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Extreme Snake Oil

mhardy6647

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so... here I am, sipping coffee, minding my own business, going through junk emails*.
And I see one (from Audiogon) about an... interesting... series of products.
So interesting, I simply cannot refrain from sharing this discovery here! :cool:



WAVERSA SYSTEMS​

EXT DIGITAL NOISE ISOLATORS​

Kevalin Audio is pleased to introduce a unique, highly effective digital noise reduction technology by Waversa Systems.

Customer feedback about the EXT Digital Isolators has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, the flagship EXT Reference Plus LAN ethernet isolator has been adopted by its purchasers as essential in their digital systems because of its immediate, remarkable positive enhancement of all aspects of their digital systems’ sound quality - even to the detriment of adoption of other excellent devices from Waversa! For example:

Technology:
Waversa’s EXT isolators’ basic, breakthrough design is closely held by Waversa under patent protection. It is being used in military and medical applications where the “cleanest” of digital signals is required and home audio also benefits.

Essentially, the devices create “tuned” electrical and magnetic fields that negate RFI and EMI effects from interference caused not only by external radiation but also by transmission within cables themselves, as well as some carried within the actual digital “packets”.

The devices are:
⦁ non-directional
⦁ completely passive (no power supply is required)
⦁ do not sever the ground connection

I mean -- these products are clearly life changing.
... and who needs measurements when they've got testimonials?

:)

_____________
* I don't know about y'all, but I have a cannon fodder email account (@ Yahoo ;) ) for all those things that ask you for an email address when you sign up, or get a coupon, or whatever.
 

mhardy6647

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I particularly like the clear explanation of the differentiation of Waversea's product tiers.
1d53ba_97a77e86f02143d79fdee0af252050fe~mv2.jpg


1d53ba_493b99d1b7b9406d93c7eef6c76e425f~mv2.jpg

Larger and heavier than the EXT-1, the EXTReference series employs more advanced technology than the EXT-1, and the gains it provides are significantly greater.

I mean, there you go! Larger and Heavier -- that's two additional technologies for one low price! Clearly Reference quality.

There's an EXTReference Plus, too, at only about $10k additional cost for that Plus technology add-on! One wonders if it is so heavy (dense) as to cause local perturbations in space-time.

OK, ok... I'll stop kicking the snake...

:cool:
 

IPunchCholla

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so... here I am, sipping coffee, minding my own business, going through junk emails*.
And I see one (from Audiogon) about an... interesting... series of products.
So interesting, I simply cannot refrain from sharing this discovery here! :cool:



WAVERSA SYSTEMS​

EXT DIGITAL NOISE ISOLATORS​





I mean -- these products are clearly life changing.
... and who needs measurements when they've got testimonials?

:)

_____________
* I don't know about y'all, but I have a cannon fodder email account (@ Yahoo ;) ) for all those things that ask you for an email address when you sign up, or get a coupon, or whatever.
Ummm. In the US you can’t “hold something closely under patent protection.” The point of the patent is that it grants a temporary monopoly in exchange for telling everyone what you did. You can have a trade secret, where just don’t tell anyone what you did and hope people can’t reverse engineer it. Works well for food. Less so for electronics.

Also I can’t find any patents for Kevalin or Waversa. Nor anything mentioning them other than audio sites, nothing with the military. I think this one might slip over into outright fraud.
 

egellings

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so... here I am, sipping coffee, minding my own business, going through junk emails*.
And I see one (from Audiogon) about an... interesting... series of products.
So interesting, I simply cannot refrain from sharing this discovery here! :cool:



WAVERSA SYSTEMS​

EXT DIGITAL NOISE ISOLATORS​





I mean -- these products are clearly life changing.
... and who needs measurements when they've got testimonials?

:)

_____________
* I don't know about y'all, but I have a cannon fodder email account (@ Yahoo ;) ) for all those things that ask you for an email address when you sign up, or get a coupon, or whatever.
Those prices!
 

pseudoid

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Ummm. In the US you can’t “hold something closely under patent protection.” The point of the patent is that it grants a temporary monopoly in exchange for telling everyone what you did. You can have a trade secret, where just don’t tell anyone what you did and hope people can’t reverse engineer it. Works well for food. Less so for electronics.

Also I can’t find any patents for Kevalin or Waversa. Nor anything mentioning them other than audio sites, nothing with the military. I think this one might slip over into outright fraud.
There was a time, before Elon became the Musk that we all know, when he had stated that his enterprises had given up applying for patents/copyrights. He had felt that the applications just became vehicles (horse-n-buggy... and NOT an eV) for others to steal his IntellectualProperty revelationso_O.
 

MattHooper

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This is one of the (many) instances in which the subjective review industry really doing a disservice:


" It is expensive, but this is a supreme case of “you get what you pay for.”

Does it really sound better than your average server? I am to say the least, highly skeptical. But...Oh...if only we could see that reviewer do a blind shoot out between this thing and, say, a logitech raspberry pi server :)

Well, I guess the disservice of telling people it's worth the money only goes so far - I can't imagine the market is very big for these things so it's not like huge numbers of audiophiles will be duped out of their money.
 

Mart68

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This is one of the (many) instances in which the subjective review industry really doing a disservice:


" It is expensive, but this is a supreme case of “you get what you pay for.”

Does it really sound better than your average server? I am to say the least, highly skeptical. But...Oh...if only we could see that reviewer do a blind shoot out between this thing and, say, a logitech raspberry pi server :)

Well, I guess the disservice of telling people it's worth the money only goes so far - I can't imagine the market is very big for these things so it's not like huge numbers of audiophiles will be duped out of their money.
It will instil them with FOMO though which is what the magazines are all about.

This quote is enough to tell me all I need to know about the writer's knowledge of hi-fi

''The Taiko Extreme got me closer to what was recorded and the venue it was recorded in then any source but the best analog rigs''
 

sq225917

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It doesn't just instill FOMO in guys with deep pockets the effects trickles down all the way to guys with NUC's and Pi's making them think better exists for more money.

When it really doesn't.
 

Mart68

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It doesn't just instill FOMO in guys with deep pockets the effects trickles down all the way to guys with NUC's and Pi's making them think better exists for more money.

When it really doesn't.
Exactly.
 

Sal1950

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An audiophool and his money are soon parted. LOL
 

antcollinet

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This is one of the (many) instances in which the subjective review industry really doing a disservice:


" It is expensive, but this is a supreme case of “you get what you pay for.”

Does it really sound better than your average server? I am to say the least, highly skeptical. But...Oh...if only we could see that reviewer do a blind shoot out between this thing and, say, a logitech raspberry pi server :)

Well, I guess the disservice of telling people it's worth the money only goes so far - I can't imagine the market is very big for these things so it's not like huge numbers of audiophiles will be duped out of their money.
Is that page the entirety of the review?

I couldn't find any link to move on past the (ridiculous) summary. I don't even know what the damn thing is supposed to do. Does it have a built in DAC for example.


EDIT - even the manufacturers product page doesn't tell you what it does. Just a load of similar guff to the review summary. I had to download the manual.

It has no DAC. It has a video output. It is VGA!! :facepalm::facepalm:. At no point does the manual tell you what you can connect to the VGA port. If that doesn't tell you most of what you need to know, nothing will.


EDIT some more:
one of the many gems from the manual.
When using a network drive you don’t have to reconnect to the file structure of the server over and over again. You simply establish a connection once and can use it the next time again.

Phew.
 
Last edited:

Galliardist

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egellings

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This is one of the (many) instances in which the subjective review industry really doing a disservice:


" It is expensive, but this is a supreme case of “you get what you pay for.”

Does it really sound better than your average server? I am to say the least, highly skeptical. But...Oh...if only we could see that reviewer do a blind shoot out between this thing and, say, a logitech raspberry pi server :)

Well, I guess the disservice of telling people it's worth the money only goes so far - I can't imagine the market is very big for these things so it's not like huge numbers of audiophiles will be duped out of their money.
Even if it does sound microscopically better than the competition, would it be worth that much more?
 

MattHooper

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No, and it doesn't.

The Taiko server has been a bit of a cause celeb in the audiophile world.

Over on the AudioShark forums, there was a thread discussing this Positive Feedback on snake oil:


That article is par for the course: the author Roger Skoff has written a number of articles defending
the more dubious aspects of high end audio, that have the tenor of religious apologetics.

I opined, on AudioShark, that the article meeting approval there was a poorly reasoned. As you can imagine, I was dumped on by a number of Golden Ears
with the go-to questioning of my gear/ears. Even though I gave reasons for why a super expensive server seemed unlikely to "improve" the sound and mentioned having done my own blind tests of music servers, naturally this was seen as irrelevant. The main go to was an imperious listing of the expensive components the proprietor had experience with including of course the Taiko. It was simply asserted that if one was using a raspberry pi music server it showed one was a bottom feeder who had no grounds on which to opine about Super Expensive Servers.

I'll never get my Golden Ears card...sigh...
 

Doodski

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The Taiko server has been a bit of a cause celeb in the audiophile world.

Over on the AudioShark forums, there was a thread discussing this Positive Feedback on snake oil:


That article is par for the course: the author Roger Skoff has written a number of articles defending
the more dubious aspects of high end audio, that have the tenor of religious apologetics.

I opined, on AudioShark, that the article meeting approval there was a poorly reasoned. As you can imagine, I was dumped on by a number of Golden Ears
with the go-to questioning of my gear/ears. Even though I gave reasons for why a super expensive server seemed unlikely to "improve" the sound and mentioned having done my own blind tests of music servers, naturally this was seen as irrelevant. The main go to was an imperious listing of the expensive components the proprietor had experience with including of course the Taiko. It was simply asserted that if one was using a raspberry pi music server it showed one was a bottom feeder who had no grounds on which to opine about Super Expensive Servers.

I'll never get my Golden Ears card...sigh...
@MattHooper are you a English major or something like that. I ask because you really do have a way with the language and detailing stuff. Your comments are sometimes very interesting to read and you have a gift for words and conceptual visualization. It's not a one-off get lucky with the commentary quality it's nearly every time. :D You could be a fantastic lawyer.
 

pseudoid

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antcollinet

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You have that backwards! :oops:
What I think you mean is "It doesn't, and no.";)
No - I answered the question, as it was asked, first (is it worth that much more), then clarified the performance.

I meant what I wrote - in the order I wrote it. ;):cool:
 

Sal1950

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I'll never get my Golden Ears card...sigh...
It's all over for you but the screaming and the bleeding Matt.
But I do give you kudos for having strength to try and teach these believers anything.
I mostly gave up some time back but I'm still bleeding. OUCH. LOL
It's not a one-off get lucky with the commentary quality it's nearly every time. :D You could be a fantastic lawyer.
He has to be, he's a vinyl addict. :p LOL
 
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