Biggest audio hoaxes

@twoleftears  I figured, "It's Friday and people here probably need their 'Red Hour'." https://youtu.be/ao9Wxov9lQM

That's quite an expensive knob. And boy, what a con job. I'd rather inject Lysol to cure my Covid or shine a UV light on my body.

So many great responses! Loving this!

I hear folks here about "one persons hoax is another person's tweak," with the CD pen being a good example.

But this one seems, so to speak, a genuine hoax:

"The Lexicon BD30 CD player that had Oppo BDP-83 guts, including the chassis!"

And @philbarone5 does a great job of pointing out the exact marketing/advertising machine that modern life has perfected

"lots of people in the business do all kinds of gimmicky type things and back it with heavy advertising and musicians that need press so they endorse it then lots of inexperienced kids and players believe the hype and buy into it then post on forums about how great it is then the business takes off but usually eventually it dies off but in the meantime they make a lot of money."

Take a gimmick, hype it to rubes, take the money, and run. For old timers, this is the PT Barnum "sucker born every minute" thing; for younger timers, it's the monorail episode.

Oh, one other thought.

Folks here have brought out an important distinction I overlooked.  A hoax can either be a completely useless device or technique that actually does nothing, or it can be hyperbole about something.

This distinction is important insofar as it helps show that some hoaxes are illusions proffered as reality, and others are exaggerations of the degree of something real. 

@bdp24 Are the Townshend products very helpful even for those of us with concrete floors covered with a short rug? My floor feels very stable, and while I respect the idea of vibration control enough to try it, I wonder if my rig is very susceptible to the kinds of vibrations these products help to mitigate?

@noromance Good suggestion. I'll probably do that!

I would love to have some kind of noise cancelling system for a listening room. A bit pie in the sky, but people have spent a lot for what seems a lot less plausible.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/sound-cancelling-speakers-in-bedroom-for-traffic/

@millercarbon thanks for the explanation. 

If all it takes is one person’s experience to disprove something that everyone else testifies (with evidence) is a hoax, that really opens up the marketplace!

But seriously, taste is not that subjective. That’s why words like "peppery" or "bitter" or "goopy," etc. are understood. We share a biology, we share cultural norms and history, and we share language. Not exactly, of course, but enough to make judgements about taste or hoaxes with sufficient objectivity for them to be understood as binding. Are there lots of debates at the margins? Sure. But the fact that there are fuzzy sections along a line of discrimination doesn't eradicate clear demarcators.

So, the question as to whether there are "hoaxes" can, at least sometimes, be resolved. If you disagree, the next time your mechanic tells you that he chased gremlins out of your engine and charged you an extra $500 for that, you’ll have to pay him. Because if you cry "hoax" and all he has to do is testify that he saw them, you’ll lose the argument and be out $500.

Time to unfollow my own thread. Thanks for the Baby Ruth in the pool, guys.