What is snake oil? Who gives the right of 1 person to call something snake oil? For example: who gives somebody the right to call cables snake oil? How about power conditioners? How about room acoustic pieces? Who qualifies as an expert to label a product snake oil?
This hobby is no different than being into nice cars. 99% of people drive a car to work or to the store and don’t really care too much about quality or technology, same goes for our audio hobby. Let’s call this group the ‘corolla’ group. If I ask anybody in this car group if they would like to buy this particular tire that has helped my Porsche handle better but costs 5x more than the tires they now have, they would think I was stupid to spend that kind of money on a tire. How about a more expensive spark plug, air filter, or a better spark plug coil adding another 10,000 volts to the plug? Same goes with our audio hobby, a guy with a good system or good ears claims that X product makes his system sound better, he is labeled as a snake oil vendor or promoter. A cable is a cable, right? (I’m not talking about con artists that want to charge you a lot of money to change your muffler bearings, there are definitely crooks out there)
There are more people out there that think the $ we spend on audio or cars is a stupid thing to begin with. 99% of all people don’t care about top quality audio systems or top quality cars and that won’t change anytime soon.
I don't need anybody to tell me (especially if they are in the ‘corolla’ group) if X product is good or bad, I’ll let my ears or if talking about a car, my right foot or the seat of my pants, tell me if it’s good product or not.
This hobby is no different than being into nice cars. 99% of people drive a car to work or to the store and don’t really care too much about quality or technology, same goes for our audio hobby. Let’s call this group the ‘corolla’ group. If I ask anybody in this car group if they would like to buy this particular tire that has helped my Porsche handle better but costs 5x more than the tires they now have, they would think I was stupid to spend that kind of money on a tire. How about a more expensive spark plug, air filter, or a better spark plug coil adding another 10,000 volts to the plug? Same goes with our audio hobby, a guy with a good system or good ears claims that X product makes his system sound better, he is labeled as a snake oil vendor or promoter. A cable is a cable, right? (I’m not talking about con artists that want to charge you a lot of money to change your muffler bearings, there are definitely crooks out there)
There are more people out there that think the $ we spend on audio or cars is a stupid thing to begin with. 99% of all people don’t care about top quality audio systems or top quality cars and that won’t change anytime soon.
I don't need anybody to tell me (especially if they are in the ‘corolla’ group) if X product is good or bad, I’ll let my ears or if talking about a car, my right foot or the seat of my pants, tell me if it’s good product or not.