I felt a big loss when this resource was no longer available. I always used a now defunct work email address and both dled and uploaded files. AT some point, my account was deleted as the old address and password no longer work. However, I respect all the effort involved in putting this site together and hope that I can gain access in the future.
^Yeah.... but discrete to discreet is a bigger difference.
Waist to wait is a screw up by yours truly. A typo.
I stand corrected.
My account for over 7 years now is the same as in here. TonyEE
I used to have a much older account but that one got removed at some point ( inaction then ).
Where do we start?
Tony, my friend, I intrinsically believe you wanted to use 'wasted'
I will step back now, unless you add more fuel to the fire.
All the best my friend.
OK, I checked and your only activity under the name TonyEE since you joined in 2017 were a couple of comments in the library. You've never contributed to the library using that account.
We only started deleting inactive accounts in 2021. What was you previous username and when?
Yes, I used to have an older account, as I pointed out. I don't remember that exact user name, that would have been a lot earlier. Could have been my full name with first and last... something I used to do eons ago. For obvious reasons I stopped that since that's also my domain name and mail server and mail address... etc.... I've been on the Internet since 1990... yep...
I provided pictures of my Marantz 4415 with SQA1 and RC-4 remote control ( a rare bird that one ). That would have been quite a while back. Possibly pictures of my Akai quad open reel.... I had it all in a stack then. The site was much smaller then.
@canbol... seems like you know a lot about Hifiengine.... brand new account, TODAY.... so what's the deal then?
Why are downloads blocked ( have been for over a year now? )... How about telling us exactly what's going on and what can we expect?
Are we going to be able to communicate with the owner/operators?
Are there plans to create some kind of a subscription method to support the site?
The problems have been going on for quite a while now... but my current account always allowed me to download the odd document here and there. Note the issues that people noted back in '17.
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/what-happened-to-hifi-engine.787948/
@canbol... if you are intimate with the issues at Hifiengine.... how about sharing them with us? Spend your time in a constructive manner because it is a great resource and it is missed.
I provided pictures of my Marantz 4415 with SQA1 and RC-4 remote control ( a rare bird that one ). That would have been quite a while back. Possibly pictures of my Akai quad open reel.... I had it all in a stack then. The site was much smaller then.
@canbol... seems like you know a lot about Hifiengine.... brand new account, TODAY.... so what's the deal then?
Why are downloads blocked ( have been for over a year now? )... How about telling us exactly what's going on and what can we expect?
Are we going to be able to communicate with the owner/operators?
Are there plans to create some kind of a subscription method to support the site?
The problems have been going on for quite a while now... but my current account always allowed me to download the odd document here and there. Note the issues that people noted back in '17.
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/what-happened-to-hifi-engine.787948/
@canbol... if you are intimate with the issues at Hifiengine.... how about sharing them with us? Spend your time in a constructive manner because it is a great resource and it is missed.
Last edited:
I'll just say this. I never was warned about activity he didn't like. I didn't do any of those things he stated he had a problem with. Boom, gone.
I once had a shop with 8 + filing cabinets worth of service manuals. Lost once I sold the shop so I started out from zero again. I had picked up a few manuals, but under NDA, so no way can I share them. I keep my word, therefore I didn't have anything to contribute beyond what he had already.
It is too bad, he helped many people. These days if I need a manual, I pay for the download and charge the client that needed it. But given those manuals are a product that were sold, no one else gets them. I noticed that he has branded and posted manuals from other sites, people contributed to him most probably. So it's interesting he had a problem with a practice that built the library he has.
Anyway, it is too bad. I still don't know what reason he had for blocking most people. Had he been clear in what he expected, I think we would be in a different spot today. Some folks will abuse a site. Others don't knowingly abuse sites.
I once had a shop with 8 + filing cabinets worth of service manuals. Lost once I sold the shop so I started out from zero again. I had picked up a few manuals, but under NDA, so no way can I share them. I keep my word, therefore I didn't have anything to contribute beyond what he had already.
It is too bad, he helped many people. These days if I need a manual, I pay for the download and charge the client that needed it. But given those manuals are a product that were sold, no one else gets them. I noticed that he has branded and posted manuals from other sites, people contributed to him most probably. So it's interesting he had a problem with a practice that built the library he has.
Anyway, it is too bad. I still don't know what reason he had for blocking most people. Had he been clear in what he expected, I think we would be in a different spot today. Some folks will abuse a site. Others don't knowingly abuse sites.
I wonder.... are user manuals also under NDA?
He could place the service manuals under some kind of download fee and the user manuals and brochures under some sort of site membership...
Oh well, I've given him my user name so now I will be under TRIPLE SUPER SECRET BAN in that site.
He could place the service manuals under some kind of download fee and the user manuals and brochures under some sort of site membership...
Oh well, I've given him my user name so now I will be under TRIPLE SUPER SECRET BAN in that site.
lol!
No. I have never seen user manuals under an NDA. They are typically easy to find and most manufactures will allow them to be downloaded.
My personal believe is that all service manuals should be freely available after a unit is out of warranty. Full manuals with all service bulletins. I think it is a right for every owner of equipment to be able to have it repaired. HiFi engine used to be a step in that direction. At the very least, real technicians should have access if you wanted to restrict things. There is no way to keep hacks from getting documents they use to destroy equipment.
No. I have never seen user manuals under an NDA. They are typically easy to find and most manufactures will allow them to be downloaded.
My personal believe is that all service manuals should be freely available after a unit is out of warranty. Full manuals with all service bulletins. I think it is a right for every owner of equipment to be able to have it repaired. HiFi engine used to be a step in that direction. At the very least, real technicians should have access if you wanted to restrict things. There is no way to keep hacks from getting documents they use to destroy equipment.
I guess over the last 10 to 15 years I have downloaded many manuals from HiFiEngine and with the exception of half a dozen or so which were for my personal use (for stuff I actually own), the rest have been used to help others fix faulty equipment that they post about on this site. That is something I enjoy doing.
I have never sold copies of the manuals or anything like that. I will often post an image or part image of the circuit being worked on to explain details but that's about it. Is that something he doesn't like I wonder?
If new registrations are also now disallowed then the site will become a repository of valuable data that no one can access or make use of. Surely the aim of such a site would be to keep old equipment going and to allow those who can to help others.
I have never sold copies of the manuals or anything like that. I will often post an image or part image of the circuit being worked on to explain details but that's about it. Is that something he doesn't like I wonder?
If new registrations are also now disallowed then the site will become a repository of valuable data that no one can access or make use of. Surely the aim of such a site would be to keep old equipment going and to allow those who can to help others.
The site is also very useful for vintage collectors.
If none of those manuals are under NDA... and if so much stuff is donated then the owners of hifiengine should not feel entitled to ownership... only for the costs of maintenance.
Note how even today, the front page claims they are accepting submittals....
A black hole I'm afraid.
Sad really because that site was dear to many people.
Again, twice I tried to reach out to them via their built in "contact us" feature, offering ideas about a subscription schema to help their costs ( just like we do here at DIYaudio and other sites ) but they never replied.
Maybe this new poster, @canbol knows about the state of things? Perhaps he can get the ball rolling to get the site fixed again?
They could easily keep a three per day, or five per week download limit per subscribed user? Power users might get a few more. I'd guess that ought to be sufficient and would prevent users from sucking all the info and incurring site costs.
If none of those manuals are under NDA... and if so much stuff is donated then the owners of hifiengine should not feel entitled to ownership... only for the costs of maintenance.
Note how even today, the front page claims they are accepting submittals....
A black hole I'm afraid.
Sad really because that site was dear to many people.
Again, twice I tried to reach out to them via their built in "contact us" feature, offering ideas about a subscription schema to help their costs ( just like we do here at DIYaudio and other sites ) but they never replied.
Maybe this new poster, @canbol knows about the state of things? Perhaps he can get the ball rolling to get the site fixed again?
They could easily keep a three per day, or five per week download limit per subscribed user? Power users might get a few more. I'd guess that ought to be sufficient and would prevent users from sucking all the info and incurring site costs.
Last edited:
diyaudio was asked politely to remove threads discussing abuse of hifiengine, including posts by fixitguy09 who was encouraging people to help him scrape the site. Along with Jan Dupont, he registered lots of accounts to scrape content, which is one of the reasons hifiengine had to close registrations. The answer was no, it's not against your rules
When your members then started reposting manuals from hifiengine, all traffic from links on diyaudio traffic was blocked.
You've known this for several weeks.
Last edited:
OK.... so @canbol IS hifiengine
So, why am I not able to download from hifiengine? I've never scraped anything from it. Downloading a document or two every three months is hardly what I'd call "scraping"
And the site tells me it's due to the cost of running the site.
@canbol.... the Internet was designed and built on the premise of the free flow of information. DIYaudio reflects that. Hifiengine has been built up by contributions from the Internet community. Hifiengine does not own the rights for any of the information that it holds... NONE OF THAT INFORMATION WAS CREATED by Hifiengine
Hifiengine is at best an aggregrator, a very useful one. And for that it deserves support, financial if it needs be.
What you are proposing here is outright censorship.
How about just fixing the problem by the root?. Create a membership system with quotas and let it be at that?
IMHO there are too many lawyers in the World. This is what happens...
Oh,. another thing.. .as pointed above. STOP watermarking documents as if they were yours. Some of those enterprising lawyers might actually sue you.
Heck, did you watermark the First Watt F1 documents? Maybe Nelson Pass and his lawyers might want to have a conversation with you about it?
https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/first-watt/f1.shtml
I wonder what the lawyers at Sony, Kenwood, Panasonic, Parasound, etc... will think about that behavior?
So, why am I not able to download from hifiengine? I've never scraped anything from it. Downloading a document or two every three months is hardly what I'd call "scraping"
And the site tells me it's due to the cost of running the site.
@canbol.... the Internet was designed and built on the premise of the free flow of information. DIYaudio reflects that. Hifiengine has been built up by contributions from the Internet community. Hifiengine does not own the rights for any of the information that it holds... NONE OF THAT INFORMATION WAS CREATED by Hifiengine
Hifiengine is at best an aggregrator, a very useful one. And for that it deserves support, financial if it needs be.
What you are proposing here is outright censorship.
How about just fixing the problem by the root?. Create a membership system with quotas and let it be at that?
IMHO there are too many lawyers in the World. This is what happens...
Oh,. another thing.. .as pointed above. STOP watermarking documents as if they were yours. Some of those enterprising lawyers might actually sue you.
Heck, did you watermark the First Watt F1 documents? Maybe Nelson Pass and his lawyers might want to have a conversation with you about it?
https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/first-watt/f1.shtml
I wonder what the lawyers at Sony, Kenwood, Panasonic, Parasound, etc... will think about that behavior?
Last edited:
Hi canbol,
I spoke directly to the owner of HiFiEngine on this very topic. What I understood was he wanted threads with links removed completely. That would mean all contributions for all members and all other content being removed for simply one link to his site. This is not reasonable. I suggested that we block those links, which totally solves his complaint. No response. For reference, Google provides links too, people who follow Google outnumber members here by a huge margin.
So you tell me, what would a reasonable response be in this case, yank all that content because a helpful member posted a link to his site? Without malice I'll add. People are just helpful by nature.
We do not control the content by members here, everyone is fully aware of that. We do not edit member posts unless there is an extremely good reason to, we might delete the post instead. DiyAudio is not recommending anything to our members, I posted we respect his decision, and it is his decision. We can't complain about it. I did make an observation that his files were taken from other sites to build his collection. He has no control over where those files come from, just as the owners or moderators of DiyAudio has no control over what members post.
So while he can certainly have an issue with certain members here, it has zero to do with the site itself. It also has nothing to do with all other members or moderators of this site. If anything, I'm willing to try and help him solve the issues he has a problem with, but I'm not even sure what they are anymore. I have told him that straight up.
I have seen his files posted on other sites. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with anyone abusing his site either, and the practice of "scraping" would be a kind of theft in my view. No one condones that here, and this site has nowhere to put those files anyway. There are other sites out there that do.
As far as members reposting information from HiFiEngine, this has happened for over a decade. Files are posted from all kinds of places, that's where many HiFiEngine files came from as well. Members are merely trying to help each other. No one is trying to rip anyone else off in any way. DiyAudio certainly is not in anyway involved in doing this, some members are.
As far as I'm concerned, you go after the folks who do this. You place a warning on your site (HiFiEngine) telling members they will be blocked if they do this. Once you have warned them, you know which member broke the rules, block them. Right now he seems to have gone after any member here. I may possibly have posted a diagram a couple times over a decade. I don't make a habit of it, and I never have once he made it known he didn't wish this. This was long before any mention of problems was brought up.
Anyway, I started a dialog to attempt to solve what he felt was a problem. It didn't go anywhere, so fine. I accepted I was blocked and never really had any warning or any reason. Therefore I go elsewhere, I can't demand anything. But, he needs to maybe look at what has him bothered, then think of where his files came from.
One last point. A posted manual or schematic here reduces traffic on his site, which reduces his costs over just a link. I'm not sure what he really wants. I do agree that "scraping" his site should be stopped. His members who don't follow his rules should be blocked. You have to state what your rules are first though. I'm open to trying to reduce the problems he has, but deleting entire threads is asking way too much and isn't even close to reasonable.
I spoke directly to the owner of HiFiEngine on this very topic. What I understood was he wanted threads with links removed completely. That would mean all contributions for all members and all other content being removed for simply one link to his site. This is not reasonable. I suggested that we block those links, which totally solves his complaint. No response. For reference, Google provides links too, people who follow Google outnumber members here by a huge margin.
So you tell me, what would a reasonable response be in this case, yank all that content because a helpful member posted a link to his site? Without malice I'll add. People are just helpful by nature.
We do not control the content by members here, everyone is fully aware of that. We do not edit member posts unless there is an extremely good reason to, we might delete the post instead. DiyAudio is not recommending anything to our members, I posted we respect his decision, and it is his decision. We can't complain about it. I did make an observation that his files were taken from other sites to build his collection. He has no control over where those files come from, just as the owners or moderators of DiyAudio has no control over what members post.
So while he can certainly have an issue with certain members here, it has zero to do with the site itself. It also has nothing to do with all other members or moderators of this site. If anything, I'm willing to try and help him solve the issues he has a problem with, but I'm not even sure what they are anymore. I have told him that straight up.
I have seen his files posted on other sites. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with anyone abusing his site either, and the practice of "scraping" would be a kind of theft in my view. No one condones that here, and this site has nowhere to put those files anyway. There are other sites out there that do.
As far as members reposting information from HiFiEngine, this has happened for over a decade. Files are posted from all kinds of places, that's where many HiFiEngine files came from as well. Members are merely trying to help each other. No one is trying to rip anyone else off in any way. DiyAudio certainly is not in anyway involved in doing this, some members are.
As far as I'm concerned, you go after the folks who do this. You place a warning on your site (HiFiEngine) telling members they will be blocked if they do this. Once you have warned them, you know which member broke the rules, block them. Right now he seems to have gone after any member here. I may possibly have posted a diagram a couple times over a decade. I don't make a habit of it, and I never have once he made it known he didn't wish this. This was long before any mention of problems was brought up.
Anyway, I started a dialog to attempt to solve what he felt was a problem. It didn't go anywhere, so fine. I accepted I was blocked and never really had any warning or any reason. Therefore I go elsewhere, I can't demand anything. But, he needs to maybe look at what has him bothered, then think of where his files came from.
One last point. A posted manual or schematic here reduces traffic on his site, which reduces his costs over just a link. I'm not sure what he really wants. I do agree that "scraping" his site should be stopped. His members who don't follow his rules should be blocked. You have to state what your rules are first though. I'm open to trying to reduce the problems he has, but deleting entire threads is asking way too much and isn't even close to reasonable.
Registrations on hifiengine were closed due to abuse, in part due to diyaudio members like fixitguy09 registering multiple accounts trying to scrape everything.
As 20K+ shill accounts were registered, reopening free registrations became impossible.
Charging a fee or subscription would go some way to solving the problems of rising costs and abuse, but it would also turn hifiengine from a free site into a commercial one.
^
"Charging a fee or subscription would go some way to solving the problems of rising costs and abuse, but it would also turn hifiengine from a free site into a commercial one."
NUTS.... right now it's a USELESS site. It is common for sites to charge users... so your excuse falls flat on deaf ears.
And are you telling me that some users are not blocked from downloading?
If so, Oh Great Poobah..., what the hell did I do to get blocked from downloading? Garlic breath? Huh?
Like I said, Super Secret Double Probation....
Forget it man... you guys sound like a bunch of entitled little Karens, making rules as you see fit.
I was right, you want to take the ball with you.... do so, Adios, Goodbye, Arrivederci, Sayonara. It was great knowing ya.
MODERATORS..;. how about blocking @canbol? Let him try his own medicine. Let him come back when he donates 50 bucks to earn a shield by his name.
Maybe we just need to create our own repository of manuals.
I'd hate to think that I toiled working on the Internet years ago to see this kind of behavior take over it.
Perhaps we should have added some fields in the IP headers for "dumbsh!T" and something in the HTML header for "ignore these dimwitts".
Oh well, when I move to Mars to live in a Musk Bachelor Pad we'll build the Martian Internet to block such Earth sites.
"Charging a fee or subscription would go some way to solving the problems of rising costs and abuse, but it would also turn hifiengine from a free site into a commercial one."
NUTS.... right now it's a USELESS site. It is common for sites to charge users... so your excuse falls flat on deaf ears.
And are you telling me that some users are not blocked from downloading?
If so, Oh Great Poobah..., what the hell did I do to get blocked from downloading? Garlic breath? Huh?
Like I said, Super Secret Double Probation....
Forget it man... you guys sound like a bunch of entitled little Karens, making rules as you see fit.
I was right, you want to take the ball with you.... do so, Adios, Goodbye, Arrivederci, Sayonara. It was great knowing ya.
MODERATORS..;. how about blocking @canbol? Let him try his own medicine. Let him come back when he donates 50 bucks to earn a shield by his name.
Maybe we just need to create our own repository of manuals.
I'd hate to think that I toiled working on the Internet years ago to see this kind of behavior take over it.
Perhaps we should have added some fields in the IP headers for "dumbsh!T" and something in the HTML header for "ignore these dimwitts".
Oh well, when I move to Mars to live in a Musk Bachelor Pad we'll build the Martian Internet to block such Earth sites.
Last edited:
Okay, so you know a couple members who abused the site. The owner attacked everyone by association.
I don't know what the answer is canbol. 99% of us do not want to see that site abused, yet we are punished.
As far as shill accounts are concerned, we have the same issues with "sock puppets" and have for ages. Banned members come back as someone else. These days AI bots are an even bigger problem. All this wastes a huge amount of a moderator's time. We have the exact same problems there that you do.
I don't know what the answer is canbol. 99% of us do not want to see that site abused, yet we are punished.
As far as shill accounts are concerned, we have the same issues with "sock puppets" and have for ages. Banned members come back as someone else. These days AI bots are an even bigger problem. All this wastes a huge amount of a moderator's time. We have the exact same problems there that you do.
.
Then delete all accounts and require that everyone register again for access. Use 2 factor authentication for each log in.
Limit downloads to n per login/day/week/month. There must be something that works well enough to deal with your problem.
Then delete all accounts and require that everyone register again for access. Use 2 factor authentication for each log in.
Limit downloads to n per login/day/week/month. There must be something that works well enough to deal with your problem.