Not at around $1 per meter speaker cable - which is all you need to pay for more than sufficient 12 guage.
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They make perfect sense - when they are marketed and sold on the basis of luxury and not non-existant performance.
You know the joke about how red cars go faster or the "go faster stripe" - that is the whole basis of the "luxury" audiophile market.
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No need to spend that much on a CD player. If you connect via toslink, then there is no sound benefit to be had and there are offerings from Yamaha, Onkyo and Sony at less than half the lower end of that budget. So again - if you want to for aesthetics and/or features, fine, but don't do so thinking you'll get better sound.
Vacceo
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Three figures for a pair of nylon stockings...
Keith_W
Major Contributor
Have you seen the high end women's cosmetics market? All sorts of creams that claim anti-aging, anti-wrinkle properties, then there are those fat busting pills ... and then you have Gwyneth Paltrow.
Waxx
Major Contributor
Wel, i designed quiet a few speakers of all kind, and are often (without advertising) asked to advice on systems or install systems. But at the end for my own personal joy i prefer the very bloated by ASR norms fullrange single driver systems driven by a low damping factor amp that has a lot of harmonic distortion. So that is why i have tube amps, class A transistor amps and a lot of single driver fullrange speakers (that i make myself). Are they the most neutral? Certainly not. Would they do good in the standard tests here? Certainly not. But they bring me more joy when listening to music. I know all the technical "faults" in the design, i know how to build a speaker that is fairly neutral (and i did, for others, and soon also for myself). But neutral is not what i enjoy the most.
And no, this is not everybody's cup of tea. I would not often recommend them to others when they ask my advice. Because i know it's a niche martket and only some love it. The general mainstream public wants a fairly neutral speaker, from the type that is popular here and get high ratings in the tests from Amir.
And it's true that many just got caught in the story that expensive equals good, and dig all the snake oil that is served to them by those companies. Even high educated do. I also don't know why, and altough my subjective preference is very coloured, i don't like to spend money, so i try to do it on the cheap side (which is possible if you know how).
And things like status, braging on "how much i spend" and looks play also a very important factor in the succes of those extremely expensive audiophile stuff.
And no, this is not everybody's cup of tea. I would not often recommend them to others when they ask my advice. Because i know it's a niche martket and only some love it. The general mainstream public wants a fairly neutral speaker, from the type that is popular here and get high ratings in the tests from Amir.
And it's true that many just got caught in the story that expensive equals good, and dig all the snake oil that is served to them by those companies. Even high educated do. I also don't know why, and altough my subjective preference is very coloured, i don't like to spend money, so i try to do it on the cheap side (which is possible if you know how).
And things like status, braging on "how much i spend" and looks play also a very important factor in the succes of those extremely expensive audiophile stuff.
Of course you can do that, if the PVC don't degrade over time. Even it does, it just becomes sticky on surface.
Killingbeans
Major Contributor
There probably are a lot of unscrupulous scam artists out there, but I think that the vast majority of the pixie dust companies believe their own nonsense. They rely on the expectation bias of themselves and their customers for verification of their designs. They are truly proud of their non-existent accomplishments.
I've never hated them. Can't imagine I woundn't enjoy having a beer with any of them.
I mostly express bewilderment and occasional ridicule. If they don't have the self-esteem to handle that gracefully, it's really not my problem.
I'm mostly interested in designing and manufacturing audio gear.
I'd like to make a contribution to the hobby that actually pushes the technology of audio reproduction forward. Same as what the snake-oil companies are claiming to do, but the real deal, and with focus on things that matters a hell of a lot more in the hunt for real innovation.
But you can't get around supply and demand. If the demand is mostly people screaming for magical nonsense, that's a pretty big roadblock in my book.
Home use tropical country, high temp, high humidity, 24/7. Become sticky when you not in luck. You can say PVC shouldn't have this characteristics but it just happened right in front of you written PVC.
Of course, I had encounter PVC wire in engine and generator room at much worse than home condition.
JSmith
Master Contributor
The Company might... I doubt their electrical design engineers do though. Paul's senior EE looked quite uncomfortable during his "answer to ASR" video for example. Rob Watts... it's hard to say if he really believes the extreme end of some of the things he claims... or not.
JSmith
Having been kind of into it in the 80s and early 90s I disagree - If you went to a store or pulled a magazine off a rack, you were getting pretty subjectivist views.
Thanks for link ! I've been scouring CL/Facebook MP for used gear and have not had any luck. That Yamaha S801 seems like a good deal.
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Yes, I had an old house and high humidity (not quite tropical). The stuff can get sticky and soft in 25 years for sure. It can almost dissolve in fact in that time. I've seen it where you can grab some, and pull on it with finger grip and it comes off like using a wire stripper.
Like eating a steak in the Matrix, does it matter if it isn't real? You hear what your brain tells you to hear. If a beautiful set of glowing tubes allows you to get more satisfaction from the listening experience, great. If inaudible measurement perfection allows you to hear music in a more satisfying way, great. If your quest is to optimize the budget-fidelity equation, then pursue and enjoy!
Like I say - when they are not marketed as delivering performance they cannot, or do not, have. Which most of those things you mention are.
G.P.'s candles - on the other hand - do exactly what they say on the tin.
The problem with the "not real" is it doesn't last.
The buyer listens and compares when they get their new kit, and hear all sorts of wonderful things - because they are listening for them. Then they go back to listening as usual, and the magic fades. They are left unsatisfied and the need to upgrade yet again to an even more expensive - yet equally (or possibly worse) performant system.
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Precisely. As I’ve said before, my working hypothesis is that most of the non-aural input into listening perceptions is unstable, and that’s one reason why we have upgrade treadmills, veil-lifting, and endless tweaking.
I’ve said this is untestable, but maybe it isn’t. In behavioral finance we have the concept of “transitive preference”, which is a method of couching the same odds/propositions differently and getting differing subject preferences. Perhaps identical blind tests over multiple days would reveal transitive (re)ranking of components.
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Yes I think that's a large part of it.
As Blumlein 88 pointed out, anyone is susceptible to nonsense. It's really quite amazing to see how many people trained in science end up believing weird stuff outside of their specialty. But that really speaks to the strength and importance of science. It forces a crucible on our ideas that you rarely find anywhere else.
It just takes stepping outside the boundaries of the method, even a slight loosening of rigor on one's beliefs, and then almost anything seems to follow.
However, as you note, I think audiophiles are the perfect storm for being sold snake oil.
High End audio products are button-pushing for guys with an interest in audio. They are neato dangling trinkets, shiny gadgets, that always come with a compelling little technical story (it's not for nothing almost all reviews start off with the technical story), which "pings" all our gadget-loving centers. It's catnip for audiophiles. And yet, most don't have the technical knowledge to really understand or vet the technical claims. And in much of the audiophile world, that's ok, you get to be your own expert - buy the shiny device "hey, I heard what they claimed! It works!" Dopamine squirts for all!
In one sense I'm a perfect mark for this stuff. I have that (seemingly mostly male) built-in neato gadget lust. Plus I'm frankly not very technically-minded (little EE-type knowledge), more of an artsy-fartsy. But not wanting to believe b.s., I just try to keep on guard as much as I can for my weaknesses, and pay attention to what people with more knowledge say on the relevant subjects.
Vacceo
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Fat busting pilla that are effective do exist. But they are extremelly dangerous and risky.