Poor value vs snake oil...

Someone could make a "snake oil" argument against any product on the planet. 

rols, his definition of snake oil is an audio product that makes no improvement in either measurement or sound quality. The manufacturer's intent is another issue. I am sure there are manufacturers who evaluate thier product in the standard(defective) manner and truly believe their product does make a difference. 
Measurement is easy but as we all know there are aspects of sound quality that are hard to measure.
You can't just plop a bunch of guys down and ask them if this device improves sound. Human's are just too complicated for that. They may have motive obvious or subconscious that drive their opinion one way or the other. You can't tell or show them what they are listening to and you have to be able to switch back and forth quickly. You have to "blind" them.
As for a double blind is concerned that depends on the honesty of the principle. Just saying something like, "don't you think this sound's better?'" ruins the test entirely. You have to stay perfectly neutral. This sort of thing is hardly ever done. Somebody thinks they hear an obvious difference and does not think it is necessary and away we go. 
If there is a change in sound quality there is always a reason and it is not a mysterious witchcraft reason. If you can not find a reasonable reason your caution flag should go up and you may want to spend your money on something more significant. In many instances the change in sound quality is not better or worse, just different. In which case it is a matter of preference such as in choosing a cartridge and that preference may depend on a host of other variables involving an individual system. One person's gold is another's poison. It is dangerous to generalize under these circumstances. 
On the other hand human's are dangerous creatures. Just look at your email box in the morning. 1/2 of it is someone trying to scam you. 75% of the non prescription pills at your local pharmacy are a scam. There are people who will rip off your grandmother's life savings leaving her destitute. This is nature at work. It is all about survival. It is kill or be killed in modern terms. Maybe some day we will evolve out of this but that is a long way off.

+1 mijostyn

mijostyn

... As for a double blind is concerned that depends on the honesty of the principle. Just saying something like, "don't you think this sound's better?'" ruins the test entirely. You have to stay perfectly neutral. This sort of thing is hardly ever done.

What you're describing isn't a double-blind test. In a DBT, the proctor doesn't know the identity of what's being evaluated - he's "blind." That's what makes the test "double-blind."

fill my bottles with conditioner I bought down at the drug store for $2 a bottle. I sell my bottles in nice store, or at an artisanal market, and a few people tweet that it works really well, and I use their quotes in my ads... then I think I am not a snake oil salesman, but a businessman. 

You're a snake oil salesman who could end up facing lawsuits. Granted if done on a very small scale the odds of being caught perpetrating this fraud is low. 

or can point to measurable change,

There's the rub.

As we don't have a full understanding of how the ear/brain works regarding the minutia of an audio signal.

So the proofing system for the question --- is incomplete. 

Not only incomplete, but the area it is incomplete in, is exactly where the data points required..lay.

Invariably...snake oil accusers fail to get this all critical point.

rols, his definition of snake oil is an audio product that makes no improvement in either measurement or sound quality.

Mjostyn: I agree with everything you say, and yes, Mr Darko did suggest that snake oil could be defined as a product that offers no measurable improvement or sound quality. The trouble with this view is that one ends up in the weeds with what is an improvement, and all the problems of measurement.

Instead I suggest that a way to simplify this is to focus on what is in the head of the manufacturer: If they know that they are selling snake oil, i.e. that they know that they are lying, then they are snake oil salespeople, and their product is snake oil. I care not if one of us thinks it works, I care only about what is in the head of the maker.

Another silly example to try and illustrate this way of looking at it. Say I think that washing my cables in the Thames makes them sound cleaner, so I buy boxes of cable, and wash them in that river, and sell them as "Thames Washed", then in my view I am not selling snake oil, just a low value add product. However if I do not bother to actually do the washing, maybe because I found that it made no difference, then I am now doing a fraud, ripping people off with what is now snake oil. 

Snake oil in audio compared to any other problems are minor one first...

Second, in an audio thread i dont want to read criticism without basis on any audio tweaks, except the evident recognized one by those who has experienced and bought it...

I am interested in low cost methods, homemade, retro-engineered one, to increase the S.Q. over the roof for peanuts....

It is possible for all, except for those who cannot think about it because of "dogmatic" attitude or because of their blinders....Those who cry " snake oil" on the roof and bought costly branded names in audio, and said to all the others: " you see these are all snake oils tweaks, dont buy these crap, buy genuine mesured branded electronic Hi-Fi design...

This message is the worst "snake oil" marketing lie, worst than a costly cable to me....They will give you their blinders free of charge.... :)

This message cut you from your creativity, cut you from your listenings experiments, and gives you the totally false impression that Hi-Fi experience is linked to price, and are inccessible to most... this message transform creators in a passive  mass of sheeps consumers....

I own a very good audio system that cost me years of fun experiments, cost me peanuts, and i bought nothing else, creating my own homemade very low costs controls device for the 3 embeddings....

Who sells snake oil here and lies? Not those who you would think about at first if you were a newcomer in audio experience....

Beware newcomers, not only to snake oil, that kind of overprice products exist indeed; but beware even more of the "dogmatic snake oil hunters", they are the one that will make you spend money in their Hi-Fi pit and myth....

« A thief think he is anything except a thief » -Groucho Marx

« At the end, and all along, you lie only to yourself»-Harpo Marx

So many words, when so few will do: 
Snake oil is in the eye of the georgehifi.

I think one major problem in this ongoing debate is that people believe that their own experience applies to everyone.

If someone goes to his local dealer or an audio show or even listens to amp A in his own system and decides that it is not musical or is too warm, most people seem to believe that the assertion that amp A is not musical or too warm is a fact.  They heard it with their own ears.  They now know that amp A is not musical or too warm.  But that's not true

It is their opinion that amp A is not musical or too warm for them.  Someone else can listen to the same system, or amp A in their own system and clearly hear that it is very musical but a little bright, etc., etc.

So one person's snake oil is another person's effective tweak.  One person's unmusical amp is the amp that hits just the right note for another person.

Opinions matter though.  We can discuss opinions and come to a general consensus, or not.  But when we decide that our opinion is the only right one, the fight starts, the insults fly and little is accomplished.

There is poor value and there is snake oil.  It’s not that complicated.  Except when people want to pretend such things do not exist. 

:)

There is poor value and good value , the border between the 2 is revealed only by a rightful embeddings...

Without rightful embeddings of an audio system there is no way to distinguish even snake oil and poor value product...

Then it is a bit more complicated than you assume all that to be...

:) Sorry to be so complicate myself.....



« Simple, life is comnplicated» -Groucho Marx

i am tired reading this
need a nap

I remember painfully listening to Darko's drivel and posting this back in May.

'My take on it was that the irritatingly impatient John Darko was continuously attempting to coerce the rather more ambivalent Jeff Dorgay (TONEAudio Magazine) into a blanket condemnation of virtually all accusations of snake oil in the industry.

Dorgay to his credit refuses to bite and maintains a reasonable perspective.

Darko on the other hand manages to forever darken his reputation as an audio journalist in my estimation.

You may feel differently.'


3 months later I still feel the same.

Darko was trying to grease his way into the affections of the industry by protesting the defence against snake oil accusations just a little too hard for anyone's comfort.

He didn't do anyone any favours.

You may feel differently.

Uh huh.

Some snake oil sounds better than others. It all depends on the snake. Oil from the Boa can constrict the sound while the oil from the Rattler can add annoying background noise. They all seem to hiss.

Common place, platitude, tags, it’s all that we reap from these "snake oil" words . they are a red herring in audio thread....

I dont care about opinions except by those who listen and try...

I care about the creative people, the sheeps not so much, especially sheeps that wrote all day about " snake oil" in audio thread....

It will be better to speak about ratio price/ increased quality.... More constructive, more clever, more creative and less boring jokes....For sure ratio price/ quality in a minimally well controlled embeddings... 

« A boring joke has no author by definition»- Groucho Marx

The distinction the OP referred to between the type of snake oil products that should be seen as fraudulent and snake oil products that are just poor value products is only possible if a manufacturer is the type to examine his motivations. And only if said manufacturer is honest with himself, or willing at least to commit to accepting an evaluation of his products via 3rd party measurements.

Good luck with any of that.

Too simplistic...

How do you evaluate a product that has a poor value in a poorly embedded mechanical system and room, in a poorly controlled electrical house grid, and in a badly controlled acoustical room, but a great value otherwise in an another optimally controlled house?

And dont speak about measurements.... The S.Q. of a greek theater is measured immediately and easily by any ears, but way less easily so with any device....

Audio quality is NOT reducible to electronical design and measurements at all....Except for too simple mind marketers...

This is a dud thread.
It is just a regurgitation of the measurements vs. ears story.

So one man's snake oil is another man's value purchase.
There can be no universally true definition.

END OF THREAD please.

This is a dud thread.
It is just a regurgitation of the measurements vs. ears story.

It is a bit too premature to ask for the end of something without even knowing what we speak about...

This is not a measurement versus ears theory thread....

The Essential point in audio is precisely that this division and separation makes NO sense at all , between ears or measures...

A correlation between ears and measures is mandatory for creation of sound electronic design...

A subordination of all electronic audio system measurements to the listening ears to embed it rightfully in the house, mechanically, electrically and acoustically, is the way to go....

All discussion of snake oil, placebos, etc are only red herrings most of the times for a simplistic arguing that will not adress the fundamental task in audio experience: how to embed an audio system the way it can reach his optimal S.Q. ?

So one man’s snake oil is another man’s value purchase.

In different and "specific" environments or houses, the same "generic" electronic components or the same electronic tweaks will reveal different impact in S.Q. and will reveal itselves different value from high to low value and even to snake oils value, relatively to the degree of rightful or wrongful embeddings in this particular house....

We cannot evaluate a product in theory or just with his measures numbers, we must evaluate it listening to it in a precise environment with different experiences from house to house.... Then which products is a high value and which is not is relative to the embeddings history of a particular house where we try the new products and also to the way we link it to the other products in the system....

Is it so difficult to understand?

Then you are right snake oil for one is a high value product for another dude, but this is not a proof that all is relative and indecidable in the absolute, but all is relative to a particular environment and a particular history with REAL ears listenings experiments to choose what is right for the moment for us...

snake oil....most power conditioners.

Some very good points here so far. rols contribution on snake oil (SO) is thought provoking. Magister calls SO accusations "red herrings." Here high in the Rocky Mountains I’m starting to see red snakes in herring oil!
What’s the relationship between SO and placebos? (Beyond the obvious, please). I see a distinct relationship between the two. I found an interesting page in the Harvard Medical School site that I would like to enter into evidence re: placebo effect. Many of you have probably seen it (2017) but I had not and offer the link to all here:

http://https//www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect

This may be THE most useless thread to date.  Either way, who cares?

Rols , I agree except even if a manufacturer really thinks their worthless product works, it is still snake oil.
Cleeds, I think you misunderstood me. What I was saying is if the principle can stay neutral (in a simple situation like this) there is no need to double blind (like there is in say a pharmaceutical study). You can always double blind if you think you have too. I don't as I have no trouble staying neutral. If I am running an experiment I am trying to learn something for myself. Influence the outcome and you learn nothing. I am also not trying to sell anything to anybody. 

"snake oil....most power conditioners."

And any bald hair conditioners. Use oil treatment instead.

What’s the relationship between SO and placebos?

Before my systematic listening experiments to increase my 3 embeddings controls quality, to improve the way my audio system was integrated in my house, many upgrade of parts, or buying of few tweaks, introduce changes that were small but there in some way, placebos or not...

SO(snake oil) and placebos qualifications are linked to a SINGULAR product and his SINGULAR effect.... The audible effect being small....We can ask ourself, was this change real enough? An is this change worth it and the amount of money invested ?

After my upgrading spree during some years to buy the best audio component i could buy, i was unsatisfied...Despite all these changes and upgrades, the question: are these changes real enough(placebo) and worth my money stay with me ?

But for the last 2 years taking the work in my own hand, i begins a set of methodical listenings experiments, and something change, a step at a times, EACH WEEK, incrementally better, coming first from the mechanical embedding , and after that from continuous improvement in my electrical and acoustical embeddings...

All my controls device are cheap and homemade, i developed my 3 embeddings methods , and EACH WEEK, for the last 2 years i has seen a tremensous increase in S.Q. with the same components, listening to the same known files...

My homemade controls are not snake oil nor placebo....Placebo enter in ANY experience anyway, it is a natural bias in ALL human experience....And i sell nothing, my idea are free and are there to convince people that good Hi-Fi experience may cost low money, contrary to a widely assumed opinions by most...


But explaining a set of continuous changes in the same direction by placebo explanation is like saying to a culturist exercising each day that his muscular mass increase is the result of placebo effect only.... For sure if you want muscular mass increase the mind set is important, and working with something about which someone says to you that it will be helping is a good "bias" and a welcoming positive placebo.... But you know that the muscular mass grows with real working not  mostly by hope and bias that  may help and will help tough....

I know that my device controls gives me the audio system i was dreaming of for all these years ....Not my positive mindset only , but my working with the electrical grid and the complex acoustics of my room with passive materials and active devices...

If not, placebo is not the right word to use about me, hallucinations is better...

I am then an " hallucinated audiophile", i prefer that branding to this trivial placebo accusation.... Placebo is eveywhere anyway, it is constitunional of human experience; very good S. Q. is not experimented in all audio system tough, even after many placebo upgrade or buying....This is my experience only....

My best to you.... :)

Mahgister, you've been at those psilocybin mushrooms again.

:)

I must say that i like mushrooms a lot....But my hallucinations comes from my speakers....Help me doctor....

:)

rols...I was Ok with what you were saying and your personal definition of "snake oil" until your last example where you sell someone else's product as your own and then use testimonials from people who are happy with what actually isn't your product but instead is someone else's. I agree that would not constitute snake oil, but it would be highly unethical and possibly fraudulent. Bad example.

I really like Mahgister’s analogy to the athlete working out. Exactly!
In our instant-gratification society, we want to hear our money NOW! "I’m not waiting for this $600 cable to break in, it sounds like a can o’nails! Must be some kind of SO!"
Give cables and components and tweaks time to get their muscles into performance shape.
It’s also important to have our listening "muscles" ready to perform. Unfortunately, listening muscles (cilia) are incredibly fragile. So abuse can result in permanent loss. Imagine what it would be like to go to the gym and work out hard, only to find that you overdid on your left arm and it’s now partially paralyzed for life!
Dr. Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard Medical says medical placebos are 50% as effective as the real meds. Why would you or I criticize a buddy who has used tweaks we consider fake to improve his system? We all do it constantly but perhaps our sense of logic clashes with our sense of hearing to the point that we draw a mental and/or financial line in the sand: "Naw, that can’t possibly work!" "Snake-oil!" And if the tweak works well, others yell "placebo effect!" Experts cited in Kaptchuk’s article have concluded that reacting to a placebo is not proof that a certain treatment doesn’t work, but rather that another, non-pharmacological mechanism may be present.
Now that certainly opens up many possible Pandora’s boxes. Yes, hallucination may be one answer, but in view of our mostly uneducated perspective, how can we automatically dismiss putting anything into our systems? Hell, if I get improved imaging with cherries jubilee under my turntable--who’s calling me out? Isn’t one of the metrics we are talking about using to detect SO dependent on wether or not there is any positive effect?
Tweaking is fun and can be really inexpensive, we see. So let’s lighten up on the unknown and get down on the cherries jubilee.

denverfred

I like your post...

Placebos is constitutive of human experience and has nothing to do with snake oil... Snake oil for me is crookery, thieving someone by selling him crap... Snake oil exist, but accusing many audio industries to sell snake oil is totally mistaken most of the times...

The reason is simple, ANY "generic" electronic design must be "specifically" embed, namely any electronic component must be used with controls methods in the mechanical dimension, electrical dimension and in the acoustical one to give his S.Q. potential...If not, the electronic component cannot gives his best...

What is the value of any review comparison of a dac in a bad controlled acoustic, even if the dac was measured by state of the art engineers?

I read most reviewers with a grain of salt.... When i started to understand that, i embarked in my systematic listenings experiments...

I will add something: a bunch of branded ready made tweaks is NOT and NEVER will be a method...

With a method of listening and a methodical investigation in this 3 embeddings dimensions, you dont buy a bunch of costly, ready made tweaks, instead you create step by step your own devices, perfectly adapted to your audio system, to your house, to your room, and to your listenings habits.... My point is that cost PEANUTS....

And it is this fact that almost nobody want to believe, even less verify with their own creativity...People wish that their money is sufficient to buy heaven.... It is not always the case because wether the best electronic component cost more money, or wether there is a lack in the controls embeddings of the costly products you already own whitout even knowing it...

Dont buy if not necessary, dont upgrade first; think and embed it all ....Listen between each steps... At the end enjoy a paradise created in part by your own hand ....It is more rewarding and less costly....

:)

Well put, Mr. Mahgister. Heading out to look for copper tape.

Well put, Mr. Mahgister. Heading out to look for copper tape.

The copper must always be on the external side of the application....My best to you Sir....  :)

It’s not that difficult to figure out how not to be taken advantage of in this hobby. Just don’t spend thousands on cables. Listen to modest tube amps and electrostats. You’re good. 

You knew the troll @millercarbon would jump on and say nothing, but he keeps his post count up.