Light Harmonic (LH Labs). Scam? USD$6 million not delivered since 2014

[jsiegel]

On 11/27/2019 at 11:30 AM, marflao said:

 

I blame it on Larry that this "project" has even started 😉

Don't Forget Gavin !!!!!!

[jsiegel]

16 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Yep - over at Head-Fi they're talking about another manufacturer having brought 11 or 21 (forget which, or maybe another number) of DAPs onto the market in the time span during which not so much as a single working prototype of the Geek Wave has been produced.

Fiio - 18 (that is just portable players like wave not Amps, dac amps or IEM's

A&K - 26 players - if you count the various materials for cases (not colors), i think they might make a couple other products.

But who is counting - Larry has only been working on the Wave since 2014, so it obviously will bt the Ultimate Player and there will be no need for either of these guys to build another one.  They should quit while they are ahead!

 

https://www.fiio.com/supports

https://www.astellnkern.com/eng/content/shop/allProduct_grid.asp

 

 

[jsiegel]

On 12/20/2019 at 4:01 PM, John Dyson said:

This problem makes me wonder -- was this an overreach by an overly enthusiastic person who didn't realize what they were getting into, or was this a scam from day 1?

I can understand getting in over ones head, and development costs being overwhelming, but a person should not even THINK about selling something without the project being almost ready AT LEAST.   My own values say -- either work on an hourly basis, project completion basis or as a complete product that is already in manufacturing (hopefully recieving working units.)

 

Encouraging customers to double as investors is a dangerous game.  There is no equity as a customer -- esp if there is no contract.  The risk is very high for the consumer, and also the risk of reputation is high for the developer/seller.

 

As someone who has REALLY developed things in the past, and had both successful and unsuccessful projects -- in one case, the failing was my own health -- I could never try to pre-sell something that I don't have in-hand, ready for production, special components already in-hand.  TOO OFTEN, there need to be design changes, and will change the eventual specifications.  Also, there is the issue of component availability, as sometimes the component manufacturers can cause real problems.  Small manufacturers should purchase a fairly large supply of necessary and/or uncommon components for a big part of the product lifetime.  Some parts just 'disappear' pooft...

 

I just don't get it, how this situation should happen...   Apparently someone is a better salesman than product developer...  (Note that I didn't use the term 'engineer' for 'product developer  -- because being just an Electronics Engineer alone is NOT enough to produce a complex manufactured product -- unless that person can stay awake 48Hrs/day, and understands pacakging and a few other disicplines like FCC/EMC compliance  :-)).   I don't know the rules today, but I have been involved in several small company, small volume (<1k) products that still needed all of the regulatory compliance issues resolved.  Have things changed?

 

 

John

 

It is amazing how many products were unfinished. 

If they had been finished he could have teamed up with a chinese manufacturer or Drop (MassDrop) to execute production.  Instead we have a few sample products in the wild that are reported to have sort of worked at one time. 

 It would be nice to know how the "money" was spent. 

Did he get caught in the "we can make it still better" spiral?

Did he lose interest in each project before the troubling "production" details were finished?

Did the prototypes prove unproducible or way over production "budget"?

 

It seems that one project could have been finished with the 3-5 million and it would have funded the company thru each product in turn.  

 

Schiit Audio has boot strapped a very successful company in the same state with currently 29 products and have evolved/discontinued another dozen products in the same time we have waited for larry to finish one.   And Schiit didn't have the "benefit" of pre selling 10 products to get the cycle started.

 

Indiegogo should share some blame in keeping their 10% with no follow up.

[jsiegel]

On 1/8/2020 at 8:20 AM, OutSider said:

 

Gotta love how the justify it by saying  LH Labs and Light Harmonic are two different companies and don’t have anything to do with each other. 
Both are run by the same fraud and scammer Larry Ho. They can change their name as much as the like, Larry is still nothing but a scammer

how can they be "separate" companies when Light harmonic ended up with the crowd funded designs:

http://lightharmonic.com/source-pro-music-server/

 

[jsiegel]

17 hours ago, Jud said:

I appear to‘ve lost posting privileges in the relevant Head-Fi thread for the time being at least (to be fair, I did link back here to news of a pending legal complaint, which can be seen as a violation of their posting guidelines), where yet another supposedly near-final, near-production Wave rendering has been posted.

 

Someone's noted that the renderings don't show an SD card slot, without which the Wave would be useless.

It is expected to magically appear below the buttons.  Even though this is the "final" drawing.

 

 

of course we have heard this before:

FAQ: Why Geek Wave project took so long?
Modified on: Sun, 17 Sep, 2017 at 5:54 AM

Stage 6/ RC1: This is the current stage we are now. PCB fabrication is done of Release Candidate 1. And PCBA is scheduled to be done before the end of this month. We will have an updated Gantt Chart for the details in the other article.

Yes. The whole project took several detours of fundamental platform or CPU changing. Also, in order to get the best performance, we didn't compromise to use existing Android systems or leverage some platform designed for Android phones. These are the few key factors that played in schedule delay. If we could go back in time, we definitely will skip few wasted steps and go to the conclusion we have now. Saving time is to save cost. So we truly believe LH Labs' members are just like all backers, we are eager to finish this project without cut corners.

Currently, we have Larry and Matt/Gerber boy working on the final hardware changes if needed. We have Craig and two to work on high level software and user interface. Jessy is in middleware layer and display driver. Lan and his team is on the Operation System level and audio output software optimization. We just recruited another good hardware manufacturer project manager/leader in Asia that will come on board in early Nov. Our production leader, Sandi will work with him hand in hand to make production cycle smooth.

We really want to express our most sincere thanks for you great patience and understanding. We will keep pushing to finish this project. Like the other 13 projects we did before. This one is big and this one is tough. But we will make it.

 

 

I especially like :"Like the other 13 projects we did before"

[jsiegel]

4 hours ago, OutSider said:

About time LHL is finally opening up the exchange program to everyone. 
you can now trade in your wasted funds on LHL gear towards atm the Stella or th Mera. Not sure why the Oscar XXI’s aren’t up there.

 I’m so glad I did this when I had the chance.

 

Since it’s open to all I’m assuming I’m allowed to talk about it now, and if not opps to late

So we can trade non existent product for iems that no one has heard and seems very highly priced compared to campfire audio??