White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...

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Danny Richie

See the info on these beauties for a really good laugh.

http://www.gr-research.com/dahlton.htm


markmaloof

funny or sad (or a little of both?)
« Reply #1 on: 18 Mar 2004, 10:44 pm »
The white van speakers...one of those things that can be kind of funny (esp. the "instruction" manual), but is kind of sad (think of all the poor saps getting ripped off with this junk.)

Of course, think of the money to be made if you had no morals, and could live with yourself duping suckers.

wshuff

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #2 on: 18 Mar 2004, 10:55 pm »
Hey Danny, funny stuff!

I don't know if it is just my browser or what, but the link to the Digital Audio white van test is buggered.

BradJudy

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #3 on: 18 Mar 2004, 11:01 pm »
Very nice Danny.  I hope the poor owner didn't feel too bad.  Did you give him a 'deal' on some of your own speakers?  :D

Danny Richie

Ripped off
« Reply #4 on: 18 Mar 2004, 11:05 pm »
Yea, I really felt bad for the guy that brought them in. There was no way of sugar coating the evaluation to him either. He got ripped off plain and simple.

The Better Business Bureau was really interested in hearing about these though. When I called them to tell them about the White van speaker scam they were already well aware of it and guessed the Dahlton name right off the bat before I could even tell them.

They also really liked all the info I posted on them and was contacting the local media right away.

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Of course, think of the money to be made if you had no morals, and could live with yourself duping suckers.


I couldn't sleep at night. I don't know how they can live with themselves.

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I don't know if it is just my browser or what, but the link to the Digital Audio white van test is buggered.


Thanks, try again it is fixed now.

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Very nice Danny. I hope the poor owner didn't feel too bad. Did you give him a 'deal' on some of your own speakers?


I haven't discussed it with him yet but will be glad to let him have a deal on anything he might be interested in to ease the pain of it all.

Andrikos

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #5 on: 18 Mar 2004, 11:15 pm »
Hey Danny,
is there anything you can do to "fix" these things and repost the frequency response?
Items that come to mind:
1) enclosure: damping, bracing and stuffing (is it ported? correct the box tuning?)
2) crossover: obviously you can improve this about 1000x
3) obviously there's nothing you can do about the side firing woofer but you can maybe reduce the low pass f from 800Hz to ?200Hz maybe and make a bit less directional?

Just some food for thought.
I thought it'd be fun how these POS scam spakers can be cheaply modified by a professional speaker builder.

:D

Danny Richie

Fixing them
« Reply #6 on: 18 Mar 2004, 11:35 pm »
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is there anything you can do to "fix" these things


I considered the same thing too.

Key words from below...

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cheaply modified


The side loaded woofer is built into the box and cannot be removed with destroying the box.

The only access to the chamber where the lower woofer resides is through the port or through the binding post cup hole, and neither of those allows for any BH-5 to be laid in.

Another concern is that the response of the drivers themselves may be so bad that it might be hard to even get them to within +/-3db anyway.

For the time and effort I would have to put into doing all of that and for what a person would end up with in the end, it would still be less expensive and one would have a much better product in the end if they just bought or built one of our kits.

My labor cost alone can easily exceed the cost of most of our A/V series kits.

wongstein

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #7 on: 19 Mar 2004, 02:17 am »
I've been offered speakers from a white van all the way up from here in Toronto.  They said they were delivering them and they got "loaded with an extra set".  I told them that I'd heard of this scam, and they said "what scam?  We're from Mississauga" (a suburb of Toronto).  They were basically saying that you could buy them super-cheap because they stole them from their boss.  Most con-artist scams are designed to prey upon your greed, and this was no exception.

This scam has been around for so many years, I'm amazed that everyone doesn't know about it.  Good job spreading the word.

Anthony

Rob Babcock

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White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #8 on: 19 Mar 2004, 02:36 am »
Hopefully anyone unsophisticated enough to fall for this scheme also wouldn't be inclined to biamp.  The first thing I thought of when you said the terminals meet right inside the speaker was "OUCH!"  :o

There's no law against building a shitty speaker (hey, B(l)ose has built millions of 'em!) but there is a law against fraud.  Certainly their manuals list many outright lies, and certainly biamp terminals that will short your amps must by definition go to the suitability of the product for the purpose sold.  I imagine they might weasle out of lying about the internals buy having a disclaimer to the effect of "we reserve the right to make any changes to the speaker without notice if we feel a performance increase can be acheived", but that wouldn't get 'em off the hook for selling a hazardous product.

lonewolfny42

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White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #9 on: 19 Mar 2004, 04:55 am »
Danny, I believe those binding posts are made from pure gold....well worth $500.00 !!! :lol:  :lol:  :rotflmao:  (and to think...this did not happen in NY....got a nice Rolex here for $20.00, interested ?? :lol: )

nathanm

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #10 on: 19 Mar 2004, 05:28 am »
Go on a counter strike.  Load up a few pairs of GR Research speakers into a van, roll into some parking lot and accost people.  No scam or anything, just tell them about them and charge your normal prices.  Maybe keep a pair of the white van specials on hand so people can see the difference.  People ARE  stupid, no doubt about it, but even my mom could see the difference in quality between a well built speaker and that half-ass thing side by side.

Just don't use a WHITE van.  Pick a different color!  :wink:

Rob Babcock

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White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #11 on: 19 Mar 2004, 05:46 am »
Yeah, people would be really pissed off when they got home and found out they'd bought-  a good speaker! :lol:

Hank

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White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #12 on: 19 Mar 2004, 01:19 pm »
"Ah yes, my little chickadee, how would you like to come over to my place this evening and listen to my shiny new speakers that reveal the subtle nuances afforded by today's digital recordings?" :mrgreen:  
Lordy.
You wouldn't believe the prices I was given at the C.E.S. in Vegas by some Chinese suppliers.  They make some nice, high-tech looking speakers that are really eye-catching.  Driver cones of various colors, fancy molded cabinets, beautiful piano lacquered cabinets, etc, etc.  And, the prices are unbelievably low.  If the scam artists (thieves) bought a cargo container of those Daltons, they probably paid $75 for them.
As long as greed thrives, the white van speaker sharks will thrive.

ohenry

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #13 on: 19 Mar 2004, 02:25 pm »
My first encounter with the white van was approximately 15 years ago.  Unfortunately a new generation is being duped as we speak.  And the really funny (strange) part of this scam is that once guys get hooked into thinking the speakers are deals, all logic and reason flies out the window.

Our local scammers were telling the story of concealing the loss to their boss, but would offer a receipt if they were asked for one.  Who gives receipts for stolen equipment?  Jeeze.

The scary thing is that these boxes of trash probably sound okay to some of the guys that buy them.  But of course, many of those same guys support an industry of thugs that do nothing more than recite nursery rhymes with attitude.

I wonder how many of these speakers wind up residing horizontally in the back of a hatchback?  Double Jeeze.

nathanm

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #14 on: 19 Mar 2004, 04:06 pm »
Well I doubt rap would sound very good if the bass rolls off that sharply!

But do you guys notice what you're doing: you're judging these speakers based by measurements and not actually listening to them! :nono:  Come on now be fair, what's the use of all that "the ear is the final judge of quality" business if you are gonna make exceptions?  I would not be surprised if they sound bad, but I would also not be surprised if they sounded better than some quote\unquote HiFi dealers' speakers out there.

I listened to "white van" speakers for a long time myself.  No, they weren't bought from a van but they were very cheaply made and had very poor drivers.  Sort of like the units shown in Steve Deckert's article here, but not exactly.

http://www.decware.com/paper10.htm

My point is that sound is SO subjective and it's not always easy to know you're listening to what others think is dead awful.  This goes for legitimate high fi stuff as well.  And it goes the other way too, because often I will be at somebody's house who has cheap gear and my mind will say "oh this is garbage" but the reality is that it ain't all that bad.  My friend has dirt cheap radio shack speakers which probably commit many of the design\construction sins that the Dahltons do, but I cannot honestly say his system sounds bad.  It's really quite listenable after all.

Still, 500 bucks for those things is insanity.  I'd pay no more than 100 for them if I didn't know better.  50 is more like it.  I mean, they don't even LOOK expensive fer cripes sakes.  They can't be any worse than the junk they're selling at the chain stores, these doofuses just use that seedy kind of drug dealer marketing approach. :(  I dunno if I'd qualify it as a scam though, as the concept of slimy cretins selling junk to idiots is one of the things that makes America great.

ooheadsoo

White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #15 on: 19 Mar 2004, 04:36 pm »
Ii would stay away from the scam, period...I'm fairly sure my friend got caught in the New Mini version of the white van scam  :nono:

Thump553

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White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #16 on: 19 Mar 2004, 06:36 pm »
Here in the suburbs they have a variation of this- moving van comes around on a weekend day, going door to door.  The story is we have some brand new surplus furniture that XXX (high end furniture store) mistakenly ordered twice, etc.

The white van scam seems to mostly in college towns, although someone tried in on me about five years ago in a downtown parking lot next to my office.

Q

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White van speakers from Dahlton, measured and tested...
« Reply #17 on: 20 Apr 2004, 06:17 pm »
Well at least they combine two great names in audio...Dahlquist and Eggleston!  Hey...lots of people buy expensive stuff just for the name...take for instance Bose or Harley Davidson!