Updates and prospects for 2024 (Patreon)

I am currently preparing to visit my Otologist and let my ears clean again. As you remember after having tried the Etymotic ERX, this screwed up my hearing. I managed to fix my settings for the Free Pro 2 to get a normal sound again, but I had stopped doing any further work on IEMs and headphones because of this since then. I would like to start again with everything soon, I had made some progress for the HD58X but also couldn't do any further verification tests, because I always need to setup everything in the living room in order to be able to hear my KH80 with a neutral response, they sound too different in my office room. Right now I just cannot occupy our living room for longer, also because my wife thinks I am just wastin my time with all this, although I would need several days for a final soundcheck, with maybe additional adjustments to finalise my headphone target and also approximate the same for an IEM, and finally also create a final compensation for my recordings, based on the responses I achieved for the headphone. Right now my sound demos are just an average for my left and right ear derived from the response I measured with the equalised KH80 in my room, but it would need further listening tests to compare my recordings to the real setup and optimise everything in detail. In the longer term I had planned to prepare our cellar for this, applying some acoustic panels to the wals, with some thick carpet at the floor to achieve a constant listening room, but right now I can hardly pay my monthly bills and do not have any funds for such a project. Therefore I am looking for ways to somehow earn a bit more money and will setup a "store" on Patreon where I can sell "sound settings" for various audio devices. Thus people not having any membership on Patreon can still purchase something.

These sound settings will be available for some given speakers like the Motion 300 where I prepared a setting in the meantime which should sound similar to the VIFA Helsinki, I also started to prepare some usable sound settings for the Motion X600, and managed to optimise my settings for the Stormbox Blast for indoors and outdoors with the latest firmware, and in the longer term I would also like to offer settings for various headphones like already announced before, but this will only happen after I managed to finalise my headphone target, otherwise it may introduce further errors.

I would like to offer everything I was working on recently to you as my continuous supporters, but after Christmas these settings will only be availabe for purchase from the "store". I am not sure how to deal with this in future but I could imagine offering my settings for the higher levels anyhow. I just want to avoid my work to be leaked and published somehwere, like I discovered recently: A site with all my Patreon postings published together with some porn ads accessible to anyone. One of my Patreons must have uploaded all these postings until September. To avoid such problems in future, I want to set up this "store" and have better overview of who actually purchased something, and if it leaks somewhere I can block these people.

Please understand that right now Patreon is my only source of income and I somehow have to protect my work. I got a one-time payment from Earfun for my work on the Free Pro 3, but they screwed me by only paying me shares from purchases done over my own links. Although they probably sell thousands of units, I maybe get shares from some dozens only, because most people buy from other links not mine. Therefore I need to continue extending ways of earning money on Patreon somehow, maybe also offering some merch stuff in future, I really don't know.

I would like to thank everyone who has supported me throughout the recent years when I started all this, you really helped me to survive somehow, but it's getting harder and harder these days.

Thanks a lot and have a nice Advent season!