Fred, I was one of the few on here who constantly questioned John Westlake about the lack of progress on the project. I managed to get myself barred from his facebook page within a few days for having the audacity to point a finger at him. What did I achieve through that? I suspect I am one of a very very few people on here who have managed to get all of their investment back and I didn't mange to do that by sitting quietly in a corner saying nothing.
I was contacted by someone who claimed to know John very well, I suspect it was Jarek but I have no proof, and he gave me information which led me to believe John Westlake wasn't going to deliver MDAC2 anytime soon (this was about 2 years ago, I'd need to check the dates on the emails), mainly due to his financial position.
Armed with that information, I read every single MDAC thread on PFM and created a dossier of dates and promises which John Westlake had made - this took me weeks and weeks of my time and I ended up with a 34 page document. I sent it to John Westlake, along with screen grabs of the original MDAC Westlake pages he'd set up at the start of the project before they were changed and stating my position and what I planned to do next - I was going to pursue him through the European small claims court.
A couple of days later a post appeared on PFM asking if anyone wanted to 'sell' their position on the MDAC2 queue as someone was wanting to buy in. I made contact and was then sent a facebook link and exchanged a couple of messages with someone who claimed to be a friend of a friend of John Westlake. A few hours later I had the full value of my investment paid in to my bank account.
Maybe it was a coincidence, I'll let you decide for yourself.
Jarek here. My friend send me this forum link saying my name is getting mentioned here quite often. I just want to clarify few things.
This e-mail you say you have received is definetly not from me. After 4 or 5 years I left John for my own personal reasons and I have no interest in e-mailing others about what is going or not going to happen.
What I will say about John and his commitments here is that I don't belive he would consiously wanted to steal your money and then go on holiday. That would be very unlike him and there is a lot of bullshit on this forum people (some of which are apparently not even invested and are in for the drama) seem to make up.
However I undersand your frustations and I know John (and me to be fair) delivered nothing. Mostly caused unhleathy perfectionalism. The concept of the DAC changed more times that I can count, and you all know that as well. Always based on new findings.
However, unlike the claimed e-mail, I belive John is capable of delivering a great DAC, that is if he stops trying to make everything perfect. I didn't read much of the forum thread, but the latest chase for an ultra low phase noise crystal is one example.
I understand that it is critical for the DAC array performance (atleast for the DAC arrays we made when I was still working with John, I dont know what he is workin on now), but from my own experiments I know you can design a DAC array, that is much less sensitive to jitter.
Maybe it would not sound as good, but it would still sound amazing and you could be shipping it...you cannot make perfect products if you don't have decent product that are selling, that is my personal opinion.
The commercial projects were jobs which had nothing to do with your investment money or know-how developed for FDAC/MDAC2, as far as I know.
They were off the shelf chips and jobs mostly I was wokring on, while John was concentrating on FDAC/MDAC and VFETS.
I've not been in contact with John for years and I will not say more about this. Just wanted to clarify for selfish reasons. I don't want to be associated with any of this, as I started working with John after the crouwdfunding was made and left working with him about 2 years ago now. I have different life now and don't wish to get back into this mess. Thanks for understanding.
