I welcome your messages, but I have a (more than!) full-time job and a growing family, and I simply can't answer emails as frequently and fully as I would like. For that reason, please assume the following:
While I will read every message I receive, please assume that I won't be able to reply. A reply could take up to four weeks.
Sorry to sound unwelcoming, but answering emails, especially those that require research or a degree of precision, takes an amazingly large amount of my time. Please help me keep on top of my emails by reading the following carefully before submitting your message:
- If you send me a message, you agree to acknowledge any reply
you receive from me. If I've taken an hour or two to research an
answer to your question and type it all up in a form that is clear and
explicit, then I think that I deserve a reply - even if it's just a quick
"thanks". An amazing amount of my replies go unanswered - about half,
believe it or not - and from my point of view, that's simply rude. And
deeply demoralising.
- Please remember that the information on this site is provided
totally free of charge, and is "as-is", with
no help or support offered or implied. Any reply can
only be on a "Reasonable Endeavours" basis, so please have realistic
expectations of what I can offer you for free. If you are willing to pay
a professional rate for my time, then please make that clear early
on.
- Please understand that by necessity, I prioritise my emails, meaning
that rather than deal with them in the order they arrive, I deal with the
easiest ones first. If you are asking something that requires a lot of
effort, then please be especially patient, as I will
think about it for a week or two before responding - I try to do that
instead of simply dismissing it out of hand.
- Please be reasonable when writing to me. Again, this
is a free service, not a commercial offering, and no level of help and
support is offered or implied - therefore you are much more likely to get
results if you ask nicely. Seems obvious, I know, but occasionally, some
correspondence is amazingly demanding, and sometimes downright rude. I
reserve the right to post examples of this sort of thing here!
- If not already provided, please don't ask for parts lists or
PCB layouts or schematics or source code. These would take
considerable effort to make available, and there's no incentive for me
because the projects have been built! If you're planning to copy one of
my designs, do remember that generally speaking, this site does not
contain "Cookbook" projects; my write-ups are intended to
provide ideas and inspiration only - if you want to build something
similar, expect to do your own research and engineering.
- I'm not a hi-fi dealer, and so I can't answer queries about
buying or selling hi-fi (I get a lot of those!). As a
dedicated hoarder, I've never really sold any of my hi-fi components, so
have no experience or wisdom to pass on. And I don't follow the
second-hand markets, so have no idea what something might be worth.
- I can't offer recommendations about what equipment to
buy - especially loudspeakers, which can sound very different
to others (and the acoustic environment can have a large impact too).
Audio is highly subjective, so my opinions should be worthless to
you - my taste, my hearing, my music collection, and my
listening room will likely be very different to yours. Frankly, this
principle should be applied to all opinions that you find from
any source, whether it's friends, reviewers, dealers or random
people on the internet! You have to live with the system
- listen and make your own mind up!
- I get a lot of questions about random things, and in
most cases, I can never fathom why someone thinks I will have expert
knowledge about the item in question. The most recent example - the
Marantz 2600. Never heard of it, and I've not mentioned it on
this web site - indeed, I haven't written about anything at all
made by Marantz here! But still, I did some research and read up on it,
and took the time to offer some general advice. That took about an hour,
and I've yet to get even an acknowledgement (please see the first bullet
point above!). So if it's not explicitly mentioned on this web site,
please help me out by explaining why you think I will know about it!
- There is nothing for sale here! I often get emails
asking for quotes for multimeters or similar. I assume that these are
feeble attempts at scamming, rather than a misunderstanding, given that
they mostly give generic (gmail or similar) email addresses.
- I'm afraid that I only speak English. That doesn't include
"Text-Speak"!
Yes, every one of these points is here because of messages received, and that this list continues to grow! At times I seriously consider removing the contact mechanism, or even taking down the whole site completely. Please remember that behind every word you see here is a human being with a full-time job and a family, and that I make no money whatsoever from the running of this web site, which is provided to you completely free of charge with no advertising.