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Extreme Snake Oil

Over at Jay’s Audiolab, Jay is doing a shootout between lamp cord bought at home Depot and “his” brand of hundred thousand dollar speaker cables that he wants to sell people.

He does a sighted shootout, and “ YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE THE RESULTS!!!” :rolleyes:

 
MattHooper said:
Over at Jay’s Audiolab, Jay is doing a shootout between lamp cord bought at home Depot and “his” brand of hundred thousand dollar speaker cables that he wants to sell people.

He does a sighted shootout, and “ YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE THE RESULTS!!!” :rolleyes:

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His brand are 'only' $5000 dollars but he wants to compare with the $100K MIT cable to show us a 'Bugatti vs Toyota'. Going to be a blind test next episode.
 
Kal Rubinson said:
As a kid, when I was made to see the Principal, he usually tried to impose his idea of belief that is foundational to a theory of something.
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Mart68 said:
His brand are 'only' $5000 dollars but he wants to compare with the $100K MIT cable to show us a 'Bugatti vs Toyota'. Going to be a blind test next episode.
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Usually these people have no idea how to do an easy at home blind test. I'm sure it will not pass even my easy to do testing techniques. But, we will see.
 
Spkrdctr said:
Usually these people have no idea how to do an easy at home blind test. I'm sure it will not pass even my easy to do testing techniques. But, we will see.
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Agreed. If they do it properly and are honest it will be a bit of a turn up.

Having said that those MIT cables have those boxes on them, probably with some resistors and capacitors inside. Might well skew the FR enough to be audible.
 
Mart68 said:
Agreed. If they do it properly and are honest it will be a bit of a turn up.

Having said that those MIT cables have those boxes on them, probably with some resistors and capacitors inside. Might well skew the FR enough to be audible.
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I remember looking at an MIT RCA type cable with a super duper little in-line box near one end, and the cable was deemed to be nothing less than magical. Curiosity got the best of me, and a buddy who believed in the cable brought a damaged one over. The little magic box contained a 0.01uF 100V disc cap in series with a 10K 1/4 watt 5% resistor, and this was placed across the RCA connections. Instructions for the cable made it clear that the end with this network was to be connected to power amp end in a preamp / power amp combo, or to the end opposite to a signal source that might feed a preamp, i.e. the preamp end. Darned if I could hear any difference between the two ways of connecting the cable, and I really wasn't expecting to hear a difference. My buddy swore he heard a difference until I did a blind test in which he was merely guessing which cable direction was in play at any time. He really could not hear a difference, but believed he could. He got it wrong most of the time. Broke his heart when I told him that he got it wrong over half the time. He spent a stupid amount of money on those cables, which I'm sure added extra sting to the bite.
 
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I'm sure that the MIT "cable" could be made to sound different to a length of lamp cord. The controls on the MIT thing convince me that there is some sort of passive network in the box which could definitely act as a filter. If that is the case then the MIT thing will achieve the main outcome desired by audiophools which is a "difference". This far down the snake-oil rabbit hole, the phools are unable to accurately resolve this "difference" into an effect that constitutes a deficit or an improvement.
 
Punter said:
I'm sure that the MIT "cable" could be made to sound different to a length of lamp cord. The controls on the MIT thing convince me that there is some sort of passive network in the box which could definitely act as a filter. If that is the case then the MIT thing will achieve the main outcome desired by audiophools which is a "difference". This far down the snake-oil rabbit hole, the phools are unable to accurately resolve this "difference" into an effect that constitutes a deficit or an improvement.
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It doesn't have to sound better; merely different is adequate.
 
Punter said:
I'm sure that the MIT "cable" could be made to sound different to a length of lamp cord. The controls on the MIT thing convince me that there is some sort of passive network in the box which could definitely act as a filter. If that is the case then the MIT thing will achieve the main outcome desired by audiophools which is a "difference". This far down the snake-oil rabbit hole, the phools are unable to accurately resolve this "difference" into an effect that constitutes a deficit or an improvement.
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That is exactly one of the biggest problems.
For most people, the change brought about by the switch is the decisive factor and many cannot judge whether it is better or worse.
I once saw someone, within a few months in which we had not met, let a dealer sell him all sorts of expensive rubbish: active speaker cables and active RCA cables, filter boxes for the power supply, expensive dampers and bases for devices and speakers, etc., after demonstrations of course. A total of several thousand euros, even more than the entire system.
I have rarely heard music so emotionless and dead. Luckily he had not yet sold his old cables and other things and we were able to rebuild the system completely as it was before. At first he was dismayed, and then just angry and ashamed of himself.
 
pinger said:
I think you mean kernel ;)
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I think there were some military rank puns going on. I shall marshal an argument that you are right and the whole thing was nuts
 
HorizonsEdge said:
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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Ah the wonders of gross capitalism as long as the government is willing to pay 17,000$ for a screwdriver at NASA then why should we miss out on the opportunity to get the best money can buy.
 
MattHooper said:
Over at Jay’s Audiolab, Jay is doing a shootout between lamp cord bought at home Depot and “his” brand of hundred thousand dollar speaker cables that he wants to sell people.

He does a sighted shootout, and “ YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE THE RESULTS!!!” :rolleyes:

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He just released a new video. :facepalm: Kinda pitiful, always seem to beg for engagement & subscriptions, as well pimp his website... Anyhow...

What I find most amazing about Jay and his lab is his ability to seem so confident in the nonsense he's spewing. Which always make me wonder what % of people are deluded vs lying charlatans.

His latest claim is that you just can't do A/B comparisons, because cables need to 'live' with the system and their sound will change overtime... I doubt we'll ever see anywhere anything that resembles a DBT or even a BT... Either he's too far gone or his paycheck depends on the result, so either way he's not going to risk it.
 
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