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Biggest audio hoaxes
Often when people discuss audio, they talk about "snake oil" or "hoaxes."
It's pretty typical to use the term hoax as a tactic against another who disagrees with one, or holds an unusual opinion or vouches for something which has not been verified. That's not what I mean by a "hoax."
By "hoax" I mean an audio product or claim which has been pretty definitively disproved. Maybe not to everyone's satisfaction, but to common consensus.
So -- with that definition of hoax in mind, what are some of the biggest audiophile hoaxes you've heard of?
It's pretty typical to use the term hoax as a tactic against another who disagrees with one, or holds an unusual opinion or vouches for something which has not been verified. That's not what I mean by a "hoax."
By "hoax" I mean an audio product or claim which has been pretty definitively disproved. Maybe not to everyone's satisfaction, but to common consensus.
So -- with that definition of hoax in mind, what are some of the biggest audiophile hoaxes you've heard of?
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I don’t know that this qualifies as a hoax. But my anecdote says a lot about the current state of the audio industry. A few years back, I was walking home from work and the route took me past an audio shop a few blocks away from where I lived at the time. I looked in the window and saw a pair of imposing speakers with a familiar footprint. Curious, I walked inside. I went straight over to them and examined them. A salesman came over and asked if I had any questions. I asked him to simply me what he knew about the speakers. The salesperson said that were made by Shindo. He spent a considerable amount of time explaining how Shindo wanted to create a proprietary design based on classical speakers of the past. After some 5 minutes or so I interrupt and ask “This design is new and proprietary?” “Yes! Shindo has ...” I interrupt again: “Well, the reason this speaker caught my eye outside is because the scale of the cabinet looked very familiar. It looks like my Altec 604C from the 1950s. It’s a speaker that’s more often than not frowned upon in most audio circles, and I was surprised to see something similar sitting on a shop floor with other very pricy speakers. When I got a closer look inside, I’m realizing that it IS an Altec 604C ...” The salesperson said that I was mistaken. Undeterred, I pull out my cell phone and say “I’m absolutely certain this is a 604C or D driver. They are quite distinctive. Here’s a picture of my own”. I take note of the price. “$33,000? Well, this speaker is very pricy as well. At least for me. Why are they so expensive?” So he carries on about Shindo’s innovative crossover, but this time I don’t let him get as far. After 30 seconds or so, I ask “Could I see the crossover?” But they are inside the cabinet. ”Could they be by any chance based on the same crossover design that Doug Sax of The Mastering Lab came up with for Bruce Botnick back in the 1960s? Could they be that crossover? Because I use those crossovers in my speakers as well.” He starts to talk about the cabinet but I continue: “the cabinet is the same size as my own. That’s what caught my attention in the first place. They seem to be built to Altec specs. So, it seems that this speaker is little different from mine. However, my cost of acquisition and refurbishment (I had Jon Specter rebuild the crossover using audio grade Jansen caps, and the drivers re-coned by Gabriel Sound) was $3,500. You are asking $33,000. Granted, the cabinets are much more beautiful than my vintage 1950s design, but isn’t $29,500 an awful lot for a piece of furniture? Surely there must be something else?” By this time our conversation has attracted a half dozen onlookers, and I spot a brochure about the Shindo Al-ni-co 604. “Well, Shindo seems to be somewhat transparent with the name they are using, but I’m still hard pressed to explain the huge price differential. Look, I have to leave, my wife has dinner ready. Could you do me a favor. Call Shindo and tell them about our conversation and ask them about the price differential? I’ll stop by next week to hear from you what they say”. I leave, shaking my head. The shop is a short 20 blocks away from Wall Street. I imagine some naive dude from Goldman Sacked or some such investment house, with more money than he (almost always a he) knows what to do with, walking in, getting seduced by the spiel and getting taken to the cleaners. I stop in next week. No answer from Shindo. The speakers were sold. |
Baby Ruth. Heh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpmECKEHSQs |
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Insecure "audiophiles" who don’t have the intelligence to become electrical engineers and don’t understand the technology.All your post to date (12) are sarcasms against a self erected "ennemy" called audiophiles and also insults like this one.... A linguist is an idiot compared to an electrical engineer in audio? I dont like people who mock someone, but i can understand mutual antipathy, it is simple human affair; but i dont understand people who insult indiscriminately all a group of people.... This is called hate, but it is a hate without great power here whose name is stupidity.... I am not sure that someone with a great intellectual potential, able to think about number theory or universal grammar will take the time to stop here to insult people he does not even know in his 12 first posts... Enjoy your own self created asylum.... |
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While there are sound differences that we do not know how or of what to measure, there are marketers who take advantage of "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." One example is the issue of skin effect attenuating treble through speaker cables. It is true skin effect diminishes the effective cross sectional area of a conductor by driving high frequency AC towards the surface of the cable. The question is how much does it attenuate high frequencies. At 20 kHz the skin depth of copper is 0.47 mm; at this depth the current density is diminished by a factor of e. For solid 8 gauge copper wire a pair of 5 foot lengths of speaker cable has a DC resistance of 0.0064 Ohms. The skin effect cross sectional area can be closely approximated by multiplying the skin depth by the circumference of the wire. This increases the effective resistance to 0.011 Ohms. put this in series with a 4 Ohm speaker and 0.5 Ohms for the output transformer windings. Take the ratio of the resistance at 20 kHz for the full circuit to DC resistance and you get a figure of 0.99896. Keep in mind the thinner wires in the transformer and the speaker coils have a diameter much less than the skin depth making their difference inconsequential. The 0.99896 ratio works out to about 0.0009 db at a frequency no adult can hear. When a cable manufacturer does litz or ribbon construction of cables and charges hundreds of dollars with the claim skin effect is a problem it has to be fraud and fraud is how many merchants who feel they need to do whatever it takes to maximize revenue or perish, that should be enough to assume many other explanations for special care such as doing something about copper grain boundaries acting like little semiconductor junctions which have threshold voltages that intermittently start and stop conducting when cheap antenna cable has no difficulty conducting micro-Volts are disprovable junk physics. The justification for this kind of behavior is "Let the buyer beware." but it is not reasonable to require every audiophile to have a PhD in physics (even though many pop culture simulacra who calumniate "PhD stands for piled higher and deeper" seem to deserve to be taken for their contempt for everything too intellectual for them. I applied to work as a sales consultant in a franchise store selling audio and video equipment. The store holds classes to educate the sales people on the latest audio and video products. It turns out that one cable manufacturer that advertises itself as correcting the skin effect problem teaches the sales staff to lie to the customers about skin effect. They have a policy never to hire a trained physicist who might break out the graduate school texts and embarrass them. If the staff do not know they are practicing dishonesty there will be no problem. If the customer is happy because he experiences placebo effect after spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on such cables the rationalization is no harm is done. But to me the customer's human dignity has to come first; everyone deserves the truth. What I see can be the downfall of the high end audio industry one day. You can't get away with deception forever because it is only a matter to time before t catches up. That is why I design and build most of my own gear. There are a few manufacturers I know who are honest and earn their profit and living. I only hope they are not hurt when the $20,000 power cords and $27,000 speaker cables are exposed and things come crashing down. |
And the winner is- muvluv! For having the longest run on sentences of the thread. Although I am afraid you must relinquish your crown for the below or have one heck of a dandy run on sentence to explain: for gold carries signal better than copper. Another one is amplifiers that put out low watts for thousands of dollars again this is just another placebo effect |
Anything claiming to use the principles of Quantum Physics to make their products better. Some cable manufacturers in particular but other dubious products a well. The experiments involved to show how QP interacts in the non quantum realm is so esoteric & difficult to manifest it cannot be overstated. This was happening well before say Quantum computing was being researched, which has no timeline for being practicable on any definable horizon. Yes, it's true the transistor was completely the result of QP principles leveraged but the odds of anyone stumbling onto anything else that does so & w/o the government research budgets the transistor had do not rise to the level of being infinitesimal. Thee are perhaps good products claiming QP is a factor but they clearly have no idea what they're talking about or are just embracing their own cynicism in lying about it. |
Speaker wires and interconnect wires are a big scam, what matters most is the size of the cables and the material involved also if the cable is shielded or not a shield will block out more interference which will make the sound somewhat better depending on how much interference you had before so it’s not with who makes it or what gets added to it which adds no benefit only a placebo effect for spending that much money you must feel good about it. If the cable is made from copper and as long as it’s almost pure copper paying 3 dollars a foot is the same as 1000 a foot unless it has gold or some other kind of material that makes it better, for gold carries signal better than copper. Another one is amplifiers that put out low watts for thousands of dollars again this is just another placebo effect considering how much money you are spending and must convince themselves that it’s worth it no matter what for not many like to feel or know that they were beat in the head without first knowing even what the stick was made out of. |
...and then you get the visitor that prys the buds out of their head, listens for a minute or three, and says: "Seems like a lot of trouble to me. This is easier, and sounds great!" Murder is still illegal, and the 'temporary insanity' defense *might* drop it to voluntary manslaughter. You still run the risk of damaging your stuff, and you still have to clean up and deal with the corpse. Best is to wait until they get outdoors...pop a cap between the eyes, and claim you thought they were trying to break in. No, I haven't tried it. No weapon other than my evil mind. Lucky you. *L* |
It's interesting to see the positive statements about springs now that some have adopted their use and heard the impact they make. Interesting in that those of us using suspended tables have either known or heard the affects for decades......yet the negatives are always eschewed by those that felt because they could not level and set it up to bounce easily that its flawed. Its not a dig or a bias as much as an account of why marketing has so many victims of bad purchases that don't fit the buyers needs or skill set. Lots of grandizing and marketing hype and overreaching unproven bs in this hobbie but others purchases are also just as infected. A lot depends on the system, the room and more importantly the bias, wishes, expectations and beliefs of each individual user and the voices they accept as correct (reviews ,personal or pro). I,ve always felt people should listen for themselves not listen to someone else's biased opinion of what YOU should like. The biggest hoaxes always have the one element that far outnumber the charlatans and con artists out there ......a captive gullible audience ..... Like anything related to a purchase... trick is knowing what you need for what you expect to do or what really needs attention. Often the biggest hoax is being sold what you don't even need .... but leaving the store convinced you did... Remember those rare dealers that would take the time backed by knowledge and budgets to show options for what YOU wanted , or needed . Not what they needed to move for numerous reasons. For me personally... (generalizing) the biggest hoax is the idiotic belief that say 6000 gets you 95% of the perfect sound ....but the last 5% is another 44,000 🤑..... Take vinyl as an example... The last 4 of that 5% AND the first 50% of the 95 % will always be the knowledge and skill and ability to get there. Second biggest hoax....is that by the time we can afford the last 5 %....the belief you still have the ability to hear it....🤦♂️ |
@vladtheimpala, A CD is the name of a slim round plastic silver disc that holds recorded music & allows audiophiles to enjoy "perfect sound forever", when of course they are not listening to the much better sounding slim round (usually black) 12" vinyl discs they were supposed to replace in the 90's. |
@sokogear has it right. I tried a Symposium Acoustics Segue ISO platform and rollerblocks for my turntable and was astonished at the improvement. I have since added rollerblocks for all of my electronic components and also got their Foundation Rack Ultra. For my new amp on order (should arrive in a few weeks) I also ordered their Ultra Pro Ampstand, Stealth. Vibration drainage, which is taking the vibration problem out from the component, is THE way to go. No hoax at all, it works very well. |
Millercarbon brought up springs again after I asked the forum this question.https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/what-your-choice-speakers-with-spikes-or-speakers-with-a-vibr... I was a newbie and was struggling with being nice to Miller or clawing back. I’m still able to post on the website so I guess that means were still friends...? I’m sure if I flew up into the great Northwest to hear his system he would invite me.😀😀 |
CD players sound better than turntables. Worst hoax ever. Music industry wanted us to rebuy everything we owned on vinyl. Video industry is worse....VHS, Beta, Laser Discs, mini discs, DVDs, bluray. Anything to get you to buy the latest and greatest. It's the source resolution. I know little about video admittedly, but isn't film still the best? Townshend pods are great, especially for isolation. I like their platform because the pods are directly screwed into it for easier adjustment, if any. Also check out Symposium products. Their roller blocks serve the same purpose as pods and also dissipate distortion from the source you put them under. The thing I like about them is you don't have to match spring (or pod) tensions. They use ball bearings. They also make shelves of varying thicknesses and quality and also isolate and dissipate, focusing more on dissipation than isolation. Also, you can actually talk to the owner and he will take the time to make specific recommendations because of the myriad levels and variety of his products. They work surprisingly well with clarity. They don't add anything. they subtract distortion. |
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There was one guy who had a magazine in his home for an interview. He told the guys that if a component or unit had been forced to play rock or hard rock, it was forever damaged. He could ofcourse hear this so he was deeply afraid when he bought used stuff. He also took apart stuff and exchanged all plastic parts. That included internal wire!! Zero plastic was allowed in any of his cables or components. This is no hoax, but question remains, was he sane? |
I dont know for sure and in all cases what "snake oil" is or what a hoax is in audio.... What people called by these names are sometimes ALSO costly devices that are ready made solutions to ready made problems ... Some reviews anyway must praise them, generally, if not with no positive publicity no one will buy them. Most work at least minimally with positive results...It is difficult to make money with something totally useless... Because I could not afford them anyway, i decided to figure out the problem which this "snake oil" OR very good products were supposed to adress ... There is generally 3 very simple one that are always coming to the fore: -Vibrations, -Electrical noise floor controls, -Acoustic treatment AND controls, But because i could not afford the costly solutions to these 3 main problems, i tried to replicate some of them , or modified some of them or create completely new one... It is possible at no cost.... The success in audio is linked to the ratio sound quality/ price... The goal is not and never was to own the best system in the world, only the one that will be optimal for us... You can buy external ready made products to improve your system and gain something very positive or not so much, or not at all.... It is related often to the actual STATE and quality level not only of your gear as such, but also it is related to your personal controls over your system and listening experience and experiments...It is linked to your ability to use the right device at the right time with the right gear... There is so much factors playing in the evaluation of a product and calling it "snake oil" or a miraculous product or only a good one is very related to each different situation... Some few products for sure are "snake oils" for everybody with a brain....I dont want to speak about that namely here because my own judgement could be wrong and detrimental for someone and i dont want to speak about these evident hoaxes and mix them with other product that can be relatively useful.... Useful if they are not too costly.... Sometimes the audible effect is there but the price so high for me that " for me" it is "almost" a snake oil" product in a sense even if it work... I say so because i replicate some at no cost my own way.... Then my point is simple: be creative, create some listening experiments and adress these 3 fundamentals problems i spoke about which plague any system and before buying anything, try by yourself.... You will be surprized... Let others decide which is a hoax for them and which is not... Water cannot flow up hill in a river, but it can in a tunnel. :-)Very wise observation....likewise, «The most important pipe is the silent one»- -a mechanic friend |
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Gremlin chasers are a bread unto themselves. Sometime they are HEROS. A hero is a guy that MAKES a problem so he or she can be the hero and FIX the problem. A real Gremlin, can't find it.. BUT it'd always simple physics. Water cannot flow up hill in a river, but it can in a tunnel. :-) Master M how's things going?.. All well I hope... Teach um!! |
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. |
I think it is difficult to label anything a “hoax” because there are always those who will claim the thing worked for them. In the circles, like Audiogon, that insist that the differences cannot be delineated or refuted with scientific measurement, all we are really left with is each individual’s personal experience. Who can refute that? Who can deny that someone who claims the sound is better when they hold their leg a certain way isn’t experiencing something valid, for them? It reminds me of a conversation I had this week, in which I observed that various ways of cutting and preparing potatoes results in different tastes, even though the potatoes are cooked in the same way. For example, why do straight cut french fries taste different than crinkle cut fries, that taste different from curly cut fries? All fried, but the cut seems to make difference, even from the same restaurant. I think audio is like that — you can take the same components and make devices that measure the same but sound different to people. |
Your speaker is already creating all kinds of frequencies at once. It is moving. Do you think that the very very high mass of the concrete floor (w.r.t. the speaker driver) is going to appreciably move? Do you really think the small level of dampening material in an isolation stand is going to provide more dampening than huge amount of material that a concrete floor is sitting on? <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We are talking about isolation (one from the other) vs absorption (the ability to SELF dampen). A cabinets resonance and the decay rate are what makes the speaker unit a clump of moist clay with drivers stuffed into it or a BOX that had NO mechanical dampening at ALL or parts of it made to amplify a driver with a bull horn The fact remains that separating thing that vibrate and create there OWN harmonics is far better than trying to share the vibration with everything inside the listening area.. The floor covered with concrete over soil is no different than a drum. Have you ever jumped up and down in a room with 3 1/2 in of concrete floors with a # 10 wire mesh.. It SOUNDS like HUGE kettle drum.. New it is loud.. WAIT till it dries all the way... The only way to stabilize the center of a slab is to support it and TIE into the slab. It's not a requirement to support a slab UNLESS it's foundational. A soil floor has nothing to do with passing code. Concrete offers no foundational support other than it's cleaner.. You can still have soil for floors you know... It is a LOT quieter soil floors. What makes a barn a barn? NO built floors. It's Always about drainage and keeping thing OUT of the weather. Good sound in a barn too.. Not a good place to be raised.. Born yes, raised NO! Use to love working with heavy timbers frames.. Regards |
Not sure what to make of the video. He's showing vibrations when walking on concrete and tapping the speaker box. I didn't see how sensitive the measuring device was set. He talked about how if music was playing how bad the vibrations would be but for some reason didn't play any music to see how audible they are as he walked across the floor. I'd need more evidence and would try something cheaper or homemade first. |
This is a good time to use common sense. IF you believe your concrete floor is resonating, do you really think that the transference of those vibrations to the speaker is going to create more sound than what is already in the room? Your speaker is already creating all kinds of frequencies at once. It is moving. Do you think that the very very high mass of the concrete floor (w.r.t. the speaker driver) is going to appreciably move? Do you really think the small level of dampening material in an isolation stand is going to provide more dampening than huge amount of material that a concrete floor is sitting on? |
