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How Does The
Thompson Vocal EliminatorTM
Compare With The Vogone®
Software Product?
I'm Lacy Thompson, Jr. and I am responsible for the development of my
company's
products and all of the claims we place on our web site. I stand behind
those claims personally. I try to be on the conservative side of accurate.
When I ran across the claims on the Vogone®
site I was absolutely astonished ! And, I take the matter
personally !
David Cox is the owner of MTU and presumably responsible for
his web site's claims. I called MTU to discuss their claims and got their
messaging system. David's wife returned the call and said she would have
him call me personally.
I never heard from him.
The MTU - Vogone® site makes direct
comparisons to our product which I find to be false and misleading. Some
attempt to draw direct comparisons with our products indicating they perform
equivalent or even better! I purchased their latest version 3.41
and found it to be inferior to products we were offering as early as 1978
in two critical aspects.
1) He fails to correct for time
errors which are common on many stereo recordings and 2) He
has no ability to
edit seamlessly into and out of the elimination process allowing you to preserve
critical instrumental solo and fill parts which would otherwise be eliminated
along with the vocals. This is my 1978 technology we are
talking about ! Our
current technology uses two completely different methods of removing vocals both
of which I have personally developed and refined without copying others.
He hasn't even been able to successfully copy and come up to the level of the
analog technology I was offering in 1978! Let alone the current VE4 !
If You Can't Out Perform Them ..... You Can Out Claim
Them !
That he does In Spades!
I
try to be conservative with our claims. There is no perfect Vocal EliminatorTM,
ours or anyone else's however there are
very significant differences
between our level of performance and copy cats like Vogone®.
Personally I was astonished when I took a look at David's site. I personally
wrote the copy for our web site and their web site looked like he attempted to
take our web site and whatever we claimed..... one up it ! To give
you a specific case in point.... We've been in business since 1976 and
have specialized since our inception in vocal elimination. We have
sold tens of thousands of Thompson Vocal Eliminators all over the world.
We were without a doubt the first company to refine and mass market a Vocal
EliminatorTM and I personally
independently developed two completely different methods of
removing vocals. For David Cox to apparently be attempting to take my
place as the pioneer in this area is truly insulting!
From Their Web Site: "Vogone has evolved for over 42 years so
you know its got to be different." Even though the first Vogone®
product didn't ship until
1998! and MTU wasn't even formed until March
1977. He attempts to be aiming to create the impression that "The Best Vocal
Remover" has been their "Passion" since 1968 in an apparent play to give the
misleading impression that they predated our efforts by 8 years and this has
been their area of focus! One would have to ask the very serious question
of why they can't even successfully copy our 1978 technology? Read
on..... the pattern continues.
So How Do They Actually Compare?
"Sweet Caroline" By Neal Diamond
Vogone®
VE4
"The Best Is Yet To Come" By Frank Sinatra
Vogone®
VE4
More Misleading or False Claims
From Vogone® Site
Claims To Be "First" To Adjust For Non Center Panned Vocals - April 2006
"including FIRST product to remove non-center-panned
vocals" This claim is False. Our very first product compensated for
non center vocals - that was 1976 30 ! Years Prior ! We've been compensating for time errors
between the two channels as well since 1978 and to my knowledge no one has realized how
critical this is including Vogone®.
It's the reason the "Sweet Caroline" example above eliminates so much better
than the Vogone® result.
Link
Gives Impression Vogone® Improves
Upon Original Quality - This is grossly misleading. "What is
also quite remarkable is just how good the remaining instrumental backing is
compared to the original!! When I switch between the original track and the
Vogone processed track, the Vogoned track has SO MUCH MORE LIFE & PRESENCE than
the very flat sounding original!! "
Link
Yes I know it's a quote from a customer, and yes I have had
similar comments from customers on our product who may have been listening to
the processed version at a higher level than the original. I would
never use such a comment on our site! The reality is that it is a
battle to minimize the losses of quality which can be substantial,
even
with our product which does a far better job than the Vogone®
of minimizing the losses. To give the impression that the
opposite! is
the case is grossly misleading ! The Vogone®
software actually increases the volume on the processed version about 6 dB over
the original which can fool some people into perceiving a higher quality level
when in fact the actual quality is reduced when the level is corrected.
Claims To Preserve The Stereo Content
Listen to the comparisons above.
At best I feel the Vogone® product
preserves 5 to 10% of the original stereo at a significant cost of the vocal
removal. I would say we preserve about 80% of the stereo content.
It varies from preserving 100% when we can automatically detect the vocal is not
present and disengage the processing completely (and seamlessly) to maybe 20% when the processing is
actively engaged to the maximum. For example in the above examples, we are
not manually editing the result. The stereo content you clearly hear is the
VE4's automatic vocal detection doing the work and computing the depth and
width and center frequency coefficients over 300 times a second to maximize the amount of stereo content
we can keep while still eliminating the vocal. Again this claim
appears to be little more than an attempt to "one up the Claim" while falling
far short of our performance level.
Attempts To Give The Impression They
Produce Better Results We Do. This is False.
A customer with a VE3+ evidently failed to get the unit to perform up to it's
capabilities. The customer should have
gotten a significantly better result than he achieved
with the Vogone® product. The only
way one could fail to get superior results from even our products going back to
1978 (Model D-2) would be ; 1) The unit was not hooked up and operated properly
or 2) There is something wrong with the unit. There is no indication
in our records that the customer called the Help Line for assistance.
We have attempted to make contact with the customer in question even locating
his Face Book page and sending an email ( twice!) . He has not responded. Hopefully since he states on
one post he still uses the unit for vocal enhancement, we will have the
opportunity to find out exactly what is going on.
Link
If David Cox can produce a single result
to substantiate this claim - Post It ! Just As We Have Posted Links Showing
Where We Clearly Out Perform His Product.
Lacy
Thompson, Jr.
President
PS: We sent a copy of a link to this page to David Cox (Vogone®
) the day this page was posted. If there are updates we feel
relevant we will update this page.
Questions ? Call (770)482-4836
For Over 34 Years - The Only Serious Vocal
EliminatorTM Providing The World's Best
Vocal Elimination
and World Class
Vocal Enhancement with Key Change
LT Sound
7980 LT Parkway - Lithonia, GA 30058
Hours: Weekdays 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM EST
(Other Than Wed)
Saturday 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM EST - Closed Sunday and Wednesday
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Not Available Through Dealers!
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