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Snake Oil Department, Top This

DonR said:
The comments are very interesting. The review itself is garbage, of course.
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About a third of the text of the review is just verbatim quote from the Nordost marketing man, what a service to the consumer Stereophile are providing,

Of course he's just a different 'authority'. Not.
 
The first thing I heard after I installed the QNet was that Gens's voice grew in size. Colors were more vivid. As silence filled spaces between notes, the soundstage seemed to expand in all directions.
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With more silence came more beauty and detail—and with it, more light and spiritual insight.
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This is no mere audio device, it provides spiritual insight.
 
Mart68 said:
About a third of the text of the review is just verbatim quote from the Nordost marketing man, what a service to the consumer Stereophile are providing,

Of course he's just a different 'authority'. Not.
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I know it is confusing with pronouns these days ;), but the article starts off suggest the “marketing man” is female:

"A switch? Why do I need a switch?" That was my response to Meredith Gabor, head of marketing and PR for cable and accessories manufacturer Nordost, after she dropped the news. She had just arranged…
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At least that part of the PR seems like it is true… but it gets less certain as we go on.
 
VintageFlanker said:
www.stereophile.com

Nordost QNet network switch & QSource linear power supply

www.stereophile.com www.stereophile.com
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It seemed reasonable that better conductive materials and superior noise isolation might create a better-sounding network interface
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Why would that seam that way? Why is it reasonable to think this? Did you check if the tested device actually has better noise isolation? Does it actually conduct better?
Ports 4 and 5 are fixed, 100BASE-TX (100Mbps) "audio" ports for audio servers, players, and external media sources.
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Funny how audio ports are slower.. with DACs: you guys need 768 kHz, 32 bit… audio switch: 100mbps is fine :facepalm: that 768/32 would already fill up half of this…
What's that oscillator for? "When the Ethernet signal arrives, it is undone, so to speak, and redone," Bonotto replied. "The bits (information) are transformed, encapsulated, and made into symbols so they can travel down the line in a more efficient and noise-proof way. When they arrive, everything must be de-encapsulated, as it were, and transformed back into bits. Then it gets routed and gets re-encapsulated and resent out on the other port. For this to happen, you need a clock base—a timing base. It's the oscillator that makes it possible." (footnote 2)
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Any switch has that.. why is this one special?

The whole article is really very scammy setup. There are lots of thing implied, but not a single real claim about the device performance.

Sidebar one is a massive example of this:
Wikipedia goes on to say, "common problems occurring at the Physical Layer are often related to the incorrect media termination, EMI or noise scrambling, and NICs and hubs that are misconfigured or do not work correctly."
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This makes readers think that this switch would actually be better at this than any other. No such claim is made however. Nor is it true. Neither is there talk of error detection or retransmission as is common in basically all networking protocols that are used for streaming audio (yes, there are exceptions, but you still don’t need an audio switch to make them work reliably).
 
Holmz said:
I know it is confusing with pronouns these days ;), but the article starts off suggest the “marketing man” is female:



At least that part of the PR seems like it is true… but it gets less certain as we go on.
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My mistake. Still it's good that there's no glass ceiling in the scamming industry.
 
VintageFlanker said:
www.stereophile.com

Nordost QNet network switch & QSource linear power supply

www.stereophile.com www.stereophile.com
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I really don't get it. Don't these people understand just how may hundreds (thousands?) of pieces of network gear their music has passed though between the source servers and their house. Somehow the music travels through all of them unhindered - but when it gets inside their four walls it magically turns into something that need some ridiculously priced hyped up piece of gear in order to survive the last few metres.

:facepalm:
 
I really do find it hard to believe how much money people will spend on this Kind of stuff.
it’s a hobby which can get a bit obsessive I guess and if you are well off I guess it’s easy to go down that rabbit hole.
I have been guilty of paying way too much for a cable just because I was scared I was hampering my system.
I think I have learned after not hearing any differences at all……..but then still spent around £400 on a Tellerium Q USB cable last year.:):)
 
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Mart68 said:
About a third of the text of the review is just verbatim quote from the Nordost marketing man, what a service to the consumer Stereophile are providing,

Of course he's just a different 'authority'. Not.
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Wonder if he paid for than $3.50 to own the review sample? "Don't give that monster $3.50!"
 
Descartes said:
These companies are just profiting from human stupidity!
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Oh no! You just came full circle from the prior posts on this very idea. It just settled down and we were moving on and bingo! You just dropped the bomb again. LOL
 
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tonycollinet said:
I really don't get it. Don't these people understand just how may hundreds (thousands?) of pieces of network gear their music has passed though? between the source servers and their house. Somehow the music travels through all of them unhindered - but when it gets inside their four walls it magically turns into something that need some ridiculously priced hyped up piece of gear in order to survive the last few meters.

:facepalm:
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Tony, you are feeding the little demon on my shoulder. In answer to your question, which just BEGS for my answer. How can I stay quiet? The answer is they are dumb or idiots, you pick. :)
 
Stunningly beautiful cables. Too bad I am highly allergic to Cryogen (and getting getting taken for my lunch money). $400
11881821.jpeg
 
voodooless said:
Why would that seam that way? Why is it reasonable to think this? Did you check if the tested device actually has better noise isolation? Does it actually conduct better?

Funny how audio ports are slower.. with DACs: you guys need 768 kHz, 32 bit… audio switch: 100mbps is fine :facepalm: that 768/32 would already fill up half of this…

Any switch has that.. why is this one special?

The whole article is really very scammy setup. There are lots of thing implied, but not a single real claim about the device performance.

Sidebar one is a massive example of this:

This makes readers think that this switch would actually be better at this than any other. No such claim is made however. Nor is it true. Neither is there talk of error detection or retransmission as is common in basically all networking protocols that are used for streaming audio (yes, there are exceptions, but you still don’t need an audio switch to make them work reliably).
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It is, of course, marketing sleight of hand. Planting a seed of doubt into the mind of the unaware which we have seen this countless times in the snake oil pitches. It is simply a form of suggestion. Reminds me of an old post on head-fi from 9 years ago, proof in itself that head-fi wasn't always on the lunatic fringe: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sug...n-in-the-assessment-of-audio-products.645125/

I think we can easily categorize 99% of all snake oil success as down to this phenomenom.
 
DonR said:
It is, of course, marketing sleight of hand.
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The article is not tagged as an advertisement. They call themselves journalists though. The company doing this is one thing, a journalist supposedly reviewing the product is another. It’s just evil.
 
voodooless said:
The article is not tagged as an advertisement. They call themselves journalists though. The company doing this is one thing, a journalist supposedly reviewing the product is another. It’s just evil.
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We here all know that high-end audio journalism hasn't been a thing... like ever. Unfortunately, it still looks like journalism to others.
 
fpitas said:
Gobbledygook. I mean, so far ahead of their time, the world still hasn't caught up!
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Sounds like a quantum entanglement kinda dealie to me. :cool:
The amp knew in the past of some future distortion, so it corrects for it now.
The spatial-temporal complexity of verbs in this context is making me tense.

:facepalm:

rwortman said:
If you think wealth and intelligence correlate, you either aren’t paying attention or your sample size is too small.
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although I will point out that correlation is (can be) a vector quantity. ;)

fpitas said:
I bet ironwood modifies the electron spins. That has to increase the soundstage!

;)
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Is ironwood ferromagnetic? Askin' for a friend.
:p
 
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