I'm not sure that Star Sound needs to release every bit of its intellectual property to respond to routine debates by the same small subset of people who, I believe, even if presented a slice of engineering truth, wouldn't purchase the product because either they aren't in the market for a new audio rack, don't like the people who work at the company, or have a different opinion on what the truth should be.
Personally, I'm getting tired of this debate because its an endless do-loop. Before I purchased my SP-7 I read all the negative comments on the products because I often find that's where the real drawbacks can be found. What I read were critiques on marketing and questions about the design that were the result of lacking information. Almost 100% of these posters were people who never owned the Star Sound product they reviewed. Their argument made simply: Star Sound hasn't disclosed sufficient engineering data to support the fact that the product works and, as a result, it sounds like mumbo jumbo, so its not worth purchasing.
As I said above, I don't believe Star Sound has to post anything. Microsoft certainly doesn't post information on how its code works...and you bought it anyway. More to the audiophile point, the same debate occurs within upsampling vs oversampling conversation, and with DVD-A vs SACD vs Redbook. If you don't like what you hear, don't buy the product.
As a side point, those engineers or analysts who are asking so many questions about the products haven't called Star Sound, despite repeated offers to answer additional questions. These people should really, really understand that a detailed conversation needs to be had - not a white paper. This is because the nature of the conversation requires substantial agreement on terminology, discussion of formulas, and why those decision making tools are used. I'm not aware of too many companies that will make an executive technical designer available in response to fairly anonymous comments on a web forum. I'd pose the question to those who have been asked to call Star Sound: Why haven't you called?
However, I read many posts from owners of the products who said the products work. So, who should I listen to: the engineers who don't have the data to back their positions (because Star Sound hasn't given them the data) or the owners of the products? To me, the fact that Star Sound doesn't provide detailed information about how their products work, really doesn't impact my decision. This is partially because I'm sure whoever designs their equipment is better at it than I am, and partially because I accept that I don't need to see 100% of data to make a decision.
Based on the information that is public, and a 30-day moneyback guarantee, I had all I needed to try the Sistrum SP-7. I didn't return it - the product works.
