Rational ways to deal with Marcel

Neil>"M...well, you're another of those tuning list guys that loves to cause a
ruckus, and another reason I never mention this list to any serious
musicians I know. Erv Wilson is a legendary genius, and you're not, and
never will be. "

    Argh...here we go with more personality judgments and "appealing to authority" by  consistently making an example of someone by comparing them to an expert, plus saying he has not given audio examples when he has (a lie, even if you do think the examples were useless in which case you could honestly call them "useless examples").  
  
    Neil, dare I ask, what effect do you think this will have on Marcel?  Assuming he has any degree of self-respect, your statement would make him either angry and very determined to prove you wrong (perhaps through quite nasty means if necessary) or simply think "oh, that Neil guy is a real nut".  Is that really what you want?

Furthermore...I will 100% guarantee your sort of response will not magically make Marcel shoot himself in the foot and leave.
--------------

   Now, if you do want to get Marcel to be a bit more humble (who doesn't?)...why not actually point out problems with his tuning system? 

   Here are some of my gripes about Marcel's actual theory

A)   He claims certain Pythagorean chords in his system sound more "right" than widely accepted standard JI ones...yet has not been able to clearly explain to me what makes them right psycho-acoustically.
    People whine at me for my own theories, but at least I go so far as to say "the reason I use 22/15 as a fifth occasionally is so I can obtain a 12/11 semitone...which has less critical band dissonance than the usual 16/15-ish semitone).

B) He uses high-limit fractions and then refuses to consider his system rational intonation (where higher limit fractions form lower limit fractions between each other)...and has not mentioned, to the best of my knowledge, how he isn't using RI (though it sure looks like he is) and, if not, what problems he sees with it.

C) While he finally got away from "wolf" fifths, he has yet to explain, through his system, things like which chords should be used when and why.  Igs and myself seem to have an impression that what he wants to do, in some ways, is to make sure chords that are stressed as relaxed (IE those based on the tonic and dominant) are less tense and the typical errors (IE non-low-limit intervals) get distributed among the chords deliberately used by composers for tension.
   However I have you to see him state his goal in simple terms like that...which gives an impression he simply has many conflicting goals.

D) We are virtually all waiting for sound examples from Marcel of more advanced songs than Drei Equili.   I'm almost to the point where I think Marcel should be blocked until he can manage to
1) Release a complex song of list member's choosing to submit, re-tuned to his JI system
2) Have a blind listening test of his rendering vs. 5-limit JI, one of Gene's favorite 12-tone systems, 53TET, and quarter-comma-meantone (where no one can downrate his version just because it's by him)...and see what happens.
If he does well in that competition, I think he deserves to reserve the right to say his system really is a true "theory". If he doesn't, I think we on the list deserve the right to say "Marcel's theory is an idea that has yet to develop a following...so use it at your own risk".

  We should also make it clear to him that any message in which he mentions his system as "the only way to tune JI" will be deleted from this list.  BTW, I'd say the same if Erv Wilson or one of the supposed tuning masters came on here and said their system was "the only correct way"...the whole idea of forcing art into a single system is basically rendering it not art.

I have never said any of my tuning systems are "the only way to do things correctly" but rather "an alternative aimed at certain goals I find lacking in many tuning systems IE avoiding very close semi-tones and bad tri-tones while keeping as many pure fifths as possible when complying with two restrictions". And I suggest Marcel take a similar approach...