What is the Silliest Accessory You Have Ever Seen.

"Btw, whatever happened to Geof Kait?"

Don't ask...he might come back!  

I haven't tried these so can't comment. But you can DIY with PVC pipes filled with sand on a wood stand. Cheap.

I think a big factor is the directivity of your speakers in mid and high frequencies and how close they are to your side walls. Place near the first reflection point, angled so the three elements present a reflective diffusion the those frequencies...is not so ridiculous.

FWIW, I've seen similar devices prescribed by Rives when they were in biz, and they weren't about selling these but about professionally creating a good listening environment. 

"He has never ridiculed or insulted anyone, but has always shown kindness and understanding."

Never say never.

"Btw, whatever happened to Geof Kait?"

Little clock continues ticking.

There are a tremendous number o these things that actually degrade the sound a little or a lot and when they do change the sound make sure it is musically meaningful not just a change you have to keep an open mind and listen but some are just plain money makers aka no good.

Don't ask...he might come back!  

He won't. I made sure of that.

Is this one of those Beetlejuice things?
Geoff Kait, Geoff Kait, Geoff ....

Don't ask...he might come back!  

He won't. I made sure of that.

Very interesting - care to share your technique?

And is it applicable to other miller-based, or rather, carbon-based life forms?

Asking for a friend...

Geoff has recent postings over at AA, so he is ok. I know why he stopped posting here, and sorry Miller, you can't put that feather in your cap. I'd enjoy his stopping in .. but, too much of a good thing? HA

@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. 

@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.  

$30,000 speaker cables that you must elevate off the floor .5,000 posts

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. 

Well, in that list of Stereo Times 2020 or so most desired components, I came across $2,844 “fuses”...

Seems like an excellent candidate.

Dear Mijo, In my original post on your disdain for fuses, I acknowledged that the little fuse screwed into the back of your equipment indeed cannot prevent damage due to a lightning strike. However, lightning strikes are rare as..... getting struck by lightning. There are innumerable equipment glitches that can kill you, take out a power transformer, destroy your circuitry without killing you, that fuses DO protect us from. Your knowledge of electronics is sketchy. DC voltage is the least of your worries with a transformer. For example, in any conventional power supply, capacitors are used as filters to remove AC ripple from the DC output of the supply. Each of these filter capacitors is connected between the DC voltage rail and ground. If one of those capacitors fails such that it shorts the path to ground, then the transformer sees a sudden huge current demand. (Due in part to the fact that there is suddenly zero or very much lower than normal resistance between the high voltage rail and ground, which means the transformer is asked to pass infinite current momentarily.  In that case, the little fuse acts much faster than the circuit breaker. This is Ohm's Law in action.) Your realization that that has occurred might only be smoke rising from your kaput power transformer. Or worse yet, those capacitors may put voltage and current on the chassis, such that when you touch a conductive knob, you receive a possibly deadly shock. (In an unrelated episode, I once saw a woman die when she touched a metal control on a frozen yogurt machine, due to cardiac arrest.  This was in the NIH cafeteria, yet.) Stuff can also catch fire. Similar phenomena can occur if a solid state device or tube fails such that there is a hot to ground short within its body. Fuses are there for a reason, and where there is a fuse, it should be rated for the current recommended and left in place. Knock yourself out with boutique fuses, if you like, but do use fuses.

Lewm, based on what you posted I would say your knowledge of electronics is sketchy too. It's all relative. Caps don't fail truly hard short, typically partial short and the transformer ends out blowing out the short (and the cap).  The yoghurt machine had a fuse. The metal control would also have been chassis grounded if assembled properly so you are saying it had a faulty ground connection AND an internal wiring failure.  More likely conductive liquid buildup but that's a guess.

"The equipment winds up protecting the fuse!"

Taking into consideration quick depreciation of used audio equipment and availability of more and more expensive fuses, this may be good thing.

What I find most interesting is that you hardly ever hear of a tweak making things worse.

After i just learned the fact that it is the visibility of my devices that change my perception of sound, in no way their shape or acoustical content properties, after reading that, i read that what prove my failure or treachery is that i dont speak about device making things worse...On the contrary: for example put a piece of shungite on the amplifier it will compress the sound.... Anyway....


I cannot express how ridiculous are the contorsions of someone willing to dismiss something he dont want to experiment or understand....


Sorry i never has been the first sheep in the line,  buy your costly device warrented to be the best by the market and dont bother with acoustic, your equalizer will solve all...

"...your equalizer will solve all..."

Finally words of wisdom.

I recommend Soundraftsmen. They are even cheaper than Hallograph.

soundcraftsmen products for sale | eBay

«Wisdom is on a scale, lettuce are not star»-Anonymus Smith

By the way i NEVER recommended to buy the hallograph, that was not my point at all...

My best to you....

Audio2design, You are absolutely correct about the frozen yoghurt incident that I witnessed.  The fuse probably had nothing to do with it. I realized this about 15 minutes after posting, but at that time I was out of the house doing something more useful than this, so until now I hadn't the chance to make corrections.  As to the capacitor business, it is fair to say that capacitors "hardly ever" short to ground.  But once in a while they or other devices in a circuit do short to ground.  I've built a few amplifiers and done some extensive mods to both preamplifiers and amplifiers, over about a 25 year period, just as a hobbyist, and I have experienced at least two capacitor failures of that type. So, do you want to use these tidbits to disagree with me that fuses built into audio electronic devices should be left in place to do their job? Did you want to agree with Mijostyn who relies upon his circuit breakers to protect his gear? If so, there we part company.  If not, what is your point?  If your goal was to point out my error in the way I told the story of the yoghurt machine, you win.  I goofed. However, I stand by the main message of my post. 


I am not an EE and never claimed to be.  All of my electronics knowledge has been acquired from books and from conversations with EEs and their ilk.  Plus I have a solid grounding in basic physics, math, and chemistry from college, medical school, graduate school, and from 40 years as a biological scientist.

I went to school once. Tom

"I went to school once. Tom"

I am twice as educated. It was boring both times.

I went to school once. Tom

The next day I didn't go back.

Thanks the article is good and fun to read....

But one fact is lacking and it is the essential one....

I proved for myself without buying anything except low cost ordinary materials or peanuts cost cheap electronics piece i modified, or device i create in my listening experiments for the last 2 years, i proved for myself and for those who will dare to try, that against ALL the conditioning market influence on the gullible consumers, it is possible to create an Hi-FI experience at peanuts costs...Yes at peanuts cost....

Then the real debate is not about the faith in tweaks, in general costly, OR the reason of science...

The real debate is between the useless throwing of money from people who buy very high cost products (tweaks or piece of gear) and try to upgrade them after that WITHOUT never knowing HOW to make them work at their effective real potential working peak quality...No single tweak at any cost can be by itself only the solution... NONE.

I called that treating and controlling the mechanical and electrical and acoustical dimensions of any audio system...


The main question then is not if there is a rational explanation or not, about a single tweak we must or must not buy....Not at all....Perhaps there is an explanation and sometimes there is one but sometimes not at the moment....Anyway....

The main question is how do i learn to listen and create at very low cost or at no cost, a Top Hi-FI experience ? All audiophile are not millionnaire....The question can be ask? but i know very well that asking this question will attract the mockery of those who own very costly product indeed....Anyway...

If i could do it, anybody can....And it is not necessary to do the same thing than me , it is not all people who can use for only their own a family room fill with inesthetical devices...But being inspired is good....This is my point

No one need a science book to know that any audio system vibrate and resonate, is immersed in a noisy electrical house grid, and that the best speakers cannot sound good in a bad acoustical room....How could i take care of that? No single tweak even costly will do the job.... It is then better to create your own device when possible....

Myself i sell nothing, i sell hope in your own creativity, and i sell reason, the rational thinking that said it is useless to throw too much money because of our faith in reviewers and audio market....

How to embed a system? This is the RATIONAL question to ask.... Not: where could i buy the best ready made immediate costly solution ? Save if you crumble under your money... Then you can mock me, some did....😊


Then interesting article but almost totally beside the main point.....

Like usual binary alternative:

shaman versus scientist, digital versus analog, faith versus reason, tweak versus non tweak, and all these misleading set of alternatives veil and mask the real question.....


 

Try increasing the laminar flow in your room .. it and the contents begin to disappear. Best room conditioning I ever did. Tom
 

Helium beats even the Hallographs.

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?

I do my best to stay "in the middle" when it come to audiophool gear-open mind until I try something myself.

So, you  already have a nice table/cart/phonostage and this thing will make it even "better"?
http://audiomachina.com/v8/

$400 headshell weight- anodized titanium plate, infused with silicone..... uh okaaayy?
I suppose it would look nicer than a penny w/blue tack.

 

Mijo- thanks for asking - doing well :-) actually worked a couple of days last week with really smart , engaged people - their software runs on 3 QPU, soon to be 5. Neat intersection of Quantum Physics and Engineering:-)

I spend less time and energy here, more on music, etc....

indeed, God does play Dice with the universe in strange and unknown ways...1, 0, or both :-)

Perhaps a different perspective? Certainly there is no shortage of items claiming to improve listening experience, almost every audio component makes that claim. To what extent the product succeeds in that is VERY subjective. For those with unlimited budgets cost is no concern, but for a very substantial portion of audio enthusiasts they can not afford to purchase a product that has no basis in fact and MISLEADS them to believe that the product will produce a significant improvement in their listening experience, but has little potential to do so.

So, you already have a nice table/cart/phonostage and this thing will make it even "better"?
http://audiomachina.com/v8/

I am a little worried about anything whose "How it works" includes...

"...Cantilever Bending Beams..."

I wonder if they would make one for Ortofon Concorde.

Selling a product and giving explanations that perhaps make no sense at the end is one thing that can be itself explained, especially if the sellers know that his product work but dont know exactly why and how...

It is not simple to understand?

BUT having always an answer always the same, to mock all that is out of our expectations window is another matter...

Between these 2 attitudes guess which is the more silly?

😊


Being myself ingenuous perhaps i dont see the world full of thiefs and liars, i think that we must carefully experiment and carefully test  people and products....Denigrating without knowing pays no dividends....

Anyway i buy nothing, i try to replicate....


«Science is not a pillow» -Anonymus Smith

"I believe the development of XTAC to be the single most revolutionary advance in loudspeaker fidelity, not only in my lifetime, but quite possibly in the entire history of the loudspeaker.” 

-Dr. Karl Schuemann, Designer"

If nothing else, it is an understatement of sorts.

Where is kenjit when we need his opinion?

AudioMachina » XTAC

Removes interfering energy and reduces a polarity of shear but does not reduce interference that travels between the record lip and the paper label..back and forth in and on the vinyl. That cannot be removed by this method. The stylus will see that traveling resonance before this device does its work.

I wonder if they tried c360 or c385 brass as they are lower in speed than titanium and are more elastic.
Very creative concept..like a tuning fork. Tom

@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.

I have a loaner Sapphire back from
upgrades from Donna w FT-3 and Hana ML

u would need to drive to Seattle to get it....

nobody understands Quantum

@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? 

6moons audio reviews: Shakti innovations Hallograph

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.  

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.

It is not so funny for me to analyse your total lack of goodfaith here...

You never experimented with this product, nevermind the fact that the marketing explanation is not able to explain correctly the product... It is common that unusual audio product are not always very well explained for all their effects....

The main point is your total lack of experience with it, then you affirmation is more fraudulent than a bad or fabricated explanation about a product which anyway probably works to some degree if i read reviews for the last 10 or 15 years ....You CANNOT know...This is the point... Only those who try know...

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.

But here it is funny... 😊

Do yo have been lectured in logic at school? minimalistic logical argumentation course?

If yes, you have been a flawed student or perhaps with an atrocius professor...

Come and see:

A-" Follow this fellow.."
B- " If he keeps them in his system. If he does then he is very susceptible to psychoacoustics "( a kind of placebo effect)
C- "If he does not, then he is FOS."(for sale)

Your conclusion is remarkable with this perfect balance between the bad faith of your reasoning and the vicious circle in it... It is difficult to not laugh with pity for you....

D- "You just can’t win."

You summarize yourself your bad faith in the last sentence.... effectively nobody can argue and win an argument with someone who is of total bad faith....You presented a vicious circle like an argument, and instead of plainly saying your "truth" you arrange it for looking convincing to whom?

You have decided that save for your 10,000 bucks equalizer ANYTHING else is placebo ?

It is pitiful....Sorry....

You are more credulous than those you criticized, you need a warrent from a branded named engineered design written on a costly device like an equalizer to trust your own ears, if not, it is placebo effect for all of us in all experience with any unusual product or tweaks.... And for sure i guess you greatly fear placebo effect indeed ? No?


My God! Why bashing all threads about any tweak?

Do you lack of self confidence so much?

"...a warrent from a branded named engineered device written on a costly device like an equalizer..."

Not that costly...

soundcraftsmen equalizer | eBay

I dont think that this is his equalizer... It is a cheap one without offending you.. But that can work marvellously, the price of an audio product is not linearly linked to his efficiency.....But anyway....That dont invalidate my point....


By the way i just validate in the last hours the effectiveness of another product myself "argent room lens"...

a kind of multicellular Helmholtz resonators....This product was just bashed by another fellow of the same species tonight who never try one....😁


I used discarded plumber tubular pipes i have already in my cellar, 30 minute of works and i verify the effectiveness in acoustic of this product in my room...I was not surprized because i have already used some resonators with success... But these pipes with another proportion and dimension than ly past resonators work even better...I will refine all that with experiments in the next weeks...

I decided to do that on the spot after reading another stupid rejection or bashing WITHOUT any logical motivation and no experience with the product like this one today...

I decide to do that to close some mouth....like the one in my last post....

No society can work without good faith in our fellow neighbours....Bashing, lying, conjuring children plots is not the way....

@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. 

mahgister,

I somehow missed who has what kind of equalizer and who "he" actually is.

Once upon a time, Soundcraftsmen was "the equalizer" to have. I was simply hinting at that.

"Soundcraftsmen equalizers and their compact "brick" style power amplifiers gained a sizable following among audiophiles during the 1970s and 1980s."

Soundcraftsmen - Wikipedia

Going back to Hallographs, did anyone else think that room in the second (large) picture looks like a funeral home?

6moons audio reviews: Shakti innovations Hallograph

Set up to kill the spirits of bad sound with out damping the good spirits of the heart and soul. Tom