Top 10 Signs That A Cable Company is Selling Snake Oil
This response was published by Audioholics.com. What's Your Thoughts?
The audio industry is full of hype with the most nonsense surrounding the simplest component of the A/V chain - interconnects and speaker cables. Because there are often very little measurable and audible differences between cables, many of the exotic cable vendors use psuedo junk science to differentiate their products from their competitors. These vendors often prey upon the suggestible audiophile giving them reasons why these products must be utilized in their precious systems in order to achieve the best performance possible to reach the true path of audio nirvana. Listed below are the top 10 cable snake oil claims to watch out for. If a vendor is selling you on any of these fallacies, run don't walk away from their products, unless of course you enjoy a good sci-fi story and desire to buy expensive audio jewelery.
Watch out if a Cable Vendor or Manufacturer:
Promotes that their product allegedly eliminates audio related Skin Effect and/or "Strand Jumping" problems.
Claims revolutionary breakthrough in cable technology by polarizing or biasing the dielectric using a battery.
Claims vast improvements in sound by inserting "Cable Elevators" to raise the cables off the floor and minimize electron misfiring or static energy fields.
Claims that cryogenically freezing cables improves fidelity or measurably changes electrical properties after the cable is restored to room temperature.
Claims that their cables require a "Break In" period.
Claims that measurements cannot quantify why their designs are superior and often misapply engineering principles in their reasoning but abandon the associated governing laws and metrics that establish them.
Claims audible differences exist between stranded and non-stranded wires of same gauge rating, geometry and conductor spacing.
Claims audible differences between silver and copper cables of equal design geometry and gauge.
I think that this sort of thread belongs no where on this forum, as such a thread is devised right form the start to give everyone an ulcer, and it destroys the website, the forum, and the business in general. and if there is no business, there is no hobby as there is no one to buy the products from. All for the sake of a small group of deaf incapable illiterate projecting a**hats.
It destroys the hobby of audio and it’s attempts to be as best it can...... all for the illiteracy of a small group of psychopathic people who can’t hear and can’t understand science (don't understand what the word science means, to start. Then it gets worse) or it’s edges of change and learning.
I think that people who start such threads need to be sent home from the forum with no supper for a week or permanently sent down the road.
I
think that this sort of thread belongs no where on this forum, as such a
thread is devised right form the start to give everyone an ulcer, and
it destroys the website, the forum, and the business in general.
+1. We've already seen that there are some that come here simply to engage in argument. There's no reason to encourage them when threads on this topic already exist.
+1 This thread does a disservice to Audiogon visitors who wish to learn ways for improving their audio system. We should be helping, not obstructing. It’s always easier to tear something down than to build it.
While I don’t disagree with almost all those points (with exception) and could add some more, not to mention, if the claim is only associated with consumer audio (and not other more rigourous industries) it is probably bunk, I have to go with Teo on this, the only point of this post is to incite discord and it has no value to the forums. I think it would be best to remove it.
I don’t agree with Teo that "questionable" products are essential to the health of the industry, and could argue the opposite is true, but if people want to believe what they believe, that is their right, as is spending money where they feel like. These people should also respect that if they are promoting their belief in a forum where others are exposed, that others have the right to question said beliefs (if they don’t resort to name calling). This us vs. them / cancel culture that is prevalent in today’s culture doesn’t help anyone but the ones who profit off discourse.
audiozenology"I don’t agree with Teo that "questionable" products are essential to the health of the industry"
Teo never claimed, stated, or asserted such a thing, and you're use of actual quotation marks to claim that teo did say that is very deceptive at the very least.
All sciences have questionable edges, that is their nature.
Anyone who does not understand that.... does not understand the concept of science, nor moving forward.
Anything else is dogma and dead.
as my signature at DIYaudio used to say:"Only dead fish swim with the stream" -Malcom Muggeridge
And no one and no science and no endeavor can properly move forward by driving through viewing the world through the rear view mirror. As that is only half of the story ....and results in dead circular logic.
The future cannot be successfully projected by viewing the dogmatic past aspects of human endeavor. Anyone who understands what the word science means, knows this. Science was delineated, as an act, to specifically avoid this. Science is about proofs ----- but first comes exploration. No one ever said a company can’t base a product on exploration.
As a matter of fact, such a thing is not all that uncommon, and not just in the world of audio. Not by a long shot.
Audio is about the sonic qualities as heard by the ear, and those are not wholly measurable. This is known. As the correlations and the sciences of all the aspects involved are not fully fleshed out.
The nature of the situation is to have varied levels of hearing ability and varied levels of intellect, varied levels of self awareness, all involved across the whole field of audio.
And we end up with threads like this, where the one set of people gang up and attack another set of individuals.
Individuals who just want to be left alone, as they are tired, to their bones... with the illiteracy that ceaselessly comes after them. No reasoning at all, just the unending ceaseless illiteracy.
Which is why some forums have banned such threads from existing. It is something that Audiogon should consider enacting.
And we end up with threads like this, where the one set of people gang up and attack another set of individuals.
Individuals who just want to be left alone, as they are tired, to their bones... with the illiteracy that ceaselessly comes after them. No reasoning at all, just the unending ceaseless illiteracy.
Coming from someone who wrote,
All for the sake of a small group of deaf incapable illiterate projecting a**hats.
all for the illiteracy of a small group of psychopathic people who can’t hear and can’t understand science
Since quotes seem to be in vogue:
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." , Christopher Hitchens
example: PLEASE, someone illustrate to me that Teo Audio is selling snake oil. So I can tear them a new one with the entirety of the physics of conductivity, and the whole of Wikipedia regarding kinetics, electron transfer function, quantum electrodynamic function and so on.
Almost no one tries anymore. For the first decade of the product existence, it was a fight against the ignorance every day. Day after day. For almost 10 years. Unbelievable levels of abuse.
And now, nothing.
Just that...the people who did not understand... and having beat the crap out of us in print for a decade, they slink away and repeat....by unleashing their ignorance on someone else or some other device or product. It is slowly being accepted that the conductivity of a fluid is NOT the same as it is with wire. As it isn’t, for...by any point in the physics of conductivity, the two are not the same. As Wikipedia will tell anyone who wants to look, with about 100 pages or so of dense physics text on the matters involved.
But, you see, they don’t come back and apologize or retract their decade of abuse. They just chase down, beat up, and gnaw ceaselessly on the next thing they don’t understand.
In this case, a list from some audio website that has published an attack manifesto.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.-Albert Einstien
Hopefully the ceaselessly illiterate society will challenge as invalid snake oil the dialectic bias patent ( shared by Bill Low and Richard Vandersteen- not a cable manufacturer ) in patent court. Doubt that will happen....
Despite all the naysayers you are spot on and it reminds me of when I worked at several “high end” audio stores years ago. I spent two summers working in two stores, one in Chicago and another in the Norfolk area, almost two years apart. I remember feeling very annoyed with all these claims from vendors about their revolutionary cables so I decided a test, which in both instances ultimately cost me my job (summer job so no big deal but did well for my masters thesis). I did blind tests for as many customers as I could and I would setup using the same speakers, same song three times in a row and would change only the cables (speaker cable, power cable, interconnects or digital cable). In each test it was.generally just speaker cables to make my point. I don’t remember a single customer that ever picked the “audiophile” cable (nordost snake oil, etc) in any of my tests as being better. More often then not the monoprice or blue jeans would end up on top, again I repeat the high end cables never won. I generally told customers after that when they were ready to buy cables to let me know and I would choose their winner (not letting them know which one it was). Again, two states, two years apart, same “high end” stuff and no one could tell (we had several local producers who are well known in the music business who picked Best Buy monster cable). So much like other fads you don’t always get what you pay for.
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