Snake oil, fraud, confirmation bias

but the force is strong...

Can 50,000 Frenchman be wrong?
(An old quote.  Look it up.)

Perception is reality.

But a second reality is that people who spend $1000 on a power cord will have $1000 less to spend on a speaker or amp that will actually improve system sound.

But a third reality is that some have sufficient funds to ignore the second reality and adhere to the first. 

the farce is strong...

@jji666 

so if you perceive no gravity, it is safe to jump off a roof? After all, according to you, perception is reality. :))

Boomerang: no, I’d still break my neck. But if I did not believe in gravity, I’d certainly be capable of believing gravity wasn’t the reason I broke it!

@jji666    uhh...ok, but I guess in your case, don't risk trying a $1000 power cord, it might break your neck. ;)

if I spent anywhere near that on a power cord, I most certainly would end up with a broken neck, but gravity would have nothing to do with it.  There are more powerful forces in the universe, namely my wife!

Even more dangerous, as I can attest!

 
defiantboomerang
@jji666

so if you perceive no gravity, it is safe to jump off a roof? After all, according to you, perception is reality. :))
.......................

Gravity is the weakest force. We cannot perceive or feel gravity. So that is what we call a bad example. Nuclear forces, for example, are much stronger than the force of gravity yet we cannot perceive nuclear forces

We do have a natural fear of heights, however. 

Costco_emoji wrote,

I don’t know where Geoff gets this idea that there are things in this universe we can’t measure. We can measure black holes colliding half way across the galaxy, but we can’t measure the quality of our stereo??? Whatever! I had one chump tell me that it would be impossible to measure single instrument within an orchestra. It would be difficult, but hardly impossible, and probably not worth the effort. These snake oil clowns who claim you can’t measure a cable breaking in speak out of pure ignorance. The answer is obviously you can’t measure what doesn’t exist. People have in fact measured cables. Nelson Pass has a great article on cable which I’m sure none of the snake oilers would bother to look up. Stereophile measures almost everything they review so I’m not sure how anybody can say nobody measures anything. The only folks that don’t measure things are the folks who know there’s nothing to measure..... because you can measure the customer’s delusions. I have to wonder if sticking suction cup dildos to your speakers would improve the sound as much as some of this high dollar hocus pocus the con artists sell.

>>>>Costco, I’m pretty sure your reading compression went bye bye again. I didn’t say nobody measures anything. Duh! What I actually said was that there is no way to measure certain audiophile tweaks. You know, the ones that SCARE you. The ones that go BUMP in the night. The ones YOU don't understand. The ones you're constantly ranting about. In fact, Stereophile doesn’t meausure audio tweaks. Nobody does. Hel-loo! So, go ahead, fly off the handle.

@geoffkait 

Your post is a bad example. Hold a 100 pound weight in your hands for an hour. I think you will "perceive or feel" gravity.

BTW, how is that teleportation thing going? Have you had it peer reviewed yet? Why not? Have you published your research? Why not? What are you hiding?

My boomerang won’t come back - but that’s not what you said. You said in your example you could perceive gravity if you’re standing near a cliff. By the way, shouldn’t you be standing out on a ledge somewhere?

Are you volunteering to peer review the Teleportation Tweak? As I said previously I already published the long awaited, How the Teleportation Tweak Works. Try to keep up.

You obviously do not know the definition of "evidence". Look it up and shut up.

Oy. I certainly don’t believe science has completed its mission of creating a perfect model and understanding of the physical universe. It never will. But that doesn’t mean I believe in ghosts.

Electronically reproduced music is, in the end, a moving magnet that pushes air. If a tweak back up the reproduction chain doesn’t affect the movement of the magnet, it doesn’t affect the movement of the air, and it is thus not affecting the sound of the music. Anyone who believes otherwise is basically thinking the equivalent of believing a volcanic eruption is the sign of an angry deity.

Because science is imperfect and we won’t have more sensitive measuring instruments until we do, I will make some allowances that maybe some "snake oil" audio tweaks may actually affect sound quality in ways that are too nuanced or minute to be measured now but will be able to be measured in our sci-fi future. And then I will make an allowance that maybe the brain is sensitive enough to pick up what instruments can’t. Although that still doesn’t justify the dramatic results some folks report. But still, the desirability of the level of impact relative to the goal of achieving perfection is a subjective one, so I won’t say that a .000001% improvement isn’t a worthy goal if someone thinks it is.

But many of these tweaks simply go against common sense. It is theoretically possible that a power cable would be of lesser quality, or contain a defect that renders it less capable of conducting current than, the power cables in your wall. But to me that clearly can be fixed by remedying that defect and rendering the power cable to be of consistent quality with what is in the wall. But that’s not a $500 fix with fancy colors and giant connectors. It’s a $5 fix, with maybe a little workmanship involved. Otherwise it is just bling. The only way a power cable that goes beyond fixing a defect could affect audio quality would be if it goes much farther than one meter - it would need to go all the way to the pole, or the power substation, etc.

Let’s pose a hypothetical: let’s go to the sci-fi world where we are sure that measuring instruments are confidently as sensitive and capable as human hearing at measuring an audio signal emitting from the moving magnets (we may be there already, but I want this premise clear as part of the hypothetical). In that scenario, if the measuring instrument detected no difference when a fancy fuse is reversed in direction, would the pro-tweaker crowd still hold to the everything-is-subjective-and-if-I-hear-a-difference-then-there-is-one axiom?

I won’t hide the ball on my own belief. I do accept that there is a level of poor accessories that are effectively defective. 20 gauge speaker cable on a long run. Very cheap interconnects that diminish conductivity under torque. Unshielded or improperly grounded cables when shielding or grounding are required to eliminate interference of some sort. So then there is a level of problem solving to eliminate these "defects" and that includes after-market products. But those are $5-$100 items, not all of this super expensive, visually stunning but scientifically non-distinct products.

It’s bling. Enjoy it if you want to - I’d love to have some of that stuff just because it looks cool. But once you’ve gone to the level of eliminating defects, you’ve gone as far as you can with this stuff from the standpoint of affecting the movement of those magnets. There is a magical, mystical quality to music. But that doesn’t move the reproduction of music beyond the reach of science and engineering.

I find it interesting that the OP can ignore his own thread, but can’t ignore the naysayers.  

Knowledge is defined as a consensus of collective observations. That said, there will be apparent anomalies within said observations. While there are laws of physics that are considered to be absolute, they themselves have been turned upside down upon occasion. One example as discussed (loosely) here relates to system synergies. While there are certain generally agreed upon "laws" of music reproduction, thinking they are found in every audio system everywhere in the same fashion is ludicrous.

One "proof" of this would be that certain speakers give different results in different systems - or even two (or more) owners of the exact same systems may hear said speakers differently from the other. In another, some hold that tube based gear reacts differently with other components than solid state gear does and that within the tube based gear universe, certain tubes give different audible results than others. Yet no one credible shouts snake oil at these observations.

In conclusion, we all hear music differently, due to age, experiences, quality of equipment, etc etc. For someone to make a blanket statement that someone cannot possibly hear what they hear in their system without hearing the system themselves before and after, and certainly not having the exact same ears, aural experiences etc, is laughable. A comparison would be someone claiming I couldn’t possibly have the flavor profile I experience drinking a particular wine essentially because their interpretation of it differs. Someone with more experience than myself would necessarily have different viewpoints of high end systems or expensive wines than I. Consensus might hold that their observations are more or less valid than mine. Because no two humans have exactly the same sensory apparatus, combined with differing experiences, declaring absolute right and wrong is impossible - everything is relative.

@ethiessen1  Nice try.  I made the same argument here earlier only to be informed by the naysayers that experiential happenings are irrelevant and silly if the phenomenon can't be measured or affirmed by science.

This is not necessarily my view but it presents an interesting point of view which adds to this discussion. The whole thing is about the authors view on snake oil - so quite relevant and on topic.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ERMu825m4

ethiessen1

Knowledge is defined as a consensus of collective observations. That said ...

That's your definition of knowledge, perhaps. But it's not the generally accepted definition at all. Here's Merriam-Webster:

"Definition of knowledge 1 a (1) : the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (2) : acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique b (1) : the fact or condition of being aware of something (2) : the range of one's information or understanding

• answered to the best of my knowledge

c : the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition d : the fact or condition of having information or of being learned

• a person of unusual knowledge"

---

As you can see, there's no need for a " consensus of collective observations ."

Nope. That’s incorrect. The real definition of knowledge is what’s left after you subtract what you forgot from school. Which, for most people, myself not included, is immediately if not sooner. There is no shared knowledge. There I no learning by osmosis, either. 🌿

I feel your frustration brother.  It won't likely be diminished by the usual vitriol in some of the responses here.  The sad and simple fact is, as others have philosophized; humanity for the most part consists of two types of people: those who are happy in their existence, enjoying life (and their hobbies/passions); and those who are not, who exist to let everone know how misserable they are.  When I read the comments of the latter on Audiogon and other blocs or hear their pathetic and banal rants at social events and store queues, I smile and think of the gum that we sometimes pick up on the bottom of our shoes: one of life's "little" annoyances, which quickly wear off and are easily forgotten.

These are just some random thoughts. I think Roger Russels classic article on speaker wire was an objective argument that any differences in speaker cables are small or related to speaker impedance and wire resistance.
( http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm )He quotes Gordon Gow who set up a true blind test and found no discernible difference. Sometimes I wonder if actual audio engineers should be the ones to write equipment reviews. But then again I doubt that all the fun of our audiophilia is based on objective sound alone. If I am listening to the sound of a pair of Tannoy Westminster's with a set of Mcintosh amps I am sure it will sound better than if I am hearing exactly the same sound coming from a cheap ghetto blaster. There is a psychology of beauty and aesthetics  involved here that really does make things sound better. 

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Check out the classical Indian music label, Moment. Fantastic music, many of their CDs recorded live. Tremendous sound quality. And guess what? Moment is a believer in audiophile equipment and audiophile cables, which they use in their recordings. And I ain't talking about no pro audio cables, either. Wake up, people! Smell the coffee! ☕️