effect the old DTV membership is up in the air, as many banned SNA members went over to DTV.

Oh, I missed that announcement gorden got a link?

stereonet.co.nz/

Well the message board seems to work just fine.
If that was peoples issue with Audioenz... then it appears to have been resolved.

I see Owen and MW on there already, shouldn't they be shot for treason ?

  re-imagined

not a big fan of all the coloured dots in the forum

looks like someone threw a handful of smarties at the screen

Aug 8, 2017 23:54:23 GMT 12 Citroen said:

Oh, I missed that announcement gorden got a link?

I must apoligise, as I find I'm locked out of DTV forum, and am no longer a registered member, All my contributions over the years have also been removed, In fact one exiled member with over 20 thousands posts, and probably many others, also have had there posts removed, which by any standard is totally counter productive. But as we said before, It's his Train set. Understandably I am unable to find the thread where we where told about the demise of DTV as a separate entity.

It would seem that anyone who attempted to comment on the future of DTV has been shown the door, So it was possibly some sort of third rate ruse , to sort out the ungodly and banish them to the wasteland, no doubt to wonder endlessly into the land of the ill informed. What they don't realise is that any forum // notice board is only as good as it's last contributor for it's continued survival

It will be interesting to see if Audioenz does re'appear in the future as possibly a audio review magazine , with or without a forum. Some on-line audio magazines the like of Tone, www.tonepublications.com/ continue to grow, and attract readership.

Thanks Gorden. So Marc will pretty much carry on where MJ left off  

It would seen Stereonet has arrived

stereonet.co.nz/forums/

i'm still figuring out how to use this one properly!

no new posts yet

Shhhh.....

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

Hi guys, Marc from StereoNET here.

I was alerted to this thread just now and felt that it would be only fair if I offer some clarification.

I would completely agree with Owen that the forum scene is very niche, and with the rise of FB Groups and making it so easy for anyone to be a "publisher", it has become even more difficult to maintain a forum, and particularly as it grows, the commercial costs must be met. To give you an idea, StereoNET Australia relies on 3 servers alone (2 x load balanced servers for the site, and a separate server just for the SQL database).

I'm not entirely sure why DTV has been brought up here, but a number of factually incorrect statements have been made and I would like to clear that up.

When I purchased DTV, they had announced they were closing down. As StereoNET's nearest competitor as far as Australia's forums go, it made sense to purchase all that content and history and preserve it. StereoNET itself had been very 2-channel focused in history, and while there was a little crossover, I believed I could maintain two separate sites with one focused on 2-channel, and the other on Cinema/AV.

It became quickly apparent that while DTV only had a couple of hundred still active users, the sheer amount of content and "guest" traffic (from search engines), meant that the site required a server setup similar to StereoNET's setup (which, for the record costs in excess of $1500 a month, excluding software and script licenses). This didn't make commercial sense.

So we made the decision to merge the site with StereoNET and maintain just one set of servers, which evidently has been the right decision.

When we announced this, we gave everyone the option to "opt out" from having their data migrated over to StereoNET. 4-5 members opted to take this up, and as promised, their account information was deleted and their content remained, simply with "Guest" as the author. Briefly, some of their content became non-viewable as the system had to completely reindex the website (standard process for IPBoard). All those posts then returned, and have since now been migrated over to StereoNET.

I'm not entirely sure why it seems Gorden has an axe-to-grind with me, nor how we can post on a public forum with assumptions that are incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, we've not met, nor had any communication directly. If there was a problem with his account, he probably should have just contacted me and asked why? Seems reasonable?

As for anyone being shown the door who didn't agree with the DTV direction, that's just nonsense. Again, unjustified and not sure where that's come from. In the time we briefly held the reigns at DTV, not one member was banned, and we actually unbanned over 300+ members who had been banned before our time at the helm. We essentially gave everyone a clean slate.

Ultimately though, StereoNET AU and DTV have little relevance here. This thread was about AudioEnz, and I'm pleased that again we could take over the legacy that Michael had left behind. NZ is a very small market and StereoNET AU had never been able to effectively cater for a local NZ market. I saw an opportunity to yet again preserve that 30 year history. We are in the process of converting all the articles, reviews and content over to the StereoNET NZ website. We have gone to great lengths to retrieve the content from the dated wordpress forum platform and convert it to the IPboard software. We've also managed to retain the user data and logins and make it all work quite seamlessly.

We're not ready to really "launch" StereoNET NZ yet, until the website is essentially complete and we can start marketing for the website in New Zealand. We have been approached by a good number of local enthusiasts and writers with a view to assembling an on the ground team in NZ, and I look forward to having two websites, Australia, and New Zealand. There is absolutely no view to merging StereoNET NZ with AU, which would have been a hell of a lot easier. We want to maintain an independent publication as StereoNET NZ.

I don't see this forum as any competition to ours and hope that our organisations can work together to promote HiFi in New Zealand into the future.
I have a wild dream of bringing our International HiFi Show to New Zealand within 1 to 2 years and have already spoken with many distributors about that; it looks positive and the support is promised.

Sorry to drop in here guys with a post of this nature, however my personal name was mentioned along with some inaccurate statements and I felt I had the right to clear the air.

Have a great weekend all.

marc thanks for providing the other side to that story.

I look forward to a HiFi show on these shores. I can't remember when we last had one. Anyone remember?

Hi marc - no problem, all are welcome here.

(Marc Rushton is publisher of StereoNET.)

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

marc - thanks for clearing things up, good to know the facts as always

Manager & Product specialist at Rapallo AV & HI-FI

Hi Marc,

Welcome along and all the best with your new forum.

Citroen: last show I remember was the one hosted by Top HiFi shop in CHCH in the mid 80's. As Top HiFi organised it was fully composed of the brands they had access to, hence rooms were from memory each allocated to one of the dealers importers, i.e Big Ears audio with Rega, PQ with Proac etc.
All ended up in a bunfight at the end as the raffle they organised with each visitor putting their contact details on the entry form was allegedly snaffled by a competing HiFi dealer importer at the end of the show.

I hope DL goes well. IMHO NZ is barely big enough for one forum. It is good though to have an NZ forum though as we have things here that are different from elsewhere, such as: TM more dominant than ebay, geographic isolation and small market for retailers, some decent brands.

I think DL is going well enough. Although we don't seem to have had many retailers or distributors jump on board ?

Aug 28, 2017 10:11:50 GMT 12 SL1210 said:

I hope DL goes well. IMHO NZ is barely big enough for one forum.

Totally agree mate.

Making your world a better place, by staying at home most of the time.

Looks like Marc has given up on stereonet nz forum, as the site has been hijacked and no attempt made to remove the offending posts. Someone has posted to every topic offering fake passports, ID, drivers licences etc!

I don't believe a spammer shows the forum has been 'given up on'.
I remember when I moderated a forum... the amount of spam posted was phenomenal. The speed involved in banning a user is one of the things I look for in forum software...

You could be right, cartridge, but the spamming posts have been up for a week now. I would have expected them to have been removed within 24 hours. I know on the old AudioEnz forums, all new posts were viewed by MJ, who ruthlessly removed spammers. I assume darklantern has a similar process in place.

I do have a look at the stereonet forum page several times a week, just in case, but very little new activity going on. Furthermore, links to a lot of the old AE data no longer work - I had a shortcut to an article in AE by The Vinyl Anachronist on my home page, and the link no longer works, get a 404 response!

Good to see the spammer posts have finally been removed, but took over a week!

AudioEnz was the first forum that I ever regularly participated in back in 2006.

I absolutely loved it, big time, and gained so much from participating in it then. Hated MJ dictatorial management.

It stagnated majorly when Micheal migrated it to its final configuration, mainly because things didn't work, and Michael couldn't or wouldn't fix it.

There were so many issues with this configuration which remain till this day.

Then Micheal revealed that he was losing interest in HiFi, and unsurprisingly..... members stopped posting.

Personally I would like to see that forum die; a death which is needed.

IMO in NZ, we would be best served by a single, well supported forum, run by local enthusiasts. Ummm this forum!!!!!!!

So f*ck Audioenz... it's a dead duck. let it die. Support Dark Lantern.

Brendan.

Making your world a better place, by staying at home most of the time.

REALLY!!!!!!!!

Have I offended no one?

Must be slipping.

Making your world a better place, by staying at home most of the time.

Admin has moderated

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

I'm gutted by your editing of my post. I'm reasonably sure that members will still recognise the word as "fuck" though.

Making your world a better place, by staying at home most of the time.

Not really sure why you think that type of language has any place here! If you were annoyed with something thats totally fair and Im sure we all get peeved from time to time but lets not bring the standard down. I think you were lucky to not have it totally removed! I back any move to keep postings and the language at a family rating.

Chaps,
- Just being mindful of Forum Rules
- The question was asked. I'm not easily offended but need to be mindful of others.
- Note emoji

PS I tend to concur with clothears' sentiment that one hifi forum seems to be plenty for Aotearoa.
PPS I am still grateful for AudioEnz & MJ's contribution to Hifi/HT in NZ & I expect that we all benefited, but in the end 30 years effort was enough.

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com