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Snake Oil Department, Top This

MattHooper said:
View attachment 323927


The cable fetish among audiophiles, and the extremes to which it is taken, never ceases to amaze me. ^^^^^ (From the recent Warsaw Audio Show)
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This is the minimum assembly that is expected when you are sold a pair of two meter cables at 67000€.
 
MattHooper said:
View attachment 323927


The cable fetish among audiophiles, and the extremes to which it is taken, never ceases to amaze me. ^^^^^ (From the recent Warsaw Audio Show)
Click to expand...
That looks atrociously stupid, is the best way I can put it. Or stupidly atrocious. Lets just start designing cables the size of firehoses, because bigger equals more better.
 
MattHooper said:
The cable fetish among audiophiles, and the extremes to which it is taken, never ceases to amaze me. ^^^^^ (From the recent Warsaw Audio Show)
Click to expand...
Those aren't cables guys. That's the latest in water powered speakers. ;)
 
MattHooper said:
View attachment 323927
The cable fetish among audiophiles, and the extremes to which it is taken, never ceases to amaze me. ^^^^^ (From the recent Warsaw Audio Show)
Click to expand...
I genuinely think there is some commonality between this cable setup, guys who inject themselves with synthol to look big, and the women who decorate their ears and lips with large plates in Kenya, that goes back to the idiosyncrasies being a member of homo sapiens.
 
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MattHooper said:
View attachment 323927


The cable fetish among audiophiles, and the extremes to which it is taken, never ceases to amaze me. ^^^^^ (From the recent Warsaw Audio Show)
Click to expand...
Good God. What does that lot cost? £10K? £20K? £100K?

And with a total value of about £50 - or perhaps in the negative due to the room space consumed.

Once again, there are not enough :rolleyes: in the entire universe.
 
Another ripe area for audio fetishism is footers; little pucks placed under equipment that cause rhapsodic improvements in the sound quality of whatever sits on them.
 
egellings said:
Another ripe area for audio fetishism is footers; little pucks placed under equipment that cause rhapsodic improvements in the sound quality of whatever sits on them.
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I put little fuzzy slippers on my equipment feet in the cold months.
 
egellings said:
Another ripe area for audio fetishism is footers; little pucks placed under equipment that cause rhapsodic improvements in the sound quality of whatever sits on them.
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Might even be valuable for microphonic tube gear ?

fpitas said:
I put little fuzzy slippers on my equipment feet in the cold months.
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I thought you ran tubes, their self heating ;)
 
Sal1950 said:
Might even be valuable for microphonic tube gear ?


I thought you ran tubes, their self heating ;)
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Footers could help microphonic tube gear if the footers are vibration-absorbent or-nonconducting enough. A lot of them are pretty solid in construction, which would render them pretty useless in that scenario. As for airborne vibration, if you are playing it so darn loud that it is impacting the performance of the electronics, you need to be more concerned about eventual hearing loss rather than equipment vibration prevention. The only place I could see footers being useful would be in isolating turntables from vibration, sensitive as they are to that ...maybe some CD players as well.
 
egellings said:
Another ripe area for audio fetishism is footers; little pucks placed under equipment that cause rhapsodic improvements in the sound quality of whatever sits on them.
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Useful for tuning turntables though...
 
antcollinet said:
Good god.

I'd love to be able to force Sony to explain how that is better for sound - complete with measurements to back it up.

When a mainstream manufacturer like Sony starts oiling their way into the market like this the industry is truly screwed.


EDIT : I notice that article is from 2015 - hopefully it bombed hard.

EDIT Some more : Pretty much every search result is from 2015 - and most seem to roundly mock it like the video below. If anything should persuade you that Sony is not the company for you, the fact that they have moved in this direction (even if 8 years ago, and even failed), it should be this.

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I think this product specifically is pretty “oily”, and an unfortunate marketing ploy on Sony’s part—but their foray into audiophile circles was intentional back in 2015-2016. This average flash media option refashioned as a high resolution solution emerged around the time that they released their “ES” line—apparently standing for “Elevated Standard”. It was their intentional venture into an “audiophile” product line, and they made an honorable effort for awhile there and continue to this day in other markets.

This “ES” line included a number of well-known products many of us have encountered among these circies for years—the MDR-Z1R closed-back headphone, their IER-Z1R IEM equivalent, the NW-WM1Z DAP, and the UBP-x1000ES and UBP-x1100ES Blu-ray/SACD players—and more recently they’ve released some tricked out and “audio-focused” A/V receivers and car audio prosuxts. These offerings continue to sell, and Sony still supports it and releases new products under this moniker every year, but it doesn’t seem like they’re as aggressive about promoting it in audiophile circles.

The Z1R earphone series is still in production; the MDR-Z1R was my first “high end” headphone purchase, and for a closed-back option, I think it performs extraordinarily well, particularly with a little PEQ to tame some of the high mids produced by their enormous 70mm driver. Sony still continues to release new iterations of their high end DAP series at insultingly high price points, although I think the DAP market as a whole is guilty of exorbitant pricing in general.

In 2021, Sony discontinued the UBP-1100ES, which I think is a shame. I own one, as well as an OPPO UDP-203, and I think they’re easily comparable. The Sony is my core physical media player that I have fed into my DAC via an HDMI to I2S audio de-embedder, and it works perfectly. Sony’s DSEE Extreme engine is something I assumed was gimmicky at first, until via this connection I was able to figure out that it’s a simple upsampler—when I play red book CDs with this feature enabled, my Topping plays then back at 88.2khz. Whether it makes a difference I can’t really say, but it sounds terrific to my ears. And the unit is capable of hosting SACD streams from a server, allowing me to rip them to ISO with J River.

The apparent explanation for its discontinuation was the loss of access to its proprietary DAC chipset—I have no idea what that was, but to my anecdotal ears it sounds terrific, and these things sell for big markups pre-owned on eBay and similar sites.

Anyway, I wasn’t aware of this specific snake oily accessory that is part of the ES line, but I did want to mention that some of the products released under this segment were worthwhile. It seems that there are few audiophile manufacturers out there that are immune to stooping beneath their dignity to make a few sleazy bucks…
 
Is this snake-oil?

Dan D'Agostino Relentless Epic 1600 Monoblock Amplifier​

Price $349,500.00​

That's a lot of jack for an amp?
There is a ton of money in the build from the case to the components inside.
My number one worry if I carried this kind of scratch would be over the "zero global feedback" design claim.
Is it still capable of fully transparent sound with this cult market design choice?
I'd have to have one drop shipped to Amir to test first, but then I'm sure he'd whine about it's 570lb weight. :p
In any case, IMHO that's one beautiful frickin component and if I had Elon Musk kind of green, I just might need a dozen
to power my next Atmos music system. ;)
I wonder how much extra they charge for Black?



d_agostino-relentless-epic-1600-mono-amplifier-1000x1000.png

Relentlesstopopen.png
520dag.promo_.jpg
 
Victor Martell said:
TBF - That is the case with consumer electronics - Sony HAD the reputation of being an exception, but current market conditions are the great equalizer - everything is built in the same spots, quality similar. After many years of buying nothing but Sony for my consumer stuff, like (mostly home theatre, but also car audio which I don't care about at all) I switched to Samsung and LG - lucky with Samsung, not so much with LG, but I've heard the opposite... guess with that stuff... it's all about luck...

:D
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My standard for reliability is simple: Either provide a longer warranty than the competition, or STFU about claims of better reliability.

I like how Chinese home appliances over here are now not only cheaper than the competition, but also have longer warranty periods than even purely made-in-Japan appliances that cost a relative bomb.
 
Sal1950 said:
Is this snake-oil?

Dan D'Agostino Relentless Epic 1600 Monoblock Amplifier​

Price $349,500.00​

That's a lot of jack for an amp?
There is a ton of money in the build from the case to the components inside.
My number one worry if I carried this kind of scratch would be over the "zero global feedback" design claim.
Is it still capable of fully transparent sound with this cult market design choice?
I'd have to have one drop shipped to Amir to test first, but then I'm sure he'd whine about it's 570lb weight. :p
In any case, IMHO that's one beautiful frickin component and if I had Elon Musk kind of green, I just might need a dozen
to power my next Atmos music system. ;)
I wonder how much extra they charge for Black?



d_agostino-relentless-epic-1600-mono-amplifier-1000x1000.png

Relentlesstopopen.png
520dag.promo_.jpg
Click to expand...
Are they stereo or are they monoblocks?
 
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