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Extreme Snake Oil

S

Spkrdctr

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Ok, I have for a few years now had Shunyata as the "King" of the snake oil sellers. They represent the worst of the worst. They have it all. Marketing material that is pure rubbish and techno nonsense by the bucket full. I always wish someone with deep pockets could sue them out of existence. Then I foolishly looked at some Audio rags, I mean mags yesterday and saw an ad for Synergistic Speaker Wire I think it was. $28,000 for an 8 foot length. I now have put them at the top tier with Shunyata as both companies need to be hounded out of business. They represent the worst of the audio world. I know I should not be surprised, but I still am at the overwhelming amount of rip off and scam artists that are dominant in the audio industry. Just thought I would mention it today.
Our "hobby" is dominated by low life's, criminals and scammers of the highest order. They are true professionals at their trade.
 
Personally, I subscribe to the belief that a fool and his money are easily parted. In my eyes, in todays society with readily available information literally at our fingertips, if you're an educated adult and you can't research whether a product is genuine or viable, then you are fair game. If it seems too good to be true it usually is.
 
I see this through the lens of rampant capitalism versus reasonable government regulations.

For example, almost no one is going to argue that it was bad for the government to set standards such as children's pajamas not be flammable or that airplanes not fall out of the sky. These were actually big issues in the 60's and early 70's.

Today, even if we have decent regulations we often have a vacuum of enforcement. You can review historical funding levels. Over funding some agencies while under funding others (sometimes in very specific categories). Quick comparison of DEA versus SEC. War on drugs has been a 40 year failure but we keep investing more and more. Meanwhile the SEC has almost no investigators and even less lawyers.

Every time someone claims that our industry is self-regulating during some interview I end up yelling at the so-called reporter who allows it to pass.

While this is not a uniquely American problem we have a history of exploitation in the name of holy capitalism. We are out of balance and hopefully someday we will be closer.
 
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StuartC said:
Personally, I subscribe to the belief that a fool and his money are easily parted. In my eyes, in todays society with readily available information literally at our fingertips, if you're an educated adult and you can't research whether a product is genuine or viable, then you are fair game. If it seems too good to be true it usually is.
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I agree in principle, but IME to assume the primacy of hostile and predatory vendors is too one-sided. Customers drive this market just as much. They love this stuff. They have a baked-in assumption (generally historically legitimate) that upward progression in SQ is always possible, and that there is no limit as to the granularity of what matters. It's all a happy collaboration. If, hypothetically, a class-action suit or government regulation killed that market, the customers would restart it underground.
 
StuartC said:
Generally by birth as I understand it
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Anecdotally, there are a lot of entrepreneurs wasting dough on this stuff. All the old money folks I know view this sort of stuff as a gauche avenue to poverty.
 
Quantum Tunneling: Post Production process, 1 million volts are passed through finished cable providing a “canal” that allows electrons to pass more freely through conductor material and connections

I'm sold......
 
Blumlein 88 said:
I think you are getting Shunyata and Synergystic Research confused. Surely the latter is the top in snake oil extremism.
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Shunyata has had the #1 position for years. Now we can add the wire company.
 
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