I need your help 🙏 (Patreon)

Let’s be honest, so far the UBoom X launch was a fail. The initial firmware was buggy, the hate towards me spreading through YouTube comments or Reddit calling it a POS already prior to release and Amazon EU still not having them in stock making people cancel their preorders from early bird, just shows that the success of a product is not related to its quality, while crappy products being promoted through newsletters being sent out every day or paid ads and reviews are selling like hot cakes.

I wouldn’t have started all this if wasn’t sure that the final product can be really satisfying. Some of you maybe remember I had doubts in the initial state if I can really achieve something decent out of the UBoom X and already wanted to throw in the towel but I had put lots of effort into trying to make it a great product with endless listening sessions outdoors fine tuning compressor settings and filters to make it usable up to highest levels without anyone complaining that it’s too soft or has too little bass (honestly already indoor+ is pretty bass heavy to begin with) and I had really hoped it to become a success and satisfy customers making them want to use the speaker for listening to music and enjoying what they are hearing.

Getting a speaker below 120€ which offers an honest natural sound but can also compete with larger more expensive boomboxes and people still complaining it’s too expensive, too many EQ settings, only 3 hours of battery life at maximum volume blah blah, shows that all effort is just worth nothing.

I really had hoped that good sales could also relax me a bit financially, as I had lost all other sources of income aside of my faithful supporters here on Patreon, I was dependent on accepting the deal from Earfun limiting my shares to purchases only done over separate links or personal coupons. I can be sure that from the thousands units produced I will sell maybe 300. So far I have no insight into how many units were ordered or purchased in total or over my link. But after a “tuning fee” I got some months back I didn’t see a penny for my work yet which continued over several months, including all the videos I did for free to show the potential of the speaker already prior to release.

After the initial shitstorm about the UBoom L some years back, it apparently managed to become some kind of “classic” or must have low budget speaker and this may happen with the UBoom X as well in future, just that I have no benefit from this at all. People recommending these speakers to others, making them sell good or praising my work just gives me nothing. I know by myself that I didn’t do any shit and I didn’t lie to anyone. I did what I could to achieve the best that was possible out of the given hardware. I am just an amateur and have no clue about what I am doing but I am doing it for so long until I am satisfied. Maybe I could squeeze out even more out of the UBoom L with having gained some more experience thanks to the UBoom X in the meantime, but Earfun always declined my ideas or suggestions about changes for a 2.0 model. I would have done this simply to salve my conscience that it cannot be made any better, not because I am getting paid for this, because in fact I won’t.

With that being said, I am simply broke right now. I have no clue how to pay my next bills. My computer is not working properly with the GPU having an issue, editing videos is a pain in the ass with the whole user interface lagging while encoding a 5 minute video can take several hours because the CPU is used instead.

Over the years I somehow managed to create lots of hate towards me or my person. Maybe because of my personality, maybe because I appear unfriendly, smart-ass or who knows, this apparently also led to the shut down of my YouTube channel although I never screwed anyone or tried to rip someone off, I didn’t spread lies or took money to create fake claims or reviews, on the contrary when I was contacted by a sponsor once who sent me some products for a review which in the end I didn’t quite review positively, I was attacked of being pretentious and arrogant although I just expressed my honest personal opinion.

I am not interested in reviewing products anymore, as I don’t want to criticise others’ work just like others are dragging mine in the mud. But what I hate is this false and fake advertising trying to sell you some shit pretending it to be the flavour of the month just to tell you the same crap some months later with an even more expensive follow-up model.

I repeatedly see people attacking me for being greedy, a shill, complaining I am offering EQs behind a paywall, asking money for an image… and I felt ashamed of asking even 2€ for my work which in reality takes lots of hours to create. But being in the need of a plumber or calling an electrician they may calculate you 100€ just for coming.

I had plans to create EQs for all given headphones I own but after I had noticed people proudly showing off they grabbed my Free Pro 2 settings for free somewhere on the web, instead of paying 5 bucks for a work which took me months to achieve and still call me untrustworthy, I simply lost any motivation to continue with that.

I wanted to create a neutral EQ for the HD6XX already for October and choose another headphone the next month, but this is not a one click solution. To achieve something that I can really be satisfied with can take several weeks, the toughest part is in the fine details and getting all frequencies into a harmonic ratio to each other, which is not possible to achieve with some quick measurements but needs to slowly be approached by ear bit by bit and still being unsure if this what I am hearing will also sound correct to someone else. Putting all this effort into a given headphone asking 10$ for it and finally discovering my work floating around somewhere with people sharing it everywhere saying how great it is and me not being able to feed my family makes me question my whole life.

I am not greedy and I personally don’t care much about money but I don’t want to disappoint my partner who believed in me for more than 20 years supported me in every possible away and allowed me to waste my time with this YouTube madness which in the end led to just nothing as if it hasn’t existed at all, to finally realise she wasted her time with a loser!

I am posting this here out of desperation not because I am asking you to send me money for nothing but because I have no plan how to continue. I am still in regular contact with the headphone factory and I am expecting 3 further samples arriving within the next weeks already featuring my tuning to check for variation, but I already foresee this to become a fail too, having to produce and finance 3000-5000 units and then maybe sell 100, because I see how people react to the UBoom X now.

Everyone being satisfied with my work so far and enjoying the products I worked on also willing to help me can always donate through my PayPal or take the entry level once or upgrade to a higher tier for at least a month, but then I will get this money not until November. I will also announce a giveaway the next days just need to look what I can offer that may be of interest.

Thanks so much to all my long time supporters and all donators and a big welcome all new supporters. I hope I can offer you something valuable in future.

Yours, O.