Joseph Crowe is an idiot

Dissident · April 1, 2025, 11:22am

i called him “sloppy” on Diy Audio and was told that this is harsh …

but he’s so fucking sloppy i am officially upgrading his title to Idiot.

my beef with him began with this article of his:

which is for a driver specified in my point source system design.

there are too many fuck ups in his write up to list from inconsistent measurement conditions, to not correctly band limiting the excitation signal to the driver to plain and simple mis-reading the charts his measurement setup produced to just plain simple not making any sense

he said 4599he had such a high level of intermodulation distortion that it was unacceptable … at the same time he also said it had the lowest harmonic distortion he has ever measured … i had to spend an entire day reading technical papers on intermodulation distortion to find out if such a contradiction / paradox was even theoretically possible … the answer was NOT REALLY

he then made some other idiotic claims for example he said that IMD going up with frequency and drive level was something unique to this driver and that other drivers do not exhibit this … he said every driver was unique in the way it produced IMD … that again struck me as odd … i had to again spend a day researching this and again the answer was NOT REALLY

here is a screen shot from his site:

i should note this shot is from his earlier blog here:

he since concluded that driver was defective and had his customer send him another one which he concluded was “marginally better”

anyway, at this point i knew he was doing something wrong so i found his review of another BMS midrange:

which uses almost identical operating principle and thus should have almost identical distortion performance and yet Joseph said it was “essentially a distortion free driver” whereas for the 4599HE he said IMD distortion performance was so compromised that the driver could not be used. well i don’t want to put words in his mouth this is what he said:

after i carefully went over the test conditions ( that he was nice enough to document ) i came to the conclusion that indeed the performance of both drivers ( the single and dual diaphragm models from BMS ) was THE SAME as i knew it should be. the entire difference in Joseph’s conclusions was due to how sloppy he was with interpreting his own measurement results.

i was already angry at this point but not angry enough to write a blog about it. after all most people don’t measure IMD at all and don’t even know what it is so my logic is well at least he tried let’s give him a break.

then today …

Dissident · April 1, 2025, 11:38am

then today i look at this review for a $1,300 Fostex Supertweeter

like the ( also $1,300 ) BMS 4599HE the driver was sent to Joseph for measurement by a customer of his …

in his review Joseph says the horn is made out of “polished stainless steel”

but on Madisound page it clearly states:

that it is made out machined brass PLATED WITH PLATINUM

the reviewer on Madisound spends half of his review to marvel at the quality of the platinum finish … which Joseph said was “steel”

actually all my car audio Rockford Fosgate power terminals are also platinum plated brass … brass is used because it is highly conductive while platinum is used because it resists oxidation to maintain contact quality.

and my gym padlocks are made of Chrome Plated Brass for similar reasons - brass machines well while chrome maintains finish.

the reason Fostex used brass is because it is heavy ( to make the tweeter feel expensive ) and they used platinum because it maintains finish quality ( versus steel that has fingerprints etch into it ) and of course because it is another excuse to jack up the price versus chrome like on my padlock. plus platinum is a more sophisticated color than chrome.

but to Joseph … it’s just “steel”

now imagine being his customer and sending that absolute fucking retard a $1,300 state of the art driver only for him to measure it incorrectly and send it back to you saying that your driver is useless trash ( when it is actually the best in the world ).

imagine sending your $1,300 platinum plated brass driver to him fore measurement only for him to write that it is made out of “steel”

now if some homeless guy didn’t know the difference between steel and platinum that could be forgiven, but Joseph charges thousands of dollars for his custom horns and then he looks at the flagship, made in Japan Fostex horn made out of platinum plated machined brass and says it is “polished steel” … that is just UNACCEPTABLE

that idiot is only in business because literally nobody else offers the services that he does.

i sincerely wish him the best and want to see him continue doing what he does because i think he is a good person and that DIY community needs his services but fuck man he’s one sloppy ass retard and needs to level up his game !