@antipodes Mark, thank you for your various inputs recently. They are much appreciated. Like it or not Antipodes have moved into the luxury end of the market with the Oladra and those customers are likely owners of other high end products where they are used to feeling wanted and to being cosseted. I know I have been one of the vocal ones raising questions which I in all honesty think were worthy of a better response than a few terse sentences which I am afraid very much came across as ‘if you don’t like what we are doing you can take it or leave it. We are not bothered either way’.
It may seem that I am a thorn in the side but I prefer to say it like I see it. My first Antipodes was a Gen1 K50 which I liked very much but I was irritated by the USB input socket which was so loose that my (not at all heavy) usb cable kept falling out. I reached out through your company’s support structure and was basically fobbed off and then as I pursued it was given a tale of how the obviously cheapest possible socket had been chosen for its audio qualities rather than its cheapness. As a client of mine was used to saying, I was not born yesterday nor the week before. Looking inside the K50 it was obvious that it required either a more robust socket or some way of adjusting the socket so that it supported the cable in a better way. In the end I gave up of trying to bang my head against a brick wall but when I traded in my Gen1 K50 for a Gen2 K50 I was pleasantly surprised to see that the strenuously denied deficiencies in the USB socket had been remedied and that revised construction has also been carried through to the Oladra (yes I have had the top off my Oladra to have a look).
In passing I will mention that whilst I had the top off my Gen1 K50 I noticed that one of the spring loaded fixings to attach the mother board cooling had not been fitted and I reported that back through the support system. All that resulted in was me basically being called a liar and there was no remedy offered to correct it. Luckily my dealer took a different stance and replaced the K50 and gave me a new one.
So you will see that I have past experience of not feeling as if I had been treated properly or valued as a customer and I apologise if that has tainted my responses to the announced upgrades including the Oladra.
But there is a saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I am sure that when you were planning the upgrades to the superseded models you thought you were being fair and reasonable. I think that where it went wrong was only to do with the Oladra. All the other upgrades are more than generous and appear good value for money. Indeed the Oladra upgrade may also turn out to be good value but at the moment it is obvious that there is a ground swell movement of irritation from Oladra owners that their top of the range device has been superseded so quickly after introduction and that there was no discount on the upgrade being offered by way of compensation. Even a $200 discount would have made the Oladra owners feel cosseted and I am sure that figure is within the margins of your mentioned rounding of the price process. Indeed there has been a very recent decision to get all Oladras back to NZ for the upgrades and that decision may be costing Antipodes a larger sum of money per unit.
Just on that decision, is it REALLY necessary for the Oladras to return to NZ for the work? In these days of environmental awareness and concerns it seems crazy to fly a heavy item half way round the world for a few hours work of unplugging some boards and plugging in new ones (for at the end of the day that is what the upgrade is). Surely this can be done locally.
Anyway Mark, the main point of this post is to thank you for your more in depth replies. It really does help to diffuse the situation if we get replies such as yours rather than the short one liners which unfortunately are counter productive.
I couldn’t agree more on the above point. There were multiple queries that went unanswered entirely for days & then when finally an answer was forthcoming it was of a somewhat unhelpful nature that only served to fan the flames. You’ve now rectified that to a large degree.
On my part & after looking again at one of my earlier posts I think my choice of words could have been somewhat better. I’m sorry if I caused any offence to yourself & that wasn’t my intent, but I expressed myself rather poorly in this instance & for that I apologise. Thank you for taking the taking the time to provide an actual explanation as to why some of the costs have appeared so distorted.
Like I’ve said in earlier posts I’ve never been of the opinion that upgrading any K50 was actually a bad deal, quite the opposite actually & have previously defended the costs. But the prices of upgrading various models did appear from the outside to be somewhat odd.
I’ve also been toying with whether to purchase an Oladra & found the original failure to answer what were some very reasonable questions from existing owners very disappointing. At the very least those owners deserved an attempt at a proper answer. Which you’ve now taken the time to do.
I’m still not quite sure which way to jump, but should I decide to stay with a K50 & that’s the way I’m now currently leaning after factoring in your comments with regard to case sizes, then I’ll actually be making my costs a little more expensive by just buying a brand new one anyway. I don’t unfortunately have the space to house a K41 & K22 or they’d be getting some serious consideration too.
I do still think that a heads up about incoming upgrades to models should be given though. It must be a bit disappointing to new purchasers to find out that their brand new unit has already been replaced by a slightly better version. In the case of the Oladra it also comes with a fairly sizeable price increase & the cost to upgrade to the new specifications is exactly the same, but I think most would still rather know what’s about to happen. At least then they’ve a choice about how they wish to proceed.
I accessed the price of the Oladra upgrade by comparing the prices of the other upgrades. All seem to be a fair price by comparison but the Oladra did not. (there is one other exception). Which is a fair assumption by me given the information and replies that Antipodes have given prior to this date of posting.
I do however compare sound SQ when I make a purchase not hardware or cost. I compared the Taiko Extreme to the Antipodes K50 Mk1, needless to say I part exchanged my CX EX combo for the K50 even though when you look inside the Taiko the hardware value and case does seem to have cost more.
Antipodes have stated the the k50 Mk3 gets close to the Oladra (I assume Oladra mk1) it has a lot in common.
Subsequently, Antipodes has release an interview with Mark Jenkins. Antipodes declare they price on product cost, so perhaps the mother board in the Oladra costs 2k more?
Hello everyone, this is my first post, and I don’t speak English very well.
I plan to buy an Antipodes K22 in October 2023, the issue of upgrades and prices is not clear to me, I ask: will the K22 that will be delivered to me be upgraded in October?? and what will be the list price, $9,000 or $11,000? Thank you
This is an intentionally facetious comment, but I don’t see any options to upgrade your own wave products, nor does there appear to be any support with upgrading to better models with, for example, trade in schemes. Perhaps some of the views you express to Antipodes could be applied to your own products?
If you’d told me off for the very poorly worded comment I made yesterday then fair play I’d hold my hands up to that. But I admit seeing my name pop up for the comment I made today did take me a little by surprise…
Whilst completely understanding where @clive101 is coming from, I have bitten the bullet and ordered the Oladra upgrade. For me it came down to my recognising, as Linn used to say, the source is the most important component, and even my Network DACs (Mytek/Meridian) sounded better with the Oladra than with the K50, even if I can’t begin to explain why.
One minor question was whether my SSDs will be okay as long as I make sure I get the order right when reinserting them? One thing I really don’t want to do is reload all of that music again.
But as you mention it you are correct, there are no options to upgrade the WAVE digital cables because so far the original design decisions have proved to be correct and have not needed to be revised. All that seems to happen is that customers find more and more places in their hifi systems where their use gives better sound quality.
I have expressed my grumbles about how Antipodes have handled the Oladra upgrade but despite that I ordered my upgrade as soon as it was announced.
I have three SSD and I have marked mine with white dots to signify which slot they belong to - one dot for slot1, two dots for slot2 etc. You will be 100% fine as long as you insert them back in the same slots. As reassurance I have had three K50’s in my system and now I have the Oladra and each time swopping over the SDD was a pain free thing.
As advised by Kennyb123 it’s always best to have back ups, but just like NickBacon I’ve never experienced any problems & my drives which usually reside in a K50, are currently nestling in the back of a loaner Oladra.
On the updates are the units given a date that they should be sent in? To prevent backup especially early on when there may be an update overload? Thanks Eli
@ELI1333
Good question
The short answer to your question is NO, we do not have specific dates for when the upgrades will begin.
We process the upgrades in order of payment received.
Antipodes will send instructions approximately a week to ten days prior to shipping to enable people to get their ducks in a row.
I just wanted to let you all know that I have been laid low getting over an operation I had a couple of weeks or so ago and we also have Oki away getting himself married in Jakarta, so we have been a bit short-handed and with a lot on. If we have looked like we are not responsive then it is not because we don’t care. The development stuff is my department and I have simply not been around, but I hope we are getting closer to explaining fully what is happening.
We have more to come soon on the software front, so I will begin to explain what is happening there soon. If my second day back wasn’t an interview with What’s Best Forum it might have been a good thing, but I am getting back up to speed now.
Up to you, what ever suits you.
Fill in the form, I’ll send you a pro-forma invoice, you pay it when you want to. https://antipodes.audio/upgrade.php
I’m booking the upgrades in on a payment received basis, so people who have already paid are in line first.
The upgrades are an ongoing thing, so get it done in August or wait until September, October no biggie, you decide.
