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Snake Oil Department, Top This

Can Amir measure a 3 or 4 "Quads per channel" improvement?

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Just saw this on the Benchmark website:

Our 2-pole speaker cables feature a 4-wire star-quad construction to eliminate the strong magnetic fields that can be produced by standard speaker cables. Our 4-pole speaker cables leverage the 4-wire star-quad construction to minimize crosstalk between the conductor pairs.
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Why does a reputable and extremely capable manufacturer gets involved with such audiophoolery?

I feel like selling my units. :mad:
 
AlephAlpha001 said:
Time Out for me. I’m off to listen to Jazz at the Porn Shop. But I’ll be Backkkkkk.
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Is there more money in porn than pawn?
And should rhetorical questions not have a question mark?


DonR said:
From what I can see the money is in selling snake oil audio tweaks to gullible dupes. $6000 for a box of dirt is easy money no matter how you look at it.
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I suspect filling with road apples could be useful.
One could also use it as a mushroom garden?


Freddy said:
"hearing is believing, I guess." Well it is for me. I do not hang graphs up on my wall and worship them.
…
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Some people do hang graphs on the wall though.
(In celebration of science and understanding.)

 
egellings said:
Didn't the late Randi the magician bring up this cable sound difference business too, and offer a 1 megabuck reward if anyone could tell the difference between cords (not sure if power or small signal or speaker type) in a supervised scientifically run blinded listening experiment? I understand that no one took him up on it, last I read.
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In 2007, Randi offered a million dollars to anyone who could distinguish, in a double-blind test, between a pair of $7250 Pear Cable Anjou speaker cables and a pair of bog standard Monster cables. Pear Cable accepted the challenge. Michael Fremer was the agreed-upon test taker.

After some harrumphing, and numerous feints, Pear announced it wouldn't get a fair shake from Randi and withdrew.

The test never happened.

I believe Pear Cables is no longer with us.

gizmodo.com

Pear Cable Chickens Out of $1,000,000 Challenge, We Search For Answers

Click to viewWhen we first criticized the $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables, little did we know it would stir up such a hornet's nest of controversy. James
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com
 
jsrtheta said:
In 2007, Randi offered a million dollars to anyone who could distinguish, in a double-blind test, between a pair of $7250 Pear Cable Anjou speaker cables and a pair of bog standard Monster cables. Pear Cable accepted the challenge. Michael Fremer was the agreed-upon test taker.

After some harrumphing, and numerous feints, Pear announced it wouldn't get a fair shake from Randi and withdrew.

The test never happened.

I believe Pear Cables is no longer with us.

gizmodo.com

Pear Cable Chickens Out of $1,000,000 Challenge, We Search For Answers

Click to viewWhen we first criticized the $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables, little did we know it would stir up such a hornet's nest of controversy. James
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com
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And there is where we get the meaning of:

pear shaped

A British expression used to indicate that something has gone horribly wrong with a person's plans, most commonly in the phrase "It's all gone pear shaped." The origin is unclear, but one theory says that it is RAF slang relating to the difficulty of performing aerobatic loops, which were described as "pear shaped" if executed imperfectly.

"Pear Anjou must have thought Fremer was a shoo-in for the Randi challenge, but somehow it all went pear shaped."
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Audio companies face the same problem as those in a few other industries - when your product is commoditised or rendered irrelevant what do you do? Do you leave the market, do what you can to maintain some sort of relevance or do what many do by cultivating an ever diminishing micro-niche paying ever more money for hot air and cult like belief?
Audio gear was commoditised years ago. Particularly if you listen with headphones or IEMs then any smartphone, tablet or PC with low cost headphones is all you need. I still regularly use the 'free' AKG IEMs bundled with an old Samsung S10 my company provided a few years ago and in all honesty have no complaints. I prefer my Etymotic ER4SR but it really doesn't alter my enjoy of music in a real way. If you want speakers then good active speakers don't need to cost much and I find the consumer oriented Sonos products very good. Which means that audio gear other than speakers and headphones are irrelevant for most people. How many people have a music system now? I remember as a kid almost every home I knew had a stereo system (usually a midi-system from one of the usual suspects like Sony, Kenwood, Technics etc) but in some cases some pretty impressive set ups. Now I know virtually nobody with anything more than a sound bar or wireless speakers such as Sonos.
Most of the big Japanese and Korean companies now view audio as headphones, IEM/earphones and wireless speakers and have largely abandoned what some might call 'serious' audio and in some cases are no more (I don't consider the current company using the name to be Nakamichi). Others companies maintain their own niche making traditional audio or professional audio gear which is well engineered and serves its intended purpose well. Then there are all the scam artists, charlatans and snake oil sellers feeding potential customers all sorts of voodoo about unobtainium cables, power chords, DACs etc and inhabiting a micro-niche where high prices are the whole point. If people like that stuff then fair enough, we should be free to follow our own path, but it's not about sound quality or just enjoying music. What does annoy me (other than the obvious of objecting to fraud and scamming) is people who sneer at people who stand outside their interests. I'm a watch enthusiast, I love mechanical watches but get really annoyed when watch nuts sneer at people wearing smart watches or watches from outside the high end watch bubble. I love cameras, especially classic mechanical cameras, but it annoys me when camera and photography enthusiasts start dismissing those who use smartphone cameras as being pond life. I feel the same about audio, I really don't object to people who indulge their passions even if I find it crazy, but don't sneer at others who see it for what it is. And I hope there is a special place in hell for those shill reviewers who inflate these bubbles.
 
He he, guys (I assume they are guys) with humor:

shot_2022-04-13_12-53-48.png


Snake Oil Cables - Audio Products - Schiit Accessories

Snake Oil sells interconnects for audiophiles
snakeoilsound.com snakeoilsound.com
 
jsrtheta said:
I believe Pear Cables is no longer with us.
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Imagine the disappointment had by the owner of a pair of Pears.
He, she, or they may have to pare their Pear collection.
Perhaps the au pair could use them.

JJB70 said:
...when your product is commoditised or rendered irrelevant what do you do?
...
Click to expand...
You mean, like the fuse industry? ;)
 
mhardy6647 said:
Imagine the disappointment had by the owner of a pair of Pears.
He, she, or they may have to pare their Pear collection.
Perhaps the au pair could use them.
Click to expand...
They took their ill gotten gains, grabbed their pair of dice and and went to shoot craps in Vegas. Their GPS conked out and found themselves immersed in Milton and... you guessed it... Paradise was Lost. Finally in Vegas at the poker table, their pocket pair got out flopped and had to sell pears by the roadside... to buy another pair of cables. There are a million stories in the naked city... this has only been one of them.
1649851824761.jpeg
 
Chaps, I have started a case with Trading Standards in the UK about sales of audiophile fuses that cost of to £2,200. Yes, the company baselessly use the word "quantum" in their title and market some made-up yet appealing distortion mechansim that their fuse overcomes. And yes, they have had audio reviews loving their product and giving them awards (no blind test of course). I'm hopeful about this, will keep you updated and will continue the battle of real science and musical enjoyment against blatent fraud and made up science, when I'm not completely depressed about the situation....!

Ben
 
Ben Cemlyn said:
Chaps, I have started a case with Trading Standards in the UK about sales of audiophile fuses that cost of to £2,200. Yes, the company baselessly use the word "quantum" in their title and market some made-up yet appealing distortion mechansim that their fuse overcomes. And yes, they have had audio reviews loving their product and giving them awards (no blind test of course). I'm hopeful about this, will keep you updated and will continue the battle of real science and musical enjoyment against blatent fraud and made up science, when I'm not completely depressed about the situation....!

Ben
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Good luck with that. However I knew one of the local trading standards officers in my home city pretty well and he once told me that their prosecution budget was woefully inadequate which meant that they normally only went after the most extreme cases involving serious money or safety issues.
 
Ben Cemlyn said:
Chaps, I have started a case with Trading Standards in the UK about sales of audiophile fuses that cost of to £2,200. Yes, the company baselessly use the word "quantum" in their title and market some made-up yet appealing distortion mechansim that their fuse overcomes. And yes, they have had audio reviews loving their product and giving them awards (no blind test of course). I'm hopeful about this, will keep you updated and will continue the battle of real science and musical enjoyment against blatent fraud and made up science, when I'm not completely depressed about the situation....!

Ben
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Hello,

Sorry, but you just can't fix ******. People have been separating fools from their money since forever. Sadly not going to change.
 
Gregss said:
Hello,

Sorry, but you just can't fix ******. People have been separating fools from their money since forever. Sadly not going to change.
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That's true, but there are laws about how things are sold. If I advertise a used rusty nail for £10,000 and supply a used rusty nail for the agreed price then more fool the buyer. If I advertise cables, fuses etc based on scientific claims then there should be something to back it up. A lot of these companies are, however, very adept at marketing their snake oil in a way which avoids outright lies or actual performance claims to avoid being sued. It's all flowery prose and implied but carefully worded in many cases.
 
When it comes to mega-snakes I don't think anyone can beat this: http://machinadynamica.com/machina43.htm (the teleportation tweak)
After all, for 2k you do actually get a fuse which works (as a fuse) and for 3.5k you get a power chord that actually works (as a power chord, no less).
With the uber tweak above what you get is a phone call.
 
JJB70 said:
A lot of these companies are, however, very adept at marketing their snake oil in a way which avoids outright lies or actual performance claims to avoid being sued.
Click to expand...
Ad: "Not everybody notices a difference with our cable|fuse|tweak, but most customers experience..."
In court: "Even if it is placebo, how does that contradict our advertising claims?"
 
DonR said:
I hold a master's degree in electrical engineering and 30 years of experience in circuit design and embedded systems design. I KNOW snake oil when I see it and "reviewers" are part of the problem.

I looked up Mr Schumann's bio and I believe I am far more qualified than he is to speak on any matter of electronics. He is a geologist by training (how ironic!) and currently teaches high school chemistry. He really should know better than to promote products that have no basis in science. The magazine he writes for "enjoythemusic" is just dripping with ludicrous content but plenty of ad copy... hmmmm.
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Please, do not engage with this gasbag—you have no need to appeal to your credentials here. He’s been a member less than a month, and right out of the gate he’s gotten busy littering thread after thread with his officiousness, without once presenting an ounce of evidence. For everyone’s sake let’s please let him work though the family of origin issues on his own time…
 
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