New Synergistic Product: Tuning Discs

Can someone please explain how these discs work? Anyone? Sans any kind of reality based explanation or double-blind tests that truly validate these discs, the only rational explanation for their powers lies in your own mind-- it's called the Placebo Effect and it is indeed very powerful-- you will hear differences, things you never heard before, and perversely, if I snuck into your house and removed those little discs without your knowledge, I would be willing to bet anyone here that you would still hear those same improvements, until it was revealed the little discs were removed. The mind is a powerful thing, one can convince one's self of almost anything.

The only thing that bugs me about little magic tweaks like these are the stupid money prices being charged for so many of them. Like a $5000 record weight's claims that it sounds better than any old $100 version of same.

Again, want to place a few bets?

I do know my own mind well enough to NEVER trust first impressions with respect to the changes I make to my analog front end. Partly because I understand the placebo effect and the fallibility of human perception.

Again, anyone here want to bet me they can consistently detect the presence or absence of these discs, $5k power cords, green marking pens, $20k cables, or whatever, when replaced by quality alternatives, or simply removed from their systems during blind testing.

Waiting for the UFO’s! Waiting...

"I don't understand it, therefore it cannot work, therefore I won't try it."

You might apply this logic to your own thinking, but with a twist... How about, "I don't understand it, therefore it must work". That better?

You will note that I asked a direct question, how do these discs work? And received an insult as a reply. I think that about sums it up. Spooky magic.

You are free to believe whatever you want, even if you have no understanding of what you are doing, and could not tell whether or not the tweak was even in your system or not-- as I have asserted.

Still waiting for someone to take me up on my bet...

 

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Answer my questions: How many $20K cables do you have on hand that we can try?How many $5K power cables that we can swap back and forth? Where are you located? What kind of components are we going to test these on? Let me know, and I will see if I can get a set that we can try out...."

My Main System: SOTA Sapphire VI w/ vacuum hold-down, Origin Live Silver arm mkII, Soundsmith Hyperion cart, Genesis III speakers and subs, Musical Fidelity "Vinyl" phone preamp, McCormack DNA Gold Amp & Preamp. Morrow and WireWorld cables.

I have tied cables costing in the thousands-- no better than cables costing in the few hundred dollars on up range. The differences are subtle flavor notes on wines-- not better or worse, just differences. You will never be able to rank them based upon sound quality and price. Even more so with power cables-- above a certain materials and build quality. Of course cheap crappy cables can be bested by well designed and made higher end versions-- but when you get to the thousands of dollars per cable... it just mental booshwa.

I am open to trying stuff on my system. I live in California.

Funny that the posts attacking my character for questioning the truth in advertising of these tweaker products remain, but many of my responses, which never attack anyone personally, but do question the claims of many of these products are often summarily removed. 

Am I bad for Audiogon's business model? Apparently so. Seems cowardly, yes?

Yes, the placebo effect. Apparently it has no effect on true believers. Yet, despite being true believers, they don't seem to have total self confidence about their ability to hear the difference between a green and a black Sharpie when I suggested a friendly wager to test how valid those beliefs really are.

I you put little round stickers on your interconnects etc., and suddenly hear blacker backgrounds, greater dynamics, more "air" between the instruments, etc., why is it so hard for anyone to believe that when your mind wants to hear a difference, whether or not there really is one, you will!

My only gripe is that people are being ripped off. When the profit margins are orders of magnitude above the actual costs (and let's be real, what substantial research and development costs could there be in many of these cases?), I think that's not a very cool thing to do to people who are honestly trying to make their systems sound better through tweaks. So who does?