Seymour's response to Tazerboo email posted on Clearstation
From : Tazerboo Aug 3 1999 6:47AM
Re : Response from Seymour
I e-mailed Jim Seymour...sharing with him my thoughts on his article(posted below) Imagine my shock when I received his response to my thoughts...also posted below!! This guy still doesn't get it!!!
Your article on EDIG was horrific!! I cannot imagine a man of your stature as an advisor and writer having put together such a shoddy piece of work...obviously deficient of even the slightest hint of research. I will not enumerate the number of errors you made but they were numerous!!! One blatent prevarication though was when you stated there was not a prototype available for your listening pleasure. Why is it then that the other columnists/reporters attending that meeting did "hang around" to SEE and HEAR it...to such an extent that they wrote articles about the astounding clarity of the music?? The article was reminiscent of a high school student doing a book report without having fully read the assigned book. Perhaps your schedule prevents you from engaging in the research required to present the true "big" picture of the future of this little BB stock. Perhaps, Mr. Seymour, should you decide to do another piece on EDIG (the company you infer may not be around too much longer)...you may want to do a little more research on the REAL future of this baby among giants.....VOICE TO TEXT AND TEXT TO VOICE!!!!! Imagine what this technology(patented by EDIG) will do for the legal, medical, court reporting, newspaper columnists communities to name just a few. Mr. Seymour....downloadable music is just the first baby step for this soon to be Titan.
His Response:
Subj: RE: EDIG Date: 8/2/99 12:17:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: jim_seymour@zd.com (JS) To: TAZERBOO@aol.com
Read the column again. I didn't say there wasn't a prototype available, but rather:
"There were no prototypes, even rough ones, of production-level portable music-players available when we met in Newport Beach. e.Digital does have a breadboard-level black box showing what it can do, but clearly a production design is not imminent.
Note the difference: I said there wasn't a PRODUCTION- LEVEL proto...and there WASN'T, just a big, black-box style engineering breadboard proto. Big, big difference. A produc- tion-level proto, something roughly the size of the Diamond Rio, would have been an interesting proto, to which I cer- tainly would have listened, and found useful. I didn't listen to the big box because time was limited, and as I told Fred, I was more interested in his business model and plans to commercialize this technology than in the issue of what their early engineering proto -- far from anything any readers of mine might ever buy -- sounded like.
Long experience in this business has persuaded me that paying much attention to such obviously early engineering protos can be highly deceptive -- who knows what's in the box? how much it's really like anything which may come to market? -- and so, yes I didn't listen.
But did I dis EDIG's quality? No, to the contrary, I said:
"Friends whose judgment I respect tell me e.Digital's player can offer very good audio quality, perhaps the best in the business, and absent any chance to test that or even experience it for myself, I have to defer reluctantly to their call. Let's take it as a given for a moment that e.Digital can provide superior audio playback."
Hah! So I *praised* EDIG's quality! See what I mean?!?!?
All this is even more impt because, as I said so clearly in the column, I DON'T THINK THE MP3-ETC. DIGITAL DOWNLOADABLE MUSIC MARKET IS GOING TO BE, IN THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE, MAINLY ABOUT AUDIO QUALITY, BUT ABOUT GETTING "GOOD ENOUGH"- LEVEL AUDIO TO MARKET QUICKLY.
And to my mind, the quality of existing systems -- MP3, Liquid Audio, etc. -- is more than adequate for this portable music market: listening to music in noisy environments, on small players and cheap, tinny earbuds.
THAT'S what I was writing about, as easily understood by many, many letter-writers who have sent me very positive notes about this column (including a number who identify themselves as EDIG shareholders, and consider the column a positive, esp given the "speculator's choice" line, and my comments at the bottom about the potential profitability of an invest- ment in EDIG at this price level...).
So...in fact, the article was very well researched, indeed -- you just don't like my conclusions from that research. [And yes, I think the VTT/TTV market may hold nice opportunities for EDIG in the future, but THIS ARTICLE WAS ABOUT THEIR PROSPECTS IN THE DOWNLOADABLE DIGITAL MUSIC MARKET. (Yes, I'm shouting....) The company's par- ticipation in VTT/TTV is a whole 'nother ballgame....]
Finally, as I've told the EDIG people, I wish them (and by inference, their shareholders) well. I just don't think they're going to be among the early winners in this game....
--JS
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