Hey, how's it going? Well, that's just awesome. I just have some opinions to get off my chest. This is a tale of two does and the attitude of the people who run them. So just to do a quick recap, about a year ago, Dan Warhol made a video about the Harrison 32C channel strip plugin where he debunked the company's claim that, and I quote, every resistor, capacitor, and transistor is included in the model by showing two simple facts. Firstly, that the EQ cramps at Nyquist, something that only happens in digital EQs, and secondly, that there is no nonlinearity in the plugin as the gain increases. In response to that, someone from Harrison Consoles made a comment on Dan Warhol's video, doubling down on these claims, very condescending the MIRAD, which prompted Dan Warhol to take the gloves off and tear Harrison a second brand new 2022 asshole in a subsequent video. About a week ago, YouTuber Lonely Rocker brought in two representatives from Harrison to share their side of the story on his platform. Now, I'm not a DSP specialist as the people representing Harrison in the Lonely Rocker video inexplicably aren't. I won't be getting too much into the science of it all. If you're interested in that, there's an awesome video by my buddy, Leandro Fakinetti, where he gets really into the weeds of all this stuff. And I will link that below if you really want to narrow down on the science part of this. I simply want to take the position of an audio software consumer and share some of my opinions about some of the comments and the overall attitude that Harrison has employed in regards to this controversy. And later, I'll be comparing that to another company who wants face similar criticisms. So first of all, in the video, the Lonely Rocker makes the frankly hilarious claim that Dan Warhol is hiding behind his videos and that if he has something valuable to say he should show his face. Now, I don't want to spend too much time on this part because it's frankly just too ridiculous. I mean, by this logic, Dante is hiding behind his book Inferno because he's an author from the 14th century before technology existed to show your face on any sort of platform. He also says that real mixing is about using your ears and not using scopes. And that one is frankly a bit of a red flag to me, especially in this day and age. I think we're all growing frankly allergic to people who question the validity of mathematics and science. The point of using scopes or plug-in doctor isn't to do so as a replacement for actually listening to stuff when you mix. One of the reasons Dan Warhol stands out in a sea of plug-in reviewers is that he removes any trace of subjectivity by using these tools instead of relying on his ears. His demonstrations are objective and replicable. And these things are the basic components of a sound scientific experiment. No pun intended. Look man, using your ears is great and everything. They just don't make for a good apparatus of measurement in a valid scientific experiment. As much as I like my ears, I don't trust my ears and I definitely won't ever ask you to trust my ears. We all got the ears that we got and most of us are acutely aware of the fact that what we hear isn't the objective truth. If you think yours does, well frankly, I really don't know how to respond to that. Except to say that your arrogance is bordering that of an anti-vaxxer who passed high school biology with a D-minus and is now questioning the bonafide expertise of real scientists. But above and beyond all of that, what really rubs me the wrong way is how the representatives from Harrison are constantly trying to derail this conversation, all the while leaving the core complaints that Dan Warhol made completely unaddressed. They try to tell you that cramping is barely audible and that for high frequencies you should be using a high shelf anyway, which if your filters cramp, every type of filter cramps, or that they didn't know about the cramping but just left it unaddressed to save consumers some CPU, which is a claim that my buddy Leandro debunks in his video. But none of these really addresses the fact that their marketing is misleading at worst and hyperbole at best. While I agree that cramping isn't a real issue in most real life cases, and that non-linearities can be introduced in other ways, this was never really the core of the argument. These were just things Dan Warhol used as examples of why the 32C channelster plugin isn't as faithful of a clone of the original rack unit as Harrison's marketing team wants you to believe, a claim that stays on their website to this day and that I've never seen them addressing anyway. So not only are all the talks about cramping missing the actual issue or distracting from it intentionally, it just feels a little bit condescending to me. Like instead of admitting that you used the exaggeration as a marketing tool, which you could argue almost every plugin manufacturer does anyway, you instead say stuff like, oh well none of you idiots here cramping anyway, so who are we hurting? It's showbiz baby. Do I really need to spell out why that's problematic? It's pretty much capitalism 101 that you shouldn't be implying that your core customers are idiots. So let's say I made a spice rub and claimed that it's the exact replica of the spice rub Gordon Ramsey uses in his restaurants. Then one day a chemist comes along, takes my spice rub to their lab and concludes that my spice rub isn't an exact replica as it lacks any trace of saffron. What I can't do then is to come out and say, ah well saffron is a subtle note anyway, most people don't really taste it. And then also go on to say that no shift worth a fuck would ever take a spice rub into a lab that they would use their palette and whatnot. Because then I'd be offending my customers by saying that their palettes aren't sophisticated enough to taste a difference between a spice rub that doesn't have saffron and one that indeed does. All the balls seeking to invalidate chemistry as a former scientific analysis. You see where I'm going with this? So with Harrison Rips instead of dancing around the subject and trying to do rail the conversation and name dropping producers who used the original rack unit. Simply came out and said, yep you're right, we were a bit heavy handed with our marketing, we'll try to address the cramping, then that would have been that. But by handling it the way they did, they just revealed their true character and attitude. I myself am a digital boy through and through, I have very little nostalgia towards analog gear and I'm very aware that what separates me from legendary producers isn't the type of gear that I use. So Harrison's core selling points were of little effect to me to begin with, but seeing how they handled all of this is really the reason why we never buying any of their stuff. Anyway now onto the comparison, because as we all know, Harrison wasn't the first company to face criticism from a Dan Warhol video. In 2021 he made another video where he correctly identified that the ratio controls in Ripper's 1175 compressor are more than a bit off. He then even went into the code of the JSFX plugin and identified the value which seems to be causing this issue. And then he fixed it. So what did Justin Franco the creator of Ripper do? Did he begin to shed talk Dan Warhol? Did he claim that anyone who didn't hear the ratios being off as an idiot? Did he start making excuses like, oh well you dial in ratios by ear anyway right? No he didn't do any of that. What he did was immediately fix the issue, release the fix in the new update, and he even made a blog post where he called himself an idiot. Let's not even mention the fact that Ripper doesn't do ads. They don't make exaggerated claims and they're not in the business of name-dropping successful users of Ripper as a way of silencing those of us who don't have Grammys on our shelves. And I don't think anybody thought any less of Koko's and Ripper because of the fact that they made that mistake way back. That interaction overall bought me a lot more respect for Koko's and Ripper. It showed me a company that I would gladly throw money at because in those very rare moments that they do make public statements, they have always shown a lot of class and humility and openness. None of which I can say I have ever seen anybody from Harrison demonstrate. On the other hand, as much as I'm sure that the Harrison 32C plugin, despite its cramping, is a fine plugin in most cases, I would never use it because I'm not really impressed by the fact that it's been used in old records, not nostalgic, but it's bold claims of transistor by transistor cloning. And I'm definitely super turned off by how they handled this entire debacle. I did find their faces hilarious as the lonely rocker was going off about Dan World not showing his face. As it happens to be the face that I have to make every day at work when a client is just being out of their mind, but I'm contractually obligated to smile and nod as if what they say makes sense. Beyond that, they just don't seem like people who I want to be a customer of. And I think, as a company with considerable legacy, it's time for them to look inwards instead of trying to point the finger at Dan World or their users for trying to drag their name through the mud. The fact is, it wasn't Dan World's video that made me swear off Harrison products. They managed to do that all under wrong. All right, that's about it. As you can see, this is my face, so I'm looking forward to how you will invalidate my comments here. You'll probably attack me for not having Grammys or maybe because I only have 6000 subscribers or what the fuck do I know. But before you do any of that, really ask yourself if it's me you're attacking or if it's your own flawed science denying boomer character that you're revealing to the whole world. Okay. Okay.