Why is the snake oil topic closed?

Anyone who wants to make a quick easy buck in this industry can try their hand at the following time honoured practice. Get a deal with a manufacturer of cheap electrical cables to supply you with a variety of cables. You can specify various design criteria, braided, coloured sleeving, different termination etc etc. 

Now you can sell them at whatever markup you fancy as long as you have a USP (unique selling point - marketing jargon) for each one.

All audio products sound different no doubt, but the only ones most humans can easily distinguish between are loudspeakers. You can also include Tube amps and turntables/ cartridges if you love analogue - who doesn't?). You can pay more for build quality, aesthetics and features and if you wish but don't kid yourself you're getting significantly better sound.

It seems criminal that some engineers are working extremely hard to further standards in these areas, often with little financial gain, whilst purveyors of snake oil rake in easy money.

Yet this is the way of the world and its only fair that newcomers to audio get a fair warning. Things were even worse before the age of the internet. Or were they? I guess on balance they were because in those days there was very little information outside magazines, a whole different world of hurt.

How many of us eventually leave this hobby due to disgust at being swindled? 

<jl35> and that's before you get to amps, DACs, CD players, and of course, cables.

What a state audio is in. Even hi-rez remastered downloads are often crushed and squeezed to death.

No wonder many stick to vinyl / tube systems and have done with it. These debates are important, but its for the readers to see where the vested interests may lie.

Audio can be simple, really. Something like Recording, Room and placement (unless its Headphones), Loudspeaker,  and the rest you can take your pick.

<geoffkait> I have always wondered is it only me who thinks why Einstein was/is so hated by certain people, because he was a jew... Or Jesus Christ because he was/is a humanist, in the first place ...

No one likes a smartarse. Here in the UK Newton is almost totally ignored by the education system, as are Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, etc.

There's a point where the rest of us get left behind and then naturally lose interest. With someone like Einstein that happens so easily. And then there's Quantum Physics.

Ultimately we can blame the dealers for selling snake oil and also ourselves for being so gullible. Human beings do seem to be pretty obstinate/defensive in their beliefs. Debunking combined with the absence of any supporting evidence still makes no difference to what they believe.
Logical, we are not.

We cannot move forwards without science, otherwise we could call in a Witch Doctor to cast a magic spell on our Hi-Fi. It'd probably work wonders for some....

Its a good idea to separate measurable and non measurable tweaks. I'm pretty certain that equipment isolation is fast becoming practice and will soon lose its tweak status.

And then there's unnecessary engineering, eg  where should you stop at, 20kHz, 40kHz, or 80kHz or not at all? 

The only way forward left is through improvements in microphone, headphone and loudspeaker technology. Distortion figures for amps, CD players, DACs, cables etc are already vanishingly low. Even transducers are pretty good outside the bass region which naturally enough imparts greater stresses on equipment materials and structure. Loudspeakers also have still to get rid of the crossover and remain full bandwidth.

As for recording quality, its out there but perhaps just not in the genres we all listen to. If it becomes profitable for the industry to do so then we might see a huge jump in recording quality. If. 

After all, if they could do it in the 1950s, then they should be able to do it far better now that 'bouncing down' in digital is infinitely less harmful. I'm guessing that the consumers back in the early days wanted better sound and the industry wanted to give it to them.

After Beatlemania, everything changed. Or maybe it was already going that way already. The era of the voice was coming to an end. Bing, Louis, Frank, Nat, Judy, Doris, Peggy etc were all on the way out. Their recordings will remain forever.