Extreme Snake Oil

[xanalog]

There must be a technical term in marketing jargon for when campaigns have rendered customers completely spineless and they begin to act contrary to simple logic.

I ask Gemini by adding "searching for the..." in front of your bolded part above"
There were 6 mediocre answers: "Bandwagon Effect" is too mild but best in show.
Hope someone else takes-on your challenge for a more appropriately derogatory term.

 

[fatoldgit]

"The origin Streaming Power Supply is available in 12V/3A and 5V/3.5A versions to match your router, switch, DDC, optical convertors, streamer, or DAC power requirements.

The vast majority (all?) of home network gear (routers, switches, hubs, access points, extenders, fibre media convertors etc) I have owned over the past 30 years has been 9V.

Aside from the absurdity of the product claims and price, not having a 9V option seems well..... absurd.

Peter

 

[egellings]

I often wonder how a fool and his money ever got together in the first place.

Inheritance, large lottery winnings

 

[sceptical1]

Fact or fiction.
Would Stereophile stoop so low?

Final Delivery: a System Upgraded, a Life Cut Short | Stereophile.com

It's a spring day, midweek, and I'm behind the desk of the small-town library where I work part-time. A woman comes in, late 60s, maybe 70. There is a quietness about her, as if time has asked her to shrink a little. She's local, but we've never met. "Laura," she offers. Her handshake is firm...

www.stereophile.com

 

[Audiofire]

 

[Deleted member 43957]

Fact or fiction.
Would Stereophile stoop so low?

Final Delivery: a System Upgraded, a Life Cut Short | Stereophile.com

It's a spring day, midweek, and I'm behind the desk of the small-town library where I work part-time. A woman comes in, late 60s, maybe 70. There is a quietness about her, as if time has asked her to shrink a little. She's local, but we've never met. "Laura," she offers. Her handshake is firm...

www.stereophile.com

What's your point, that they made it up to sell Meridian gear, or to plug their own mag?

 

[sceptical1]

Edward Sweeney Obituary (2015) - Legacy Remembers

View Edward J. Sweeney Jr.'s obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.

www.legacy.com

Maybe it was Stereophile derangement syndrome. At the time their stance on MQA sounded convincing to many.
How can we be sure when to trust them?

 

[Nutul]

How can we be sure when to trust them?

That's an easy take: ne.ver.

 

[xanalog]

How can we be sure when to trust them?

I can think of just two options:
#1. Purchase 'trust insurance'
#2. Replace trust with verify

 

[TLEDDY]

Every time I think it can not get worse:

The Absolute Sound

“ $11,100

A technological marvel at a ridiculously low price, the Cadenza C41 network player incorporates unique advancements that perfect digital volume control, improve the handling of jitter, eliminate pre-ringing, and eradicate clipping due to intersample peaks.”

Oy f***ing vey! Low price?!?

Whatever reason I have had to subscribe (self-abuse, perhaps) , I simply give up and will not renew…

 

[Mart68]

Every time I think it can not get worse:

The Absolute Sound

“ $11,100

A technological marvel at a ridiculously low price, the Cadenza C41 network player incorporates unique advancements that perfect digital volume control, improve the handling of jitter, eliminate pre-ringing, and eradicate clipping due to intersample peaks.”

Oy f***ing vey! Low price?!?

Whatever reason I have had to subscribe (self-abuse, perhaps) , I simply give up and will not renew…

For 30 years better digital mousetraps fixed the non-problem of jitter and when that finally got old, new non-problems like intersample overs and ringing came along. Where were they in the 90s and 00s? Never mentioned.

Once every new product has been fixing them for a decade would anyone like to guess what the next digital non-issue to need fixing will be?

 

[Mnyb]

For 30 years better digital mousetraps fixed the non-problem of jitter and when that finally got old, new non-problems like intersample overs and ringing came along. Where were they in the 90s and 00s? Never mentioned.

Once every new product has been fixing them for a decade would anyone like to guess what the next digital non-issue to need fixing will be?

Intersample overs are real someone did measure some 90's players they all show the problem . But the "problem" is mostly the broken loudness war masters. But it can show up when going to and from different sample rates or from a lossy to a lossless format , maybe less common practices in the past ?
But the fix cost nothing just sacrifice approximately -3db somewhere in the conversion chain ( it fixes itself if you use a digital volume control or replay gain before the DAC ).
Some good manufacturers like benchmark adress this .

Filter ringing on the other hand does not happen with properly sampled signals it's only an consequence of the test pulse , so here you actually make the products worse by "fixing" this by a leaky slow filter or no filter .

You forget the non problem of "noise" via spdiff and Ethernet and USB

 

[Mart68]

Intersample overs are real someone did measure some 90's players they all show the problem . But the "problem" is mostly the broken loudness war masters. But it can show up when going to and from different sample rates or from a lossy to a lossless format , maybe less common practices in the past ?
But the fix cost nothing just sacrifice approximately -3db somewhere in the conversion chain ( it fixes itself if you use a digital volume control or replay gain before the DAC ).
Some good manufacturers like benchmark adress this .

Filter ringing on the other hand does not happen with properly sampled signals it's only an consequence of the test pulse , so here you actually make the products worse by "fixing" this by a leaky slow filter or no filter .

You forget the non problem of "noise" via spdiff and Ethernet and USB

I know intersample overs are real just like jitter is real - but in the case of the former its a mastering problem not a hardware problem. I'll bet the few CDs I have that have excessive limiting and compression sound just as bad through a Benchmark DAC as through my 35 year old Sony DAC.

Benchmark use Steely Dan 'Two Against Nature' as their example of the intersample over 'problem' - because that recording sounds good anyway so people will be easily convinced it can sound even better.

They don't pick some disaster of excessive limiting and compression - like the 'Best Of The Bee Gees' album I have - because that will still sound crap even through the Benchmark.

 

[Mnyb]

I know intersample overs are real just like jitter is real - but in the case of the former its a mastering problem not a hardware problem. I'll bet the few CDs I have that have excessive limiting and compression sound just as bad through a Benchmark DAC as through my 35 year old Sony DAC.

Benchmark use Steely Dan 'Two Against Nature' as their example of the intersample over 'problem' - because that recording sounds good anyway so people will be easily convinced it can sound even better.

They don't pick some disaster of excessive limiting and compression - like the 'Best Of The Bee Gees' album I have - because that will still sound crap even through the Benchmark.

Putting things into perspective is not an audiophile thing

 

[Mart68]

Putting things into perspective is not an audiophile thing

I have noted that many audiophiles will clutch at the straws of any plug n play magic solution if it means they can avoid buying better speakers or sorting out their room acoustics. In some cases to a pathological extent.

 

[Punter]

Sooooo.....Cadenza C41.....

Well, it looks like a high-end component, gold shiny bits, minimal controls.

Out back we have some connections

But what have we got inside?

Hmmmmmm. Well we have a base/mother board which I would assert is proprietary to the manufacturer but we also have a bunch of sub/daughter boards. If we consider where the sub boards are located, they seem to be mainly associated with the rear panel connections. The upper-center board is what looks like a generic balanced/unbalanced audio output board. The next one along is a USB sound card then a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 mounted on an interface board which probably owes a lot to the open source board offered by RPi.

On the base/mother board we have the usual suspects. An FPGA chip in the form of an XLINIX Spartan and our old mate, an ESS Sabre DAC.

The rest is either a mount for some interconnecting ribbon cables and the inevitable linear power supply.

MBL claims a few unique features and technologies associated with this DAC and it's possible they have managed to massage some of the features built into the ESS chip but that would be locked away in the FPGA. While the construction of this unit is reasonably neat, I'm not seeing $US11,000. All things considered, it's a custom motherboard with what amounts to a bunch of dev boards mounted on it.

So, $11,000 worth?

 

[Audiofire]

So, $11,000 worth?

A rhetorical question.

 

[Holmz]

A rhetorical question.

Maybe more financial than rhetorical with the filing of insolvency?

 

[Audiofire]

Here is the formula they used for pricing:
a×10^n

Called scientific notation by actual engineers.

 

[antcollinet]

Intersample overs are real

Perhaps - but I've never ever heard one. Just like jitter is real, and I've never heard that either.


Most of these things are real, in that you can measure them - see them on a scope etc.


None of them are real though as an audible issue that detracts from listening enjoyment.