I am a fan of Etymotic's ipod ear cannel headphones, the Etymotic ER6i's. I've reviewed them as great, affordable entry level higher end headphones that can really change your ipod listening experience. They are also great noise eliminators with no need for a battery to get that noise cancellation to work.
Recently, i've also learned that Etymotic provides exceptional, beyond the call of duty, customer support. If you're weighing up options of a company to get your next phones from, besides thinking about quality of product, this tale of after sales support may encourage you to look at this specialist group for their excellent work and quality of support.
Technorati Tags: etymotic, gear, service, support
Here's the story. I bought a pair of ER6i's about 18months ago that went flakey on me about 9 months ago. By flakey i mean that one side was cutting in and out, and finally, pretty much just out. I thought well, that's me: i've just treated them too unkindly and maybe that's why they've turned south. When i can i'll get a new pair. In the interim, the price on these phones has come down almost 50%! making them an even better deal than when i first reviewed them. So i got another set 4 months ago. Truth to tell, i used them rarely as my listening habits in the past four months have changed somewhat. They spent most of their time safely in their case (an excellent redesign of the previous pouch - so an even better value than the earlier phones yet again). I was therefore hugely surprised to find that one day, on plugging them in, the left channel was dead.
I thought oh dang, now i have to deal with customer support and warranties - where's the bill where's the bill. I looked at the warranty page on the web site (they actually make it easy to access right from the main page of the web site) and learned that there was a 12 month warranty on these puppies.
That's when i felt like a fool: when my first set died, they were under warranty; now they weren't. But at least the current set were. I wrote customer support whom it turns out i'd written about a year before to ask about filters for the original phones and they'd been great then. This time i was writing though to ask about two things:
First, i was asking how do i proceed to do a warranty claim on the new headphones.
Second, i asked if there was any chance they'd look at the old headphones, even though they were now 6 months out of warranty and it's my fault for not thinking of that sooner.
The response and subsequent interaction was amazing. The customer support person - it turns out the same person i'd dealt with previously, said yes send them both along! That's the first great thing. The second is that i said i'd be in the states for a bit and perhaps if they were able to turn around checking them out, they'd be able to send them to me in the US, rather than back to the UK where it would take me awhile to catch up with them. Yes again - please give us both addresses and we'll do what we can.
And they did. Within a week they were out of my hands, in their shop, and then back to me.
The third great thing, that just blew me away is that in the return box, there was only one pair of headphones. The second had not made it. When i asked about this via email, they were extremely apologetic and said they'd send out that replacement pair via UPS red and that i'd have them the NEXT morning. Now, my email asking about the missing pair went to them late that afternoon. UPS red is not cheap, but they opted to use this service so i'd have both pairs before i left the country. I wrote back to say it's ok; please just send them to the UK by whatever means: i have the one pair now i can use; the other can follow. But no, there they were the next morning. There was even an extra couple sets of ear tips - i'd asked why the tips were now grey rather than white on the replacement pair. Apparently they're all going to this better grade grey tip, but since i expressed a preference for white, the extras were included with this next set.
Now, every step of that experience, from looking after an out of warranty repair, to facilitating a particular shipping request, to recovering from the smallest of errors with the greatest of grace, every step here was a demonstration of a company going above and beyond the written letter of their warranty, beyond customer satisfaction, and getting to customer delight.
It's experiences like this, along with great product to start with, that build customer loyalty for sure.
Here's a shout out to Maureen Defoort of Etymotic Customer Service and to a company that supports this kind of care.
Yet another reason to recommend these excellent headphones.
Recently, avid's digidesign group released Pro Tools LE MBox 2 mini: a wee (6" * 1.75 * 5 inch, 1.1 lb) usb 1.1 based audio only interface (no midi and again no firewire or "pro" version as there is with the regular Mbox 2's) that includes Pro Tools LE audio/midi recording and editing software that, at 300 USD, promises to put the Pro Tools experience into even more musician's hands. For those who already use existing protools systems, the Mini promises to be an expensive dongle that will finally enable access to Pro Tools LE software while working on the go. Whether it's a price current LE owners will be willing to swallow is another matter.
Pro Tools systems are the industry standard for recording. It is the Microsoft Office of the digital audio studio domain. The LE line of Pro Tools products has let home and indie studio musicians/engineers access the (near) same features as the Pro Tools HD systems found in many professional studios - at a fraction of their professional price. The advantage of using the LE software is that one can easily take audio files made at home into an HD studio for the full bore studio treatment. File exchange is also facilitated: just like word and power point files can be easily swapped. Read any of the discussions on product sites about software musicians or dj's use, and you'll see most of the time in the discussions on technology, pro tools is the final audio mix system of choice - Logic, Digital Performer or Live for sequencing, but ProTools for the final audio mix.
The Pro Tools LE systems come in a variety of configurations, from the $2500 digi002 8 channel audio/midi mixers/control surfaces to the variety of mobile MBox (usb) and MBox pro (firewire) systems, and now the $300 MBox 2 mini. With Avid's acquisition of M-Audio, Digidesign also recently released a special version of the software, M-powered Pro Tools, specially designed to work with certain M-Audio devices with audio/midi interfaces. So, for 279 on top of your instrument purchase you can use Pro Tools software with these interfaces.
The disappointing disadvantage to these systems is that use of the software requires that one of the specified interfaces be attached to the computer when using the software. Forget about whipping out your laptop to edit your work while you're on a train/plane somewhere: unless you have that hardware plugged in, the software won't start. And if you already have a protools system and then get an m-audio, m-powered aware device, can you use that m-audio device to boot up your protools LE software? No. You have to buy the m-powered pro tools version of le to use directly with those devices. Of course you can use those devices with pro tools - when your pro tools hardware is attached.
Think of the hardware interfaces as giant iLoks, or dongles that won't let you access the software without some hardware authorization device attached. At least, i'm guessing this is digidesign's rationale for not allowing paid and licensed users to access the software without the hardware attached. Hence begins the rant.
Technorati Tags: audio, pro tools, technology
Audio is one of the last holdouts for arcane protection mechanisms. While many companies like Ableton and Native Instruments have moved to online registration systems for their software, there are still several key Old School manufacturers that rely on some form of crippling physical authentication. While some companies (apple with Logic Pro is an example) use their own proprietary format USB dongles, ILok's are the major dongle of choice for many in the audio world - and they have a lovely insurance policy if something happens to your iLok - you can pay $30 a year for "zero downtime" to get *temporary* licenses back should your lok be lost or stolen, and then one gets the permanent licenses from the software vendor - somehow - but that only works if the company using the iLok system agrees to that replacement policy.
One of the biggest audio effects makers, WAVES, does not support ANY recovery of license authorizations if your iLok is lost or stolen. Instead, they say "Waves does not offer replacement keys for lost or stolen iLok keys or authorizations. We suggest insuring your iLok key to cover the possibility of such misfortune happening." Does that mean they expect license holders to have to repurchase the software? YES! that's what the insurance is for, stupid: buy new software. This i fail to understand - what i fail to understand is WHY NOT just work like a credit card when it's reported lost or stolen: with a credit card, as soon as you report it lost or stolen, the issuer kills the numbers and issues new ones on new cards. Surely the same could happen with these plugins? Authorization is validated at each use on any machine: if the numbers have been cancelled, the dongle no longer functions.
Plainly there's a business model that says NOT supporting something this straightforward with zeros and ones is in the company's interest, and since Waves has the lion's share of the effects market in big production work, what motivation is there to change? As many many posters on many audio forums note, all waves plugins have been hacked and work flawlessly on the PC (too bad for mac users!) so once again, the only group this copy protection strategy hurts are legitimate users.
But i digress. This is about Pro Tools. As for Pro Tools, their hardware acts like such an authorization dongle, and is equally if not more exasperatingly irritating than a dongle because usually their physical dongle hardware has some heft to it. The MBox 2 Mini is small, but it's not tiny. On the plus side, it has a kensignton lock port on it (try that with an iLok! ha!). And it does offer what's reputed to be a good headphone jack which is nice for editing on the go. So a dongle with some features that may actually be useful when NOT RECORDING just editing.
Don't get me wrong: for someone looking for a decent audio interface that will let them into a Pro Tools space, this could be just great. For those who want midi and more than two tracks on a portalbe interface, there's other MBox's. For those already there with pro Tools who have been wanting a way to edit their sessions on the go, the MBox 2 Mini may just be the dongle to set one free - relatively speaking.
It will be interesting to see how many people who already have digi002's for instance add the Mbox 2 Mini to their gear finally just to get on the go with their session editing - of course, carrying their usb hub, too, so that they can plug in all those platform specific dongles.