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Snake Oil Department, Top This

When it comes to cable lifting you can't trust any complementary product.

To get rid of the ground fog (very big issue in my house) I only trust the original FogLifters.

www.audioquest.com

AudioQuest Fog Lifters Kabelheber zur Isolierung von HF-Rauschen - Satz von 8

Reduzieren Sie das HF-Rauschen, das kapazitiv durch alle festen Materialien (Teppich, Stein, Holz usw.) in Kabel einkoppelt.
www.audioquest.com www.audioquest.com
 
egellings said:
Mt ultimate snake oil product was the Tice Clock. This was a small nightstand alarm clock that you plugged into a wall outlet anywhere in the house, and it magically made your system sound better.
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In case no one has already asked the obvious question, has any of these merchants ever been prosecuted for fraud, or is there always a get-out?
 
The proprietor of Welborne (Ron Welborne) was prosecuted, I think, for something. Not fraud, though. Not quite a snake oil peddler - he made and sold SET amps and kits and parts and whatnot. I guess he's still at least kind of around:

Ron Welborne, USA

BD-Design, designer and manufacturer of the famous Oris front horns and initiator to use front horns in combination with high sensitive full-range drive units for optimal performance. We started our company in 1996 and it has grown naturally due to increasing interest in the designs and...
www.bd-design.nl

 
AudioSceptic said:
has any of these merchants ever been prosecuted for fraud
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I'm pretty sure a couple of UK companies have been compelled to change their advertising for making unsubstantiated factual claims, but I don't know anything more than that. They're usually smart enough to never make claims of anything measurable that they might be legally challenged on.
 
It's smart what some of them do. Move strictly in hard-to-prove/disprove-anything areas like cables, powerlines, cleaners, conditioners, fuses, little helpers like absorbers... these network switches also do something. Some of them really de-couple the copper line with a fibre line and then go back to copper. The exact working method that someone would chose who has the real need to do this separation, for whatever problems with the network line. It's just that it's not very costly, but the pretty all-in-one box sure is.
 
CapMan said:
You get the impression that the folks who wax lyrical about the improvements from audiophile switches would test drive two cars and declare that one feels much faster than the other without ever looking at the speedo :p
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At least there you have real, perceivable differences. Noise and physical forces. Nothing to do with speed of course.

The fastest feeling car I've ever driven was an Opel Speedster (Lotus Elise based) at 200 km/h. That was feeling scary with the noise and twitchiness and me basically sitting on the road. Much much faster than over 250 in comfy cars. :D
 
mhardy6647 said:
The proprietor of Welborne (Ron Welborne) was prosecuted, I think, for something. Not fraud, though. Not quite a snake oil peddler - he made and sold SET amps and kits and parts and whatnot. I guess he's still at least kind of around:

Ron Welborne, USA

BD-Design, designer and manufacturer of the famous Oris front horns and initiator to use front horns in combination with high sensitive full-range drive units for optimal performance. We started our company in 1996 and it has grown naturally due to increasing interest in the designs and...
www.bd-design.nl

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he does other kinds of fraud , in my less informed days I ordered and external PSU for something . Delayed ofcourse then I got ghosted , he just took my money .
Suppose he repeated this scam a couple of times until someone sued .
 
Mnyb said:
he does other kinds of fraud , in my less informed days I ordered and external PSU for something . Delayed ofcourse then I got ghosted , he just took my money .
Suppose he repeated this scam a couple of times until someone sued .
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I actually bought a bunch of parts from him at one point for some project. He was a or the source for WIMA capacitors at the time. At any rate, it was a painless transaction, thankfully.
 
Descartes said:
What do you all think about IsoAcoustic GAIA?
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Gaia 3 are 239 € here for a set of 4.

Nice looking, if they do what they say they do (very good isolation) and the build quality is top, then I'd say expensive and on it's way into snakeoil territory. But not too bad. For some speakers the look of these might be a good match. Personally I'd avoid them because I don't like so much height added to floorstanders.

I think this whole area of products needs some kind of measurement. Can these feet really do more than € 25 from amazon with the same weight tolerance?

There are other offers like Alto Extremo that dwarve these prices.
 
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