New year, 2010!

[Thanos]

Dear All,

Life gets shorter every day, that's why it becomes more precious, meaningful and finely detailed. Yet, more obvious as a whole. Exactly like Harbeth speakers! So, love each other, enjoy music, love your Harbeths. Then you are, we all are, RICH!

Have a Lovely Christmas and a very Happy New Year! With health and a flower-like soul above all!

Alan, would you ever dress yourself up as Santa Claus amidst the snow and publish the photo for us all? So many years that you keep bringing presents to the music lovers of the world, so dress up once!

Cheers with so many smiles from Greece,

Thanos

[keithwwk]

Merry Christmas to all of you!

[Gan CK]

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all at Harbeth & to all Harbeth users around the world.

[tein3]

Wishing all Harbeth users, non Harbeth users and in general all music lovers ---- A Merry Christmas and a wonderful year 2010 coming ahead.

May we all retain in good health, good hearing to carry on with our enjoyment from Harbeth speakers for the music that we love listening to.

May Alan and Team have a Merry Christmas for all the hard work done for the year 2009... to bring us such great enjoyment from a wonderful product, and may year 2010 be good and kind to you all!

[A.S.]

We at Harbeth much appreciate your orders, support and contributions here, and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Attached is a picture taken at our staff Christmas party last week of our small, tight-knit team here at Harbeth UK.

We were very much conscious that not able to be with us are the hundreds of staff throughout our worldwide distribution network, and our direct salaried employees working overseas for us.

>

[A.S.]

This posting has been relocated here.

[A.S.]

Sorry. Can't agree. The picture quality on Freeview is complete and utter garbage - the equivalent of MP3. It would be as the bit rate is so pitifully low. You must be sitting a long way away. The off-air UHF analogue signal is much cleaner, has sharper edges and has none of the ghastly blockiness and fast-motion tracking problems of Freeview. But, of course, the analogue signal uses a huge bandwidth into which hundreds of Freeview channels can be crushed.

That Freeview is tolerated by the public on the ever-increasing TV screen sizes beats me. Anything above 32" and it is utterly ghastly, as a trip round your local TV store amply demonstrates. Freeview, as a social experiment is very interesting because it reveals just how tolerant the general public is of degraded picture quality. Exactly the same issue as the adoption of internet (MP3) audio - how quickly we, the public, forget just how high a standard we used to take for granted before consumer choice and diversity became the new mantra: quantity over quality rules.

Freeview takes the standard of TV quality backwards to early 60s, the start of the colour TV era. In fact, it's far worse. The early colour pictures were soft but at least they were not blocky with staircase edges. That MPEG2 blockiness drives me nuts! To say nothing about the horrid colour cast (usually blue-red) that applies to most LCD TVs.

[Hu]

Alan, wish you merry christmas~, could you tell us who are in the picture? I think I know you, harbethpr and Andy.

[Hu]

Ummm, the older gentleman (with glasses) who took the chopsticks is Derek?

[A.S.]

In the picture, back row nearest the wall, left to right ....

Samantha (Sam) Production supervisor
Andy (Production manager)
Marcus (hidden) Production
Vernon (good friend, clock restorer* and makes bi-wire links)
Derek Hughes (helps me in R&D, production engineering, CAD)

Front row, left to right:

Mark (Production, makes all 5", 8" and 12" woofers)
Me
Anne (Accountant)
Trevor (PR)

The most important persons are those in Production. Together, the production staff shown have worked at Harbeth for about twenty years.

*I have made a short video of visiting Vernon in the clock-repairing workshop on this page.

[Hu]

Haha, dear Lao Alan, see I recognized Andy, Trevor (harbethpr here) and Derek!!!

About bi-wires links, the posts of my 25 anniversary M30s are in hollow, very difficult for bi-wires with spade plugs, and difficult for cables with spades. Finally the posts of my 30 anniversary ones are on surface!

Sorry, I thought Anne is your wife, hehe.

[Hu]

Lao Alan, please say hello to people in Production, thank them to give us the chance to enjoy such pretty music!

[A.S.]

Will do! Between us we have about one hundred years of making speaker experience.

Anne has been our accountant for over ten years. She is very sharp. Our auditors congratulate her every year on her professional, neat, accurate book-keeping. They can find all records immediately. She also analyses the financial records of all suppliers, customers and even competitors so we understand the full supply-chain and competitive environment. We know our exact commercial position internally and relative to the market. As a single-parent she is very cautious and conservative and this means that we do not waste any money.

[Don Leman]

Who was taking the picture and doesn't Trevor like brussel sprouts?

Don

[A.S.]

Well spotted Don! My youngest son, David, 21 back from university for Christmas and sitting on Trevor's right took the picture. Trevor is the pickiest eater I have even met. He's a vegetarian and seems to find reasons not to eat just about all and every food!

David is studying marketing at university and has a sneaking regard for what we've achieved at Harbeth. Not so much that he actually want to work for us, but never the less, a certain admiration. Ah well, he's young yet ... he is also dangerously fit through daily exercise and I find it best just to go along with whatever he says.

[Hu]

Very handsome boy David!!!

[A.S.]

On behalf of the entire Harbeth network may I wish every one of you a healthy and happy new year. Let's make it our combined resolution to worry less about the equipment and more about the music in 2010. So much music to explore out there!

Now, an announcement about this User Group. Nothing to worry about, but it's taxed us for the last few days. We have used 98% of the allocated database size on the server where the HUG actually runs. The hosting company, 1&1, the largest in Europe reportedly, have declined to increase our capacity as we are at the limit of what their Linux server offers. As this database is written in MyPHP, to convert it to another database format (such as MS PHP) would be a huge and risky task.

Yesterday, we found another host company who confirmed that they could offer us MyPHP on Linux with at least 50% more data capacity and we signed up for it. Although Ivan, our webmaster worked through the night to make the data transfer, it quickly became clear that the new host had strict limits on file sizes, and database files do not easily divide down. He is now away for a few days break and I'm off to CES on 5th Jan 2010. In the meantime we inch closer to the 100% capacity. Whilst Ivan is away, I'm negotiating with the new hosts to try and get a special dispensation to allow bigger files for upload - even for a few days.

I am going to have to lock the HUG for a few days soon, so we can make the transfer (if we can find a way of doing it). In the meantime, please do not attach any picture files as they use-up our remaining capacity faster than text. It's all in hand but we were not warned of this catch. There is no risk that data will be lost until we hit 100% capacity.

Happy New Year and thanks for your contributions and orders in 2009.

[John Geisen]

Dear Alan,

From one of your dealers in Florida, USA I wanted to extend a very warm Christmas and Happy New Year to your and your staff. I've felt privileged to represent Harbeth at my store and would like to continue doing so in the future. Walter Swanbon has done an excellent job supporting our dealer network. I hope to see you both at CES.

Sincerely,
John Geisen
Wellington Audio

[kittykat]

Thank you Alan, and also wishing everyone a wonderful year ahead where your dreams or the journey of reaching are achieved. Hope everyone had a most pleasant and safe holidays.

some holidays pictures...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2159563...7622994619427/

the comment of giving attention to whats important in our lives is most important eg. music and also our families and our loved ones.

[harbethpr]

It wasn't snowing when Alan departed London for the CES earlier today, but now London Gartwick airport is closed .... he's arrived in the warmth in Las Vegas. Had he left a day later, as he usually does he'd have been stranded here. Snow

So if you do have a chance to say hello sat the CES please do so!