What is the Silliest Accessory You Have Ever Seen.

Honesty?

Get a lantern and start looking. 

@gmerser, There are people who will try to sell you a dead horse.

Kelvin is certainly enthusiastic.

The only honest reviewer is one that has nothing to gain from the review.

Sorry about the mistakes. I was using my medical Dragon Dictate then had to get to a patient and prematurely hit the post button.
Change "permanent" to primitive. Change "goes across" to those.
Some of the mistakes are strange. I run music in the background and I think it must confuse it. I'll have to turn the volume down more. 

@theaudiotweak, Very true Tom. But, you are in a strange environment and a very large mysterious one not in your own living room. You don't get scared when you turn the lights out in your bedroom. It is a more primitive instinct more likely to be manifest in children. My favorite instinct fighting situation is being in an MRI scanner. Even if you are not technically claustrophobic you get uncomfortable. We instinctively do not like being in tight places we can't easily get out of. I have many patients I have to tranquilize to get a scan done. I have one that will never have an MRI without being totally knocked out. Why do we all have these instincts? Simple we were better at staying alive and having children. The ones without this instinct were more likely to get killed prematurely. Many of these instinct got started long before Homo Sapiens was around. They were passed down to us. The survival instinct is a good example. 
Now. what about the instinct to buy silly audio tweaks that do nothing but subsidize someone's income.  It is obvious that this instinct does not occur in all humans. Since nowadays survival equals money goes across without this instinct will out survive the ones that have. So, over 1,000,000 years this instinct will extinguish.  Looking back on it people will think that the tweak buyers are permanent. Just an extension of the idea:-)

@rauliruegas , Raul, not "rejecting", you meant "projecting," like a projector. Rejecting means to throw away or to disavow. 
Just trying to be helpful.
@glupson, You have a valid point! Humans do not like absolute darkness. It makes them uncomfortable, one of the reasons we are so fond of fire.
The only problem with eyes closed is that sometimes I wind up falling asleep:-0

@lewm , I thought you would like that. That song is on two records. Jazz From Hell, were it is done entirely on a synthesizer. The whole album is done on a Synthesizer. The version you saw is on The Yellow Shark Which I believe is the very last album he supervised before his death.
Frank had a concept he called Conceptual Continuity. Certain themes come up repetitively over the years in reimagined forms. If you really want to understand him. You start from the beginning, Freak Out. I must warn you, if you are genre specific Frank is all over the place from Do Wop to Neo Classical, small groups to the London Philharmonic. 
If there are some genres you do not like Let me know and I will tell you what to skip. Stay away from any albums produced by the Zappa Family Trust for the time being. You can get a discography on Wikipedia. Just as a primer get the video "Roxy." This is Frank in the late 70's. It is very Jazz oriented. If you like tight bands and musical gymnastics with Jazz musicians you will love this. Then Start from the beginning. 

Enjoy,
Mike

Yes , The Dweez plats well. Unfortunately, he does not have the compositional talent of his father. But he has been left with plenty to play.
Franks library has to two to three timed larger than any other artist. He recorded everything and maintained control over it. 

WOW, I have not seen that version of G Spot Tornado. That girl is dynamite and that is some outfit. Great Find Tom. 

Hot Rats was just released again. A Classic and on Rolling Stones list of greatest albums of all time.

@roxy54 , I saw him 1976 in Montreal at the Forum an again in 1984 at the Winchester Centrum. The 76 concert was in the early Terry Bozio years when he was still a wild teenager and played in his underware. He insisted that cloths slowed him down which has merit I suppose. For those of you who do not know who he is Terry is one of the 10 greatest drummers alive today. His drum set is twice the size of Neil Peart's (RIP).
@lewm , I was just making some suggestions in case you wanted to hear what he was really about. The Yellow Shark is Neoclassical and at times very complicated. It is performed by a group of very talented classical musicians. It is a taste of where he was headed had he not died of prostate cancer. He claims his greatest influence was Edgard Verese' The Yellow Shark has my favorite version of G Spot Tornado. By the way the recording and mastering are fabulous. G Spot was originally programmed on a synclavier. It first appeared on Jazz From Hell  a complete album of programmed music. You can google it. Then imagine classical musicians playing it note for every darn note. Nothing you will see at the Cirque Du Soleil is as amazing. Every audiophile should have this record. It is audiophile candy. 

For those of you who do not know Frank Zappa just google his discography. There are very few people who manage to create that much music in 52 years.

Raul, this is a silly game. You keep moving the goal posts. Less visual interference  is less whether you get it by turning down the lights, turning them off, or closing your eyes. Humans see poorly in low light conditions we are diurnal creatures. Next you are going to tell me we are nocturnal.
I've got news for you. Lights are a very recent innovation. Next you will tel men cave men had fires. True, but not for the thousands we were first evolving as primitive primates. 
@roxy54 , looks like we have something in common. Do you have all of the "You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore" disc's? The Grand Wazoo is a great one. Chungas Revenge is another of my favorites

@lewm I suggest you get a copy of The Yellow Shark. There are also re releases of Hot Rats and Uncle Meat out now. These predate the Flo and Eddie era when his performances started getting R ratings. If you care to see a live performance get the DVD  ROXY The Movie. This features what I think is one of his most gifted small units including George Duke, Chester Thompson, Ruth Underwood, Napoleon Murphy Brock and Ralph Humphry. If you like drums and percussion in a jazz like setting you will really like this. 
I mentioned frank Zappa in relation to Staying Alive from Saturday Night Fever because he perpetually made fun of Disco music.

Raul, I afraid you are very wrong about this. We know a lot more than you think about the human brain and we are learning more every minute. Because of the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease there has been an explosion of research over the past 10 years. I have been to three conferences on exactly this subject. You will see the benefits of this in medical practice shortly. I am talking from experience. You are not. Yu are making assumptions which are outdated.

Listening to music in a dark room (all lights off) is the same as listening with your eyes closed, no visual distraction. In many situations it is difficult to turn all the lights off. Or I'm just being lazy and don't want to get up and turn off the lights. In Collage we use to get stoned, turn off all the lights and listen to stuff like Tubular Bells. Actually, I think I was tripping once.

@lewm , I mentioned Ray Charles and Art Tatum is a previous post just above. But I did not mention Mathew Whitaker. You really need to listen to this kid. He is going places fast. His industry caretaker is Herbie Hancock.

@glupson, I'm surprised at you, Staying Alive is not music, just ask Frank Zappa:-)

Raul, with modern imaging techniques we know a lot more about the brain's function than you think. Most of the research is centered around Alzheimer's disease. When you stimulate the brain a certain way specific areas of the brain light up showing they are functioning at a higher rate than other parts. We have known what areas of the brain usually do under normal circumstances for a long time. It is what happens under unusual circumstances that is interesting like what happens to your hearing when your eyes are closed. If you have been blind from a young age almost your entire visual cortex, the occipital lobes in the back of your brain are donated to hearing. These areas are three times larger than the area usually used for hearing in the left temporo-parietal lobe.
Obviously most musical geniuses have their vision but there are blind musicians that are just extraordinary like Stevie Wonder. You need to listen to him when he was 12 ears old! He was called Little Stevie Wonder back then. There are recordings of his early performances. Amazing.    

Rauliruegas, you bet. Most of time my eyes are closed. Some people are entertained by watching the musicians. I am not. I prefer to take in the musical event. This is at classical concerts only. At rock concerts the  sound is mono at best and very loud. There is now usually a light show worth watching not to mention the antics of the musicians. 
Roxy 54, you have no understanding of the neurosciences. I do not know it all. I just usually know my limits unlike some people so, it seems like arrogance but it is not. You can pick out audio details better without visual interference. It is just the way we are wired. This explains some of the brilliance of some musicians like Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Art Tatum. You can argue all you want but the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and there is not a darn thing you or anyone else can do about it. Now, you can listen to music with your eyes open all you want, most people do, but if you want to tune your system to the highest level you need to close your eyes and concentrate on exactly what the system is doing down to minute detail.
 Many people do not know how good a system can get because they have not heard high end systems set up correctly. They have no basis for comparison. Many if not most concerts are not a good comparison. Classical concerts and acoustic jazz quartets make wonderful comparisons. Concerts where you are close up to acoustic instruments.
String quartets are perfect. Beethoven's early and middles Quartets by the Quartetto Italiano are perfect for comparison to the real thing. Another favorite is Cherubini's Quartets by the Melos String Quartet. Some popular music can be recorded as if the instruments were naturally layered out in front of you but most are surrealistic and can not be used for critical evaluation of a system. When listening to a live string quartet my eyes are closed for most of the concert. I am listening to the individual instruments and the interplay between them. Listening to a string quartet is like watching great figure skaters. 
You can't keep your eyes closed at a Nine Inch Nails show. Your eyelids are blasted back over your ears. No, really you would miss half the show with your eyes close. At home there is nothing to see. You need to put on something like Weather Reports Mysterious Travelers, turn off the lights and let it wash over you at 95 dB. Quite an experience, an event in your own home. 

Don't know. I'm one of those people that can't be hypnotized. 

It is one of the greatest Tweaks and you actually save money with the lights off!

That is exactly right Tom. Strange things do happen:-)

@roxy54  Your ability to focus on music improves when you have no visual input. It is why we have had so many totally blind fabulous musicians. You transfer sonic interpretation to the visual cortex at the back of your brain. Proven fact. 
If your system does not sound better with your eyes closed you have work to do. 

docfar, not true! Music always sounds better with the lights out. But, that is exactly what they reminded me of when I first saw them, candle holders. 

Rauliruegas, you have never made more sense and you are absolutely right. I certainly have fallen for a few things over the years. The best teacher is experience. 

Audio2design, also true. The default mode is trust vs not trust. That is why big tech and the media have become so dangerous. Our default mode has to be "not trust." Humans are just too dangerous. Just look at your email in the morning. How much of it is people trying to scam you.
How many people do you trust with your wallet, your car, your kids. A hand full maybe, mostly family. Otherwise it is safe to assume every human is out for themselves. In the words of Layne Staley. " Why does it have to be this way."

What brains?

@lewm , We are actually in close agreement. I always have said that you have to control the acoustic of the room to the greatest extent possible before resorting to digital adjustment. You just stop before the digital adjustment. You should measure your system. I think you might be surprised. As for tweaks we feel exactly the same way. That money is much better spent on equipment and effective acoustic treatment. If any of it does anything it is miniscule in comparison. Whenever I get flowery, bombastic descriptions of the improvement "product X" made I dismiss that opinion out of hand. 
Now as for my career. I am a board certified family physician licensed in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. 
I started building Dynakits as a kid. I got so good with a soldering iron that while in high school I got hired by dBx in Waltham to wire the power supply chassis of 32 channel noise reduction units which I did for two Summers. In 1976 I traveled to Miami, FL for medical school. To help with finances I got a job at Luskin's Hi Fidelity nights and weekends as a salesman. It was a discount box store  selling mid fi mostly but we did have some nice stuff like Revox and Accuphase. The big high end store was Peter McGrath's Sound Components. I got most of my own equipment there. A friend of my cousins (very wealthy) asked if I would set up a system in his new house which I did using equipment from Peter.
Other wealthy people heard his system and I started getting requests. I left the job at Luskin's and started working on my own. Peter gave me discounts on equipment which I sold at retail with an added labor charge.
I then got all my own equipment at salesman's comp. That for me was the jackpot. The final system I set up was the entire PA system at Flagler Dog Track. The old system started having trouble and needed to be replaced including the exterior speakers. Nothing like climbing through steel girders and trusses hanging from the roof of a huge grand stand. The electronics were up in the announcers booth hanging from the roof dead center. I had to build the main control console which fed 8 JBL amplifiers and controlled two R2R's, two 8 tracks, a radio, a TV and two microphones. Along the way I developed a relationship with Jim Strickland of Acoustat fame. I had Acoustat X's which I got through Peter.
They were very pretty but the enclosures were awful and resonated like crazy. I pulled the panels out and mounted them in a solid frame, covered it in grill cloth and mounted a 3 inch thick maple plate to the top and bottom then stuck them on top of two RH labs subwoofers. Peter heard it and dragged Jim over to hear and he was impressed. The design turned into the Monitor 4 and Monitor 3. Jim had this plastic base made that lifted the speaker 18 inches and housed the amplifiers which I thought was ugly but it was a huge improvement. A year later he switched to the Model 1,2,3,4 followed by the 1+1, 2+2, 3+3 and the monster 4+4. This was at about the time I moved to Ohio for residency. I wanted a set of 2+2s when I got to Ohio so Jim set me up with a dealer in Akron called The Golden Gramophones. He sent the speakers up there and told John Ashe the owner to give them to me at dealer cost. I think but I am not sure that Jim charged John less than the usual dealer cost. John and I became close friends. He got me a deal on my first Porsche, a  944 Turbo. Now that I had an income as a resident I only set up system's for friends. I always got the from John and he always took care of me even after I moved to New Hampshire until the store closed in 1998. 
I hope that explains everything lewm.

@teo_audio, such negative vibes. Exactly who's life are you describing? 
Certainly not me. Except for my right hand I consider myself very lucking and I certainly would not kick a dog. But I do like lighting fuses. It is that human fascination with fire and explosions. Plus I love the tweakaholics.
They are a never ending source of entertainment. No animosity intended.

Just what I thought :-)))

@glupson, Stop trying to be a wise guy:-)

Go for it audioguy85, but the pipe will give you mouth cancer so I would suck on something else. Try an M+M pop.

Lewm, There is a right frequency response, perfectly flat from each individual speaker within it's operating range. Once you have that you can alter things to suite your taste. I run my subwoofers a little forward and tilt the treble down 3 dB at 20 kHz for some recordings. I also use a 4 kHz notch filter for harsh recording. 
You should stop being a stick in the mud, spend a couple of $100 and get yourself a calibrated microphone and computer program. It is a lot of fun and a great learning experience. But, if you are happy where you are nobody can argue. Yes, this is certainly a hobby, the mechanical part of it. Listening to music is a necessity.  

Lewm, I fully agree, You have to know what the real deal sounds and feels like to have a prayer of getting that kind of performance at home....with live recordings. Many recordings were not meant for that. The artist had something else in mind.
There are two major characteristics I think in achieving a realistic live performance. Power projection, the ability to create the dynamics and volume of a live performance across the entire frequency band. And the right frequency response which is tricky because this includes the room.
Power projection is actually pretty easy. You just need the right speakers and enough power to do the job which depends on what you chose for the right speakers. The right frequency response is much harder. If you think you can trust your ears for this you are out of your mind. Human hearing accommodates to frequency very quickly. I have tested many systems that the owner was happy with and they were all way out. If you are use to listening to a bright system (most common) A system that is relatively flat will sound dull at first. People also have no idea what their room is doing. Making empirical changes in room acoustics is a crap shoot. First you have to get to flat. Flat is the only acceptable reference point. After that you can start tilting things to your preference and you will know exactly what you are doing. The easy way to achieve this is room control. But theoretically you can do this with a measurement microphone and some smarts, but for certain it will take you a lot longer to get there.
You will never have the best system you could have trying to balance it by ear, never. I have measured too many systems that people thought were just fine only to come up with a substantial mess. They had just gotten use to their sound. Measurement microphones and programs are not that expensive. IMHO Every audiophile should have one. This is immeasurably more important than any tweak you could buy.  It is like having a good protractor for your turntable. It is also a lot of fun and a great learning experience.   

Cleeds, obviously, any sense can be deceived. I think most people got the gist of what I was saying in the absence  of deception. Again, thank you for the kind an understanding comments. Your second paragraph was wonderful.
millercarbon, you seem to be descending into psychosis. Besides getting lost is there anything we can do to help. Really.

theaudiotweak, by radical do you mean ineffective? Resonance control systems can be very important. The Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory in Vermont had a huge problem. It's compressors were driving it's neighbors nuts. The screens surrounding them rang like a tuning fork. They hired my brother's company to stop it. What component parts do you make?

I have had more negative experiences than I care to admit but usually not from "tweaks" but from poorly designed or misused equipment. I fell for the marketing. My favorite example being the Transcriptors Vestigial Tonearm. Try not to die laughing but I even tried to put a Koetsu in it and then blamed the Koetsu for poor tracking. When the right bass note came along it would pop right out of the groove. Worse it was on an LP 12.
My formative years. A V15 did not even fare well in that arm.

There was always better equipment to buy. Who wanted to waste money at the margin. The really stupid stuff didn't start until the early 80's and by then I had set up over 100 systems including the entire PA system at Flagler Dog Track. Experience and reading had gotten me well up to speed. The days of falling for marketing were over.

@glupson, are you ever wrong? 

I need to stay up later at night, missed a lot of fun. 

What is the dynamic that make us so gullible when it comes to audio quality. Why does all this junk always make things sound better and not worse. Why are there always some people who are unable to understand that their hearing, all of our hearing is excellent at playing tricks on us. Seeing is believing, but hearing is not. Hearing is a very emotional sense. If you hear danger you are in big trouble. We can see much farther away than we can hear 99.9% of the time. If you see danger coming you generally have a lot more time to deal with it. It is why we stand on two legs. Good thing Indians were scared to attack at night. 
Lack of understanding/knowledge and ego I think are most to blame. None of us likes to be wrong. Because most of this stuff does no harm (no benefit either) other than financial it is much harder to fault. 
I am lucky I suppose in that my own mistakes have always screwed things up enough to notify me that I had botched it. Certainly people with a better understanding of the science behind all of this are less susceptible to the chicanery.
When dealing with strangers it is always best to proceed with a high degree of suspicion. Someone who is for real knows this and will go head over heals trying to show just how good their stuff really is at shows and such.
You get up in the morning and check your email box 3/4 of it is somebody trying to scam you. It may be sad but you have to keep that in mind when dealing with strangers.

@cleeds , Glad you liked my post. Thanx for joining in:-)

@mitch2 , you might as well get the money out of them. Go Tesla!

Thank you recluse, I needed that:-)

Mahgister, well said. audio2design,glupson, myself and a few others are "stupid." I am getting good at this trolling stuff. I may be stupid but I am certainly not defensive. Maybe you and millercarbon should go out and get a drink together. Cool off. Talk about the old days when you could tweak yourself silly and everyone would just ogle at the genius of it all. 

millercabon, I'm surprised! You can't tell that a Sherman tank can't fly?
Oh, your insulted. I'm terribly sorry I insulted you. That was not the intension. I apologize. Really.

Right. Lets say cleeds (this is just an example) says mahgister saw a Sherman tank fly. I take a look at a picture of a Sherman tank and reply that mahgister is hallucinating again. We have to increase his thorazine dose. Cleeds replys, "How can you say that? You just saw a picture!"
Now I know darn well that unless he is back on the sauce again, cleeds can look at a picture of a Sherman tank and know for an absolute fact that that thing ain't flying. He is just pulling my leg for fun. 
Well folks, some of us are gifted and can tell by looking at some things that they are absolutely not suited for the suggested purpose. We do not have to go through the ordeal of a blinded AB comparison. If you want to prove to me that something sounds better you have to show me the blinded AB comparison study with at least 10 subjects. Otherwise, it is just an opinion and when it comes to audio the opinions of strangers are close to worthless. There are times when you can't even trust your own opinion.

@glupson, My group of people shunned the Soundcraftsman units at the time. We had already started to slide into the minimalist units without tone controls. Units like the Soundcraftsman were in part responsible for that movement as they seriously screwed up soundstaging/imaging. 
Now the Argent Room Lens. If one end of the pipe is open then they could function as Helmholtz resonators but I fail to understand why you would want something resonating by your speakers. As long as the pipes do not ring I suppose they could operate as diffusers at higher frequencies. They look like big door bells. They certainly have more potential to do something than the Hallographs which are too spindly to do anything. IMHO the best way to deal with room acoustics is to use directional speakers so that you do not bounce sound all over the place. Then a little absorption here and there is all you should need. In the small rooms we listen in you really want to decrease the amount of stray energy rather than redirect it. It is like clearing fog out of the way. Room treatments is another area where there is a fair amount of chicanery. Good contoured foam tiles are all you really need but unfortunately, they are not the look that some people want. You have to spend a lot more for decorator stuff that works. I am very lucky in that my wife does not mind them at all. I didn't even have to buy her flowers.

@mahgister, there you go insulting me again. Lack of good faith? You have to be kidding. These guys create a totally fictitious story to sell a cheap wooden construction to soak money out of uneducated (in science)  audiophiles which I am trying to expose and I am the one operating in bad faith. People may not like what I have to say because it offends their sense of political correctness, to which I say "Get over it."
You want to ogle over silly tweaks, start your own thread. This is about exposing them. 

It is not BS because he may seriously believe what he says or he is trying to protect an advertiser. Whatever. The marketing and the premise are total BS. Follow this fellow and see if he keeps them in his system. If he does then he is very susceptible to psychoacoustics. If he does not then he is FOS. You just can't win.  

@tomic601 , Least of all me. 

Donna seems really stress out. I'm trying not to pester her. She says I'm in line but she won't take a deposit. That makes me worry. Is she afraid she won't be able to fill the order? 

@tablejockey , Nice find! The marketing is fabulous BS. What a riot.

@tomic601 , Phew, I was worried you were having another manic break. Nice to here you are OK. God just works, no 0's or 1's. That's just us trying to understand. A long way off still.

I just realized I am in trouble. My trusty old Sota Sapphire just walked out the door. Fortunately with a real nice young fellow who seems awfully happy to get it. But, I have not been without a turntable since I was....4 years old. Not kidding. Maybe a couple of weeks on vacation traveling but that is it. Sota is way behind schedule because of this dumb virus. My table is probably 3 months out. I think I'm going to have a seizure. Maybe if I get my wife to hide all the records it won't be so bad.

Audio2design, did you read the marketing behind the Hallograms? Go to the web site. It will make your day :)

It is wonderful how the mythology spreads. Humans will say almost anything that suits their purpose. You'd think every bodies electronic gear is blowing up and catching fire. I just does not happen very often. The only time I ever got close was with a power tool and it was my fault. Power tools do not have fuses. They must be regulated differently. They are certainly subjected to way more abuse. 
I worked in Audio for 15 years selling and installing equipment. I saw maybe three dead pieces. No fires. Nothing dramatic just dead. A bunch of bad switches in cheaper gear. No transformer failures. A lot of blown speakers.

@tomic601 , are you OK?

There is a question here that is important. 
Masking is a concept we use in medicine daily. You can provide meaningful pain relief by creating a stimulus that is louder than the pain. If you don't want to hear your car rattle turn up the radio. The simple Band aide is such a technique. Put one on a cut and within a minute the pain goes away. When I give 4-6 year old's injections I have mom stand in front of them and they give her a big hug (looking in the other direction)
They never feel the shot. They always ask if it is over yet. Yup, then a giggle and big smiles. With adults you just squeeze the skin firmly and they don't feel it. There are numerous other examples.

So in audio we have these "tweaks" that in many instances have no reasonable explanation for effectiveness. Anyone with a science oriented education will say right away that they are bogus. Then some people swear on improvements which they are sure they are hearing when in reality if I did a blinded experiment they would not hear anything. But, is this any different than masking. Masking is real pain relief. Are imagined sonic improvements as good as real ones? Much of it is harmless enough. Some manufacturers come by it honestly. Others blatantly lie and create misleading and sometimes stupidly silly marketing to sell the product as in the case of the Hallographs. So, it is not only a quality argument but an ethical one also.
All of us are subject to virtually the same physiology. Education, training are the major difference. The training an electrical engineer gets is way different than what a lawyer gets and one will know virtually nothing about what the other does. Some of us will not hear an improvement because our training will not allow it. Others are more suggestible.  What I find most interesting is that you hardly ever hear of a tweak making things worse. The odds favor that a certain percentage should make things worse but the way we procure and utilize them always favors an improvement and that is purely psychological. 

@eudisam, I hate to burst your bubble eudisam, it is all psychoacoustics. There is a connection between your eye and your ears. What you see changes what you hear. If you do not believe this, tonight play one of your favorite songs listening as carefully as you can. Now play it again but turn the lights off. Best tweak going! The more complicated the music the better this works. Any symphonic work will do. My favorite is Weather Report's Nubian Sundance on Mysterious Travelers. How's about a tweak you actually saves money! The Hallographs only make things sound better because of the way that they look. That is the scam. Sell them if you can. If not use them as towel racks, the hipsters will think you are cool. Steep price to pay but hey, we all make mistakes now and then. The Transcritors Vestigial tone arm I bought once was just as pathetic.  

@lewm , Lightning (excuse my spelling) did strike my house in 2003 or so. Fuses saved nothing. Every piece of equipment that blew had fuses that did not blow and that would be, the telephone system, the burglar alarm system, two garage door ops, two preamps, and every computer in the house that was plugged in. The power amps that had bypassed fuses all did just fine. None of my breakers tripped. This episode is the basis of my opinion and the insurance adjuster backed this up wholeheartedly. The equipment protects the fuses, the fuses protect the house.
Power transformers are expensive and maybe very small ones might be delicate but big expensive ones are just huge slo-blo fuses. Maybe if you dumped 12 volts DC into one for 15-20 you might be able to blow one. You would certainly get it smoking. Transformers are not in the habit of seeing DC. I have never seen a transformer blow. I suspect if one did it would be more likely a manufacturing defect that took it out. 
The job of the circuit breaker is not to protect equipment it is to prevent fires. By the time a single piece of equipment is over drawing a circuit which is rated for it the damage to that equipment is carved in stone. Occasionally you get lucky and get a bad breaker. I am talking only about line fuses, not speaker fuses. None of my speakers have ever had them but if they did I would bypass them also. 
IMHE, which admittedly is shallow, electronic equipment failures tend to result in open circuits, not short circuits. The most common causes of electrical fires are here https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/firefightingtools/articles/5-common-causes-of-electrical-f...
In modern houses it is now rare to see faulty in wall wiring cause trouble unless someone drove a nail through it or played around with an outlet. Modern breakers are also very good. Several years ago I f---ed up and shorted out a power tool doing a repair on it. The very instant I plugged it in the breaker tripped.