What is an equivalent product to HiFi snake oil?

[Punter]

@Punter while I generally highly appreciate your posts and insights on audio gear, unfortunately I think you've missed the mark on this one. What you've definitely established is that you don't care for post-modern art or contemporary art, but "this art is ugly to me, so obviously it's some kind of scam" is not a thoughtful treatment of the subject.

I don't have a problem with art when I can see it's been produced with skill and care. I do have a problem with "art" that is demonstrably low quality and meaningless. The scam aspect is very well established and there are numerous examples of "art' being used for the purposes of tax evasion and money laundering. None of this would be possible without the enablers in the art caper itself. The critics, dealers and galleries all play their part in this for their own financial gain.

 

[bluefuzz]

A lot of art I enjoy a lot. But not the stuff I don't understand

And yet you still presume to pronounce on things you admit you don't understand. Such is the nature of the internet I suppose ...

and it looks like I could paint it.

Brain surgery looks pretty easy too. Just have at it with a bone saw and few scalpels. Any fool could do it ... ;-)

 

[Doodski]

You could have been a famous artist and displayed your work at the DALI museum!

Hmmz... One never knows unless one tries(tried). I doubled up on metal working and drafting studies instead of a arts study.

 

[DonR]

As regards snake oil, this is my favorite:

View attachment 236783

Engine oil additives are, indeed, generally snake oil.

 

[Spkrdctr]

Brain surgery looks pretty easy too. Just have at it with a bone saw and few scalpels. Any fool could do it ... ;-)

As a matter of fact, that does sound like a new side hustle. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Pablo27]

Expensive hand tools, brands like Snap On offer little over less expensive tools.

I hate to admit it but electric guitars also, epiphone vs gibson etc.

 

[DMill]

Overpriced isn't snake oil... Has to make a claim it can't deliver on. The worst of them prey on far more than a speaker cable. Things like homeopathic cancer cures come to mind.

 

[Doodski]

Expensive hand tools

I disagree. I worked ~15 years as a mechatronics specialist and good hand tools are essential to working that everyday. Then I worked for some years in manufacturing (Electrical assembler.) heavy duty wheeled and tracked machinery used in oil and gas, water well drilling and exploration. Metals included non-ferrous stuff, stainless steel, T1, T2, T3 and T4 stock. I bought JET hand tools and they lasted about 1 year and the pawls in the ratchets would fail and the sockets would crack and wear. Expensive tools like Gray Tools, Snap ON, SK Tools, Some Craftsman stuff is good for daily service/use, MAC Tools, Wiha, and Xcelite are commonly seen and last very well when working metals all day long everyday.

 

[pablolie]

Razor blades with 6 blades... car paint protection stuff... leather renewing formulas... weight loss formulas... magic face creams... titanium exhaust pipes... there are a ton of things out there.

Like others, I am not quite onboard with the generic swipe against modern art... sure there's a lot of silly stuff out there, but I don't see the artists claiming that their paintings are better and deliver on measurable benefits.

 

[LightninBoy]

I posted an article on this forum which included some florid prose written by Dawid Grzyb reviewing a “high end” power cable. The post caused another member to comment that the author in question could be an effective wine reviewer. I responded with agreement but it started me thinking “what is a parallel to HiFi tweak reviewing?” With respect to wine reviewing, obviously, people reviewing a particular vintage wine are going to offer a subjective review based on what they are tasting. This subjectivism will be expressed with all of the usual wine-related superlatives and adjectives. The reaction the taster has to the wine will be very much an internal set of responses that they will attempt to describe in words but the fact remains that the taster is tasting the wine and there are established ways of expressing this experience. For example, a taster presented with a glass of red wine will be expecting to be able to classify it based on the known qualities of different varieties and this can only be described as an objective experience. An experienced taster will be able to determine the grape, region, maturity and many other properties based purely on taste. If the taster finds the wine appealing, then you can expect a torrent of enthusiastic superlatives in their written description. In addition to this, in most cases, wine tasting is done blind, the taster has no idea the maker or vintage before tasting. If we compare this method to the “testing” of HiFi snake oil products, there are some obvious differences.

When a reviewer receives and subsequently fits and listens to a new tweak/component, the reviewer is aware of the presence of the new component and is predisposed to “hear” a “difference”. Subsequently, while performing their listening tests, they will be gazing at the glowing lights on the product or maybe fingering the packaging and reading whatever description of the product the manufacturer has provided. The reviewer then has to find something to describe the experience they were expecting to have. It’s at this point that the difference between wine reviewing and HiFi tweak reviewing differ. The wine reviewer has an objective experience and the HiFi tweak reviewer has a subjective experience inasmuch as if another person tasted the wine, they would likely experience very similar sensations of taste to the original taster and subsequently be able to agree on the quality or otherwise of the wine. I’m not saying that the second taster won’t be influenced by the first but the objective experience will be a parallel experience between the two. By contrast, the experience of the HiFi component reviewer is entirely internal and can only be considered a subjective experience as we all know unless the dreaded “double blind” testing method is employed. The HiFi world now has an ocean of products which do nothing more than exploit the “Audiophiles” rejection of objective testing. In wine tasting, this would be the equivalent of wine reviews being based purely on the label artwork.

So the corollary between wine reviewing and HiFi tweak reviewing doesn’t stick. This made me search for something that relies almost solely on subjectivism for a gauge of value and I think I found it.

Modern art.

Interesting post. Thank you for sharing. I completely disagree with it.

I believe modern art is a flawed analogy to audio snake oil because it further confuses the act of artistic creation with the act of reproducing the creation as faithfully as possible. The former is mostly subjective, the latter is mostly objective. You hear audiophiles fall into this trap all the time when they attribute their emotional impact to the reproduction equipment rather than the recorded music event itself.

The modern art is more analogous to the conversation/debate we had a few months ago around the quality of contemporary music versus the music of decades past.

To make an art appreciation analogue to snake oil, you'd have to have things like specialized lights that bring out the resolution of the painting. Or pebbles that filter the air for spurious quantum light waves that add visual noise to your perception of the art.

 

[deadwood83]

The wide world of firearms lubricant marketing. Hoooooooly smokes. It's almost as bad as "special" composite films to stick onto your caps with adhesive "to broaden the soundstage"

 

[Recluse-Animator]

Razor blades with 6 blades... car paint protection stuff... leather renewing formulas... weight loss formulas... magic face creams... titanium exhaust pipes... there are a ton of things out there.

Like others, I am not quite onboard with the generic swipe against modern art... sure there's a lot of silly stuff out there, but I don't see the artists claiming that their paintings are better and deliver on measurable benefits.

Not snake oil.

 

[Pablo27]

Blind testing of electric guitars

I disagree. I worked ~15 years as a mechatronics specialist and good hand tools are essential to working that everyday. Then I worked for some years in manufacturing (Electrical assembler.) heavy duty wheeled and tracked machinery used in oil and gas, water well drilling and exploration. Metals included non-ferrous stuff, stainless steel, T1, T2, T3 and T4 stock. I bought JET hand tools and they lasted about 1 year and the pawls in the ratchets would fail and the sockets would crack and wear. Expensive tools like Gray Tools, Snap ON, SK Tools, Some Craftsman stuff is good for daily service/use, MAC Tools, Wiha, and Xcelite are commonly seen and last very well when working metals all day 3/8 mac ratchet won't out perform many for half the price.

I disagree. I worked ~15 years as a mechatronics specialist and good hand tools are essential to working that everyday. Then I worked for some years in manufacturing (Electrical assembler.) heavy duty wheeled and tracked machinery used in oil and gas, water well drilling and exploration. Metals included non-ferrous stuff, stainless steel, T1, T2, T3 and T4 stock. I bought JET hand tools and they lasted about 1 year and the pawls in the ratchets would fail and the sockets would crack and wear. Expensive tools like Gray Tools, Snap ON, SK Tools, Some Craftsman stuff is good for daily service/use, MAC Tools, Wiha, and Xcelite are commonly seen and last very well when working metals all day long everyday.

I definitely agree good hand tools are essential. I don't agree it's necessarily linked to price though. Snap On vs Craftsman for example. I'm in the UK and out equivalent of Craftsman is probably Halfords, which come with a "lifetime warranty" also.

 

[Pablo27]

Not snake oil.

Depends what the claims are I suppose!

 

[Pablo27]

There's quite a bit of research now indicating that anti depressant medication is no better than a placebo.

My nans anti aging cream doesn't seem to be working.

 

[Doodski]

Blind testing of electric guitars



I definitely agree good hand tools are essential. I don't agree it's necessarily linked to price though. Snap On vs Craftsman for example. I'm in the UK and out equivalent of Craftsman is probably Halfords, which come with a "lifetime warranty" also.

If you have a guitar(s) then surely you have a cutter for the metal guitar strings and that cutter costs a fair bit. I've only had one cutter for such hard metals duty and it cost me $80 for a industrial strength one for daily metal working.

Craftsman is astonishing value for the money spent but it has it's flaws in some specific tools like the screwdrivers are not as accurate as the best of the best. The warranty is as good as it gets as you know. I saw peeps using Craftsman and even peeps with chests near full of high end tools and they would have a few pieces of Craftsman too. I was one of them. The 3/8" and 1/2" ratchets lived long and the pawls seemed to never wear or break although they are a very coarse pawl and that has it's negative points for doing electrical assembly. The Halfords stuff seems reasonably priced for a lifetime warranty.

 

[syn08]

Well, as a non-art expert I have a quick story. I went to the DALI museum in Tampa Florida. It was my first foray into the art world. I left the museum with a few thoughts.

1. DALI was totally nuts and needed serious medication.
2. Anyone who bought DALIs junk was questionable in their mental state and probably should be medicated too.
3. Oh, there is no 3. Those two thoughts were my entire experience.

Now I see the above pics of Picasso. Immediately, I thought OMG, another person who was nuts but still wandering the streets having to make "art" to survive. How anyone can pay any money for things a 5 year old can make any day they want, is amazing. But then, I'm not an art expert. Which is a good thing, I don't need the meds either.

By your logic, anything that’s beyond the rubensian view of the humanity is not worth a dime. But that’s ok, you can happily live in your hole ever after. Or you are totally nuts and need serious medication. One way or another, ignorance is bliss.

 

[DMill]

I would also add art is not snake oil. A McIntosh box with a glowing logo on it for $1500 is also not snake oil until they market it as something that improves the sound of your system (which Mc makes no claim other than it’s box to show you love your gear and have FU money)

 

[JeffS7444]

When judging art, I allow for the possibility that there's something more profound, but I'm simply not seeing it. And it's those "Aha!" moments of clarity which make art appreciation fun.

 

[egellings]

And yet you still presume to pronounce on things you admit you don't understand. Such is the nature of the internet I suppose ...



Brain surgery looks pretty easy too. Just have at it with a bone saw and few scalpels. Any fool could do it ... ;-)

I was a teen aged brain surgeon!