-
Welcome to ASR. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
Snake Oil Department, Top This
- Thread starter Ron Texas
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2019
- Messages
- 16,055
- Likes
- 36,336
So... macrovibrations (which are kind of a loudspeakers stock in trade, you know?) are okey-dokey, then?
It's just those darned microvibrations.
Oh, and, of course, misshapen magnetic fields.
It's all so obvious in retrospect, innit?
Punter
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2022
- Messages
- 332
- Likes
- 1,561
The irony is that the purveyors of snake-oil products spin the function of their products using torrents of scientific terms and jargon. Then, when anyone suggests that their product be assessed scientifically, they haughtily dismiss any evidence that could be determined that way. Now we all know why the snake-oil vendors react this way but the individuals who comprise their customer base are fine with this schism. My belief is that the customer base wants to spend money on their HiFi setup because it's their main hobby.
As I have pointed out in other threads, the prime demographic for high end HiFi gear is the over 50's and many of these people would be 60+ and retired. many retired men have little to no hobbies or interests, many of them have focused their lives on their work and family. When these men retire, they have no close friends and no interests that can continue to provide purpose in their lives. Subsequently, the HiFi hobby is quite attractive. There's lots of online communities to participate in and the retail therapy is very satisfying.
For people with restricted social horizons, it's a pastime that can be indulged in a solitary way. This type of individual is hungry to add doo-dads and embellishments to their equipment. Over time, their HiFi rack becomes a sort of shrine. To many people, their buy-in on esoteric and expensive accessories looks like they are gullible and suggestible but as we all know, it actually involves subscribing to a belief system.
As I have pointed out in other threads, the prime demographic for high end HiFi gear is the over 50's and many of these people would be 60+ and retired. many retired men have little to no hobbies or interests, many of them have focused their lives on their work and family. When these men retire, they have no close friends and no interests that can continue to provide purpose in their lives. Subsequently, the HiFi hobby is quite attractive. There's lots of online communities to participate in and the retail therapy is very satisfying.
For people with restricted social horizons, it's a pastime that can be indulged in a solitary way. This type of individual is hungry to add doo-dads and embellishments to their equipment. Over time, their HiFi rack becomes a sort of shrine. To many people, their buy-in on esoteric and expensive accessories looks like they are gullible and suggestible but as we all know, it actually involves subscribing to a belief system.
This occurs when a tool (a sound system, for example) becomes an end in itself. Once you have the right equipment, the logical thing would be to focus on listening to music, attending concerts, etc. We should not pay more attention to our sound systems than we do to a screwdriver or a wrench.
"and many of these people would be 60+"
I happen 2 be one of those (however not retired yet)
2 things saved me from this kinda behaviour , 1: ASR and 2: i'm a poor bastard
i don't and never had that kinda money to spend on phoolery to start with.Go spend time at Garage Journal (which has its share of screwdriver fetishists, and I do respect a good screwdriver), Hobby Machinist (comprising participants whose machine-tool collections outstrip their skills by a fair margin, and I include myself in that dictum), or even EEVBLOG, withs its subforum titled Test Equipment Anonymous (the evidence would convict me there, too).
But, as I once told the great Jobst Brandt on a bicycle technology forum, I had two hobbies of interest to that forum: Riding bicycles and talking about the technology of bicycles.
One thing is for sure: I will have hobbies when I retire
Rick "and then there are the tubas" Denney
Using a screwdriver or wrench for purely utilitarian purposes does not bring the same sort of enjoyment that using your cherished audio system does, Big problem with those tools: No music.
Now if I could just hold a shot glass below one of those audio jacks, pull the little wooden handle forward, and pour me a nice little shooter, well, that would just make my day!
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2022
- Messages
- 1,066
- Likes
- 2,947
This is something that really, really frustrates me as a person with an interest in hifi but also a recording musician. If these idiots put half the money they put into useless trinkets and dohickies and hacks and overpriced snake oil into buying albums and supporting artists, the music industry would be a little bit healthier and musicians would be better off. Instead they're just handing it over to charlatans.
Facebook put this insanity in my news feed today.
You need to have an audiophile grade network switch and it has to be vibration-isolated or it's not going to sound as good.
I'd love to hear the just-so story this guy comes up with when you point out to him that recording studios just use whatever TPLink or Netgear switch their IT guy put in the closet for them, or if I were to note that I can transfer a lossless 24/96 WAV file between my NAS and my workstation over regular in wall CAT6 network cable via a $20 switch and the router/modem my internet provider supplied a thousand times and the copy will still be bit-perfect and identical to the original at the end of those 1,000 trips back and forth through the switch and router.
If no uncorrected errors get picked up along the way, it will be identical.
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2022
- Messages
- 1,066
- Likes
- 2,947
Through newly installed wiring on a physical connection with modern error correction, the likelihood uncorrected errors get through is practically zero, and no different on my particular setup than with some vibration-proof "audiophile" switch and network cable.
diddley
Addicted to Fun and Learning
I always must laugh when i read this. and then think that it excist in the real world and that real people buying into it.
BeeKay
Major Contributor
It amazes me that the technology that is good enough for bit-perfect transfer of executables, where one bit of error is all it takes to cause the program to lock up (or BSOD if it's a hardware driver) are somehow not good enough for audio, which can suffer extensive loss of bit accuracy and still be indistinguishable from the original.
Rick "but at least the file transfer over the usual standard technology goes orders of magnitude faster" Denney
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2022
- Messages
- 1,066
- Likes
- 2,947
It's not about any rational argument. They can "hear the difference" and their senses are infallible, so any explanation that involves them being mistaken or mislead has to be tossed out, even if that also means tossing out basic principles of physics and computer science.
"Audiophile" is not good enough. It must be "audiophile grade", or I am not even going to come by and listen!
Yea, a 5 minute 24/96 song, bit perfect, 1000 times over 300' of cable and it would take 10 minutes! .6 s per song.
Last edited:
If errors were a problem would you trust online banking?
"Banks transfer an enormous amount of data daily, generating approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data from millions of individual transactions."
And over distances that span the globe.