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Extreme Snake Oil

A salesman at an audio store recently 'bragged' about having worked for MIT Cables. I almost pointed out that that made it hard to take anything he said seriously.
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or to take Absolute Sound seriously!!!
 
A salesman at an audio store recently 'bragged' about having worked for MIT Cables. I almost pointed out that that made it hard to take anything he said seriously.
View attachment 425494
Look twiddly knobs !

Yeah the consummate audiophile like to tweak and twiddle everything except tone controls that actually do something :p
 
Some of these absurd statements would fill your Audiophool Bingo Card. I'd say it's unbelievable, but unfortunately it's an every day bunch o'garbage.



The energy and time differences involved are so minuscule they're almost unmeasurable.

And yet, at the same time - easily measurable. Also known as the "a'phool paradox"
 
Here's a superb example of a vendor straight-out lying about his product. This is the "Ideon Absolute Stream Meta" Just another streaming server based on a vanilla PC motherboard.


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In this case its the Asrock J4125-ITX which has a soldered-in Intel Celeron processor. Retail price on these is around $50-60 USD. To make it "more audiophile", the board is run off a bespoke linear power supply rather than a switchmode unit and the whole lot is mounted in the, becoming ubiquitous, aluminum chassis which has been CNC'd out of a solid block.
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Thus far, there's nothing much to differentiate this from so many other Linux based audio streamers on the market. This is where the vendor has to take things up a notch!

The reviewer writes:

"To gain further insight into the product, I Zoomed with Athens-based Ideon co-owner and CEO/software architect/product optimizer George Ligerakis, US distributor Audio Skies' Michael Vamos, and Ideon Network Engineer Emilios Ermidis. Language barriers prevented the participation of the chief designer and co-owner, electrical engineer Vassilis Tounas."


"Vamos emphasized that Ideon uses a "very high-quality CPU optimized to only play music, with extremely low latency. ... It plays live with no other processes running in parallel. As far as we know, unlike any other streamer on the market, the Ideon CPU plays directly and live from the kernel without any processing or lag. Ideon also uses totally overpowered, very quiet linear power supplies to achieve optimal sound quality."

A bit more about that "directly and live from the kernel" bit. One thing that means is that the track is buffered and played from memory, but there's more to it than that. Apparently, the native Linux recently—within the last few years—added "real-time" capability. This functionality is intended for mission-critical applications in which a computer must respond promptly—without significant latency—to an external event. It's especially helpful when the computer interacts with some real-world device, like a car or a medical device. Emilios told me that as far as he knows, Ideon is the first hi-fi manufacturer to utilize this native Linux "real-time" capability. He emphasized the Absolute's use of Linux's own core, not a home-built substitute, ensuring, he said, more reliable, efficient operation."

All complete bullshit!
Review

According to the review, in spite of all this amazing technology, the unit struggles to play a high quality WAV file! A member of the Audiogon forum spelled out why and it's primarily down to the weedy CPU on the Asrock board. (link to discussion)

All of this can be yours for a mere $US 24,000 !!!!!!!!!!!


 
According to the review, in spite of all this amazing technology, the unit struggles to play a high quality WAV file! A member of the Audiogon forum spelled out why and it's primarily down to the weedy CPU on the Asrock board. (link to discussion)
Getting that level of poor performance is quite an achievement, considering a £15 raspberry pi 2 zero has plenty of power to serve audio.
 
Think about all those excel files lifting their veils. Only on highly resolving laptops, of course.
 
I thought this thread would be a good place to post this Email I got from Upscale Audio. Going with all Advertisement is good Advertisement another shout out to ASR. Maybe people are starting to ask them uncomfortable questions?

View attachment 424050

That really is painful. The dude is a bit of a doofus in the videos as well.

Admission: I’ve purchased matched tubes before from upscale audio.

But I didn’t hear any break in :)
 
Upscale was fun when Kat was there, Cadence/SME is her new world now. For TT's Kat was go to.
 
That really is painful. The dude is a bit of a doofus in the videos as well.

Admission: I’ve purchased matched tubes before from upscale audio.

But I didn’t hear any break in :)
I should probably unsubscribe but I get a laugh reading the emails. I can't remember what I ever bought there. Something during covid that I Must have returned. Went a bit nutty trying and returning through that period.
 
Here's a superb example of a vendor straight-out lying about his product. This is the "Ideon Absolute Stream Meta" Just another streaming server based on a vanilla PC motherboard.


View attachment 425856
View attachment 425861

In this case its the Asrock J4125-ITX which has a soldered-in Intel Celeron processor. Retail price on these is around $50-60 USD. To make it "more audiophile", the board is run off a bespoke linear power supply rather than a switchmode unit and the whole lot is mounted in the, becoming ubiquitous, aluminum chassis which has been CNC'd out of a solid block.
View attachment 425860

Thus far, there's nothing much to differentiate this from so many other Linux based audio streamers on the market. This is where the vendor has to take things up a notch!

The reviewer writes:

"To gain further insight into the product, I Zoomed with Athens-based Ideon co-owner and CEO/software architect/product optimizer George Ligerakis, US distributor Audio Skies' Michael Vamos, and Ideon Network Engineer Emilios Ermidis. Language barriers prevented the participation of the chief designer and co-owner, electrical engineer Vassilis Tounas."


"Vamos emphasized that Ideon uses a "very high-quality CPU optimized to only play music, with extremely low latency. ... It plays live with no other processes running in parallel. As far as we know, unlike any other streamer on the market, the Ideon CPU plays directly and live from the kernel without any processing or lag. Ideon also uses totally overpowered, very quiet linear power supplies to achieve optimal sound quality."

A bit more about that "directly and live from the kernel" bit. One thing that means is that the track is buffered and played from memory, but there's more to it than that. Apparently, the native Linux recently—within the last few years—added "real-time" capability. This functionality is intended for mission-critical applications in which a computer must respond promptly—without significant latency—to an external event. It's especially helpful when the computer interacts with some real-world device, like a car or a medical device. Emilios told me that as far as he knows, Ideon is the first hi-fi manufacturer to utilize this native Linux "real-time" capability. He emphasized the Absolute's use of Linux's own core, not a home-built substitute, ensuring, he said, more reliable, efficient operation."

All complete bullshit!
Review

According to the review, in spite of all this amazing technology, the unit struggles to play a high quality WAV file! A member of the Audiogon forum spelled out why and it's primarily down to the weedy CPU on the Asrock board. (link to discussion)

All of this can be yours for a mere $US 24,000 !!!!!!!!!!!
At this price I would expect at least a small Supermicro board. An Asrock board is really ridiculous at this price, regardless of the usefulness of the device
 
Upscale was fun when Kat was there, Cadence/SME is her new world now. For TT's Kat was go to.
I have to admit it took me longer than it should have to correctly translate the acronym in that final sentence... :D
 
I'm somehow reminded of the people believing in Orgon Accumulators, putting their store bought veggies onto a 1500$ "Orgon Accumulator Tablet" to neutralize the evil energy in barcode stickers and to introduce good energy into the veggies..... and a lot of people believe in talking burning bushes and so on.
 
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