Because debunking certain aftermarket accessories might affect Audiogon’s revenue? I don’t get it. There were points to be made. It was just getting "good."
It’s nice that you honor science and engineering but surely you must be aware that if nothing else science is full of surprises.BIG SURPRISES! You know, black holes, gravity waves, which by the day, could not (repeat not) be measured for decades and decades.
You don’t know what you don’t know. You may not be familiar the famous expression, anyone who claims to know how quantum physics works probably doesn’t.
... as a serious audio fan that honors science and
engineering, it can be kind of embarrassing to be associated with some
of the more ridiculous tweaks that some support here ...
You post here anonymously, and yet are embarrassed by the anonymous posts of others? That really doesn't make any sense, especially from someone who says they honor "science."
Well for one thing as a serious audio fan that honors science and engineering, it can be kind of embarrassing to be associated with some of the more ridiculous tweaks that some support here.
Why would you feel embarrassed if you don't believe it? You are not associated with it at that point. I find many of the tweaks don't have efficacy, but personally feel no connection to them what so ever. I enjoy high end home audio, period. You can only be embarrassed or offended if you allow yourself to be. Don't worry about some anonymous person on the internet. There are many more important things in life to be worried about.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.
You don’t even know enough to realize just how little you know.
"Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."
Manipulating societies is driven by elevating and empowering the former outside of their cognition that it is being done, and denigrating and degrading the latter ...via similar manipulations... and most importantly...having the former (the enabled illiterate) chase after and defeat the latter. Pure Machiavellian tactics. Practically page one chapter one of the Machiavellian guide to controlling populations.
The scenarios encountered on forums like this show the door is always wide open to use this lever, even if the people be aware of it. Cognitive dissonance driven by desires, fears, and so on. The harder a body is driven the stronger the ego's grip. After all, that's it's job..which is to preserve the body above all else. Thought and cognition that is unedited can happen in the calm times. So control is about disallowing rest and calm times. Which some of you, if you noticed, in the past decade or so... there have been probably dozens of books now that try to get that point through to the people. But..cognitive dissonance intercedes...
I'm just a guy who loves music and audio gear and believes that common sense should prevail in determining which after-market accessories should or should not make a difference or at least which are worth pursuing. There could be a civil, interesting conversation had about this, even if it was had before.
Instead, what you have here, I am sorry to say, are a few other voices like my own drowned out by some pretty odd/extreme folks on both sides of the debate.
Now I do understand why Audiogon closed the prior thread. Unfortunately it's a little like closing the picnic basket after the ants have already gotten in.
This is a fair question. Indeed, I think many of the self-proclaimed objectivists here suffer from this effect. But the real problem here seems to be the seething intolerance and animosity that some posters express, as reflected in the many deleted posts in this thread.
"I’m just a guy who loves music and audio gear and believes that common sense should prevail in determining which after-market accessories should or should not make a difference or at least which are worth pursuing. There could be a civil, interesting conversation had about this, even if it was had before.
Instead, what you have here, I am sorry to say, are a few other voices like my own drowned out by some pretty odd/extreme folks on both sides of the debate.
Now I do understand why Audiogon closed the prior thread. Unfortunately it’s a little like closing the picnic basket after the ants have already gotten in."
I’m waiting for some kind of argument why something must make sense or must be measurable. I’m not interested in if you’re a nice guy or not. Or if you’re a reasonable fellow. That’s beside the point. Black holes don't make sense. Quarks don't make sense. Quantum mechanics doesn't make sense. Lots of things in this hobby don't make sense. That vinyl can sound better than CDs. Vibration isolation. Especially for solid state electronics. That fuses are directional. That speaker cables are directional. Mpingo discs. The Green Pen. The Schumann frequency generator.
I’m being civil. Stop pretending this conversation isn’t civil. And stop pretending anyone who disagrees with you is some sort of extremist or lunatic. If you don't wish to discuss the subject, the one YOU started, I'll understand. 😀
Huh? Quantum mechanics and black holes don't make sense. It all makes total sense to me but I dont go in to the detail of these things with preconceived notions. Einstein made that mistake.
Twas’ a purposely opaque statement. Pythonesque in intent.
So we can have robots, ie people just like us--which is socially and culturally..a dead thing. No differences = death, dead things.
Or suffer from the barbs and intrusion of individuals. Suffer the differences and be alive. So one cannot recognize the shape of even one thing ...or even ’be’... without the existence of fundamental differences. Differential is the fundamental of reality.
Between the goalposts of identical vs chaos, humans meander in their lost little ways, seeking perfections in unity if they are fools, and happy mediums of not quite manageable difference..if they understand some of the issues at hand. Being comfortable is loosely equatable to being dead. Too much chaos disallows coherence, so that’s the same as dead. Dead in -and as- a sea of noise.
Somewhere in the middle is the road of life.
Oh yes, critically, exploitation requires, on mass levels..it requires commodification of the target. Commodities are dead things, unchanging things. Manageable things. Or it can be achieved via injection of Chaos. Tie humanity to one goalpost or the other. In each motion they become commoditized and manageable. Keeping people out of the middle and out of reasoning- is key.
shadorne Huh? Quantum mechanics and black holes don’t make sense. It all makes total sense to me but I dont go in to the detail of these things with preconceived notions. Einstein made that mistake.
>>>>>>A great man once said anyone who thinks he understands quantum mechanics probably doesn’t. So black holes make total sense to you but just not audio tweaks, is that what you would have us believe? You don't have preconceived notions about hyper physics, only about audiophile tweaks.
I think it would help if the topic called "snake oil" won't be taken so seriously! ;-) ...Seriously!!! It is just snake oil, so by definition it should be fun talk, not name-calling and endless accusations. Art Dudley (of Listener, now one of the seniors at Stereophile) said once that he would have to stick a few feathers up his, ahem, hat, while showing the Mping dots to his beighbors. If Shakti Stone sitting on top of my Nap250 makes me smile and prevents the pile of jewel cases from scratching my beloved amp, why would I substitute it for the ugly Yellow Pages? Shakti looks nice, and according to my wife "kills Naim sound"... so there is some effect according to non-blind test! :-) I do not see myself accusing Ferrari driver stuck next to me in LA traffic of stupidity, Ferrari makes him happy. $1000 a pop Shunyata power cords make me happy,... an unpleasant and far more costly visit to Newman Markus or Theodore makes my Boss happy. I do not see myself (well, do not dare!) calling her Stupid! Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, interferometers and whatnot will show nothing special about $$$ dress, so what? Those "ashamed of themselves" by being here, move onto McIntosh, or Linn, Krell, Harman/Kardon forums. All the gizmos are sold with some return policy, I do not see many posts here saying that folks tried Nordost Valhalla and then ran back to Audio Advisor or RadioShack-on-line. Why is that? reminds me of "scientific" discussion with Olympus sales rep about my stupidity of using Zeiss and Leica microscopes in my research. It turned as ugly as some posts on Snake Oil. Is there an agenda on both sides??? Preaching McDonalds (dont get me wrong, totally respectful establishment) to Audiogon crowd? Why???
BTW (returning to the beginning of this lengthy rambling), what are you talking about, what is the definition of SnakeOil as opposed to Tweaks? Sounds the same to me as "all TT/amps/CD players sound the same" from prev generation of 'Goners ;-)
Seriously!!! It is just snake oil, so by definition it should be fun talk
It's all good for an individual to play around with these snake oil products in private, just keep it to themselves. But when they come on here and tell the "gullible" that it's a fix for whatever problems they have. Then tell the "gullible" to spend their hard earned money on them, that's when it becomes objectionable. Especially when it makes bags of money for the voodoo'ist peddler who's selling it.
Patronizing A-Goners (anybody else out here?) by being "gullible" is what makes this thread so unpleasant. So I will ask again, what is the agenda on "my" side of all this? Should we all repent and buy Bose Wave Radio?
We have no idea how sexual minorities or sex-disoriented kids happen, we do not even know all the species of animals we are exterminating on this Planet. But, Hey, we landed on the Moon and we detect black holes colliding out There, we know EVERYTHING!!! All amps sound the same, I know...... first thing tomorrow morning I will list all my CDs and LPs on Discogs and start hi-rez download spree, is this a "certified" move? Naim Audio claims that each one of their CD drives gets $whatever worth of special paint. Looks and feels real special to me. Is this a Snake Oil?? who to believe? Big buck companies like Bose? Anonymous WWW posts? My own ears? Suffer thru double-blind / ABX tests each time I am buying new iPhone? What a poor boy should do? (Genesis, Lamb Lies Down...) Come on, Cheer Up!!! :-) if folks spend $10k on Nordost, do Not talk to me about "hard-earned money"... should they spend $$$ on yet another Lamborghini instead? Or get another mistress? Point a dimwit like myself where and how to waste my extra cash!
"Rub Snake oil onto my..." Which Oil? I have not upgraded my stereo in 7+ years, so the problems I am dealing with now are not related to Audio in any way whatsoever. But this thread, as its predecessor, is turning UGLY, and your comment proves (to me) the point. I am out of here, shall spend the rest of the evening with Stereo2Go folks, among civilized audiophiles. Good Bye!
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?
Let’s see, maybe we should establish what it is all of these people are complaining so bitterly about. I’m sure there must be some specific things that really get under their skin. Or is it just a general paranoia? Who knows? My guess is there's gotta be something pretty reprehensible, disturbing, out there to produce so much angst and anger. Sure, everyone gets a little upset over super high cable costs and aftermarket fuse prices have really gone through the roof. But, geez, there must be some other things out there that are really bothering people. Maybe some uh, criminal things. Hmmmm, I wonder what they could be....
So, without further ado, your humble scribe, and a prime suspect in the hunt for purveyors of dreaded Oil of the Snake, presents The List. In no particular order, the list of really, really obvious and noxious Snake Oil products. By the way, PWB Electronics of Leeds England, another primary Purveyor of Oil of the Snake, (Peter Belt RIP) is still going strong, cranking out gallons of the stuff as we speak.
The List. These are the ones you really have to be careful about. The ones with the snake 🐍 next to them are from Machina Dynamica (blush).
THE LIST Mpingo disc Shakti Stone The Green Pen (Audio Prism) Red ’x Pen Cream Electret Silver Rainbow Foil The Teleportation Tweak 🐍 The Clever Little Clock 🐍 The Quantum Clip Franck Tchang’s Acoustic Resonators Original Cable Jacket SteinMusic Harmonizer Brilliant Pebbles 🐍 The Intelligent Chip Super Intelligent Chip 🐍 Golden Sound’s Ultra Tweeters Flying Saucers for Windows 🐍 Morphic Message Foil Shakti Halographs Schumann frequency generator (Acoustic Revive) Xtreme AV Tourmaline Gun The Photos in the Freezer Tweak (courtesy PWB Electronics) C-37 Lacquer VPI Brick Marigo VTS Dots
HONORABLE MENTION Tip Toes, aluminum cones, the first Audio Technical wet playing system for vinyl records Herbies Audio Lab Tube Dampers Iconoclast ionizer from Mapleshade Auric Illuminator CD treatment, one of the first Extreme AV Liquid Resolution CD treatment Audio Deske CD Improver (edge beveler) Extreme AV Quicksilver Gold contact enhancer Nimbus Sub Hertz 6 DOF Isolation Platform 🐍
<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.
"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. "
+1 That is so true. What money gets wasted on snake oil never reaches the engineering design team that could possibly make the next significant real and measurable advance in audio. Given enough time, that entire engineering design team gets fired and the company outsources an industrial artist to design a cool looking face plate or a orders a thicker OEM cable jacket and a sales director is hired to attend audio shows and issue magazine ads touting miraculous new bogus scientific discoveries of effects going beyond what anyone has heard. Profits go up and costs go down but progress in audio is now ONLY in aesthetics (driven by the sales director and an outsourced industrial artist.)
The snakes are certainly quite brazen these days. I wonder why? Do people find it entertaining? Brash, snarky brazen snakes > the sneaky more secretive ones? Brash is in these days I hear.
Let’s hear it for the poor downtrodden engineers. Working in obscurity, unheralded, overworked, and underpaid, working in low light, striving to find the perfect formula to make the big bosses some real money. Not some piddling amount. The audio industry is analogous to the car industry. "Where do we go from here? We got the four valves per cylinder. We got the forward looking radar. We got the airbags all around. We got the lithium battery. What else can we possibly come up with to sell these gosh darn cars??" Equipment upgraditis. Sound familiar?
Let's put it this way: It's an art to sell moving out leftover portable cd-players and cassette players as hot-roded ones for $169 -- pure profit with nearly $0 invested and so is bag of rocks! That deserves nothing more than respect weather it's snake oil or not. It exists bcoz of ones who buys. As soon as there will be only rational freaks like me where each item has to be worth every penny or more -- it's badaboom over. Nevertheless, I've been always respecting players being player myself. Why steal and/or violently kill when you can sit down and out-play the fool? I have a right to bluf about my hand and you have a right to call raise or fold and that's all to it. __________________________________________________________
Selling mandatory health insurance, prescribing unnecessary life-time meds is substantially larger snake oil that is to say. It clearly looks like our Health Industry 'trains' medical students to deliver this bs to us so we 'consume' it and go for it! For those behind it I have nothing but an array of loud confrontations including swear. They are criminals period!
Home audio snake oil is fine and it does not destroy anyone's dignity or life style.
+1 czarivey . certainly if someone wants to be a consumer advocate, the insurance industry and big pharma seems a much more productive arena than high end audio products...
Albert Einstein is the most intelligent and human individual walked the Earth, with Stephen Hawking, Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton close behind. They are scientist and they seriously believe in rational and scientific approach to things, natural sciences to be exact. Everything else is voodoo. And so is the all pseudo stuff of today´s society, including audio. Pseudo/believers´ audio existed already thirty years ago IME. For me as a novice it was quite a hard road to ignore all the hype and BS that was going on in audio, and "best music" as well. Well, when many "experts" started to rave about "CD´s superiority", some even about its perfection in sound quality, I learned my first lesson of sneak oil. Never trust other´s fantasies, and never looked back.
People who dis natural sciences in anyway are just mourons. Anyone who even tries to belittle Einstein´s work both as a human being and a scientist is good for nothing, honestly just another damn nazi or commie :^) All isms are snake oil.
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 ...
And yes, this is just another stoopid thread as many have said. Period.
Zen … and the Art of Debunkery Or, How to Debunk Just About Anything
“While informed skepticism is an integral part of the scientific method, professional debunkers — often called ‘kneejerk skeptics’ — tend to be skeptics in name only, and to speak with little or no authority on the subject matter of which they are so passionately skeptical.” – Dan Drasin, author of Zen and the Art of Debunkery
Kneejerk skeptics. Good one! Pseudo skeptics react to words, not the meaning behind the words. Quantum mechanics. Quantum Teleportation. Information field. Mind-matter interaction. Electromagnetism. Photon. Graphene. This thread is going along in typical herky jerky fashion.
+1 czarivey . certainly if someone wants to be a consumer advocate, the insurance industry and big pharma seems a much more productive arena than high end audio products...Enter your text ...
I realize you believe you’re on some kind of mission. But Im on a bigger mission. A much bigger mission. In fact, I’m financing YOUR mission.
<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.
I’d opine it’s probably the opposite of gullibility. If naysayers were gullible they’d be buying up the snake oil in barrels. Instead of gullible shall we say superstitious? Maybe overly suspicious. Even Einstein could be overly suspicious. As in his rather stubborn inability to wrap his mind around quantum mechanics or black holes.
I'd like to chime back in here. I think what is appropriate or inappropriate relative to forum participation in certain threads depends on the context and the purpose of the thread:
(1) When someone asks the community for advice on the best power cord, fuse, interconnect, or other tweak, they are not asking for a naysayer to jump in and troll the thread by offering a link to Amazon to buy $1 fuses and a marker to make it blue or red. They are asking a question of those who believe in the efficacy of the product to share their experiences, and it is the naysayer who jumps in and does so that is the one trolling that thread. If stated in a civil fashion like "as I have said before I do not believe this tweak to be effective" that would not be as insulting as some of the responses I have observed.
(2) When someone poses a question about whether a given tweak is effective or not, they open the forum for believers on both sides to lay out civil thoughts and arguments about the product; but not for people to start attacking each other personally or trolling the thread by posting elusive, sarcastic, or otherwise non-responsive posts. Just stick to the debate in a civil fashion.
(3) When someone posts an attack on the tweakers or the naysayers, like the original snake oil post that was shut down, that I unwittingly revived with my OP, they are opening the floor to whatever is said on both sides. That said, I do not feel it is civil to post such an attack. My take is ClearThink's post was a diatribe that invited the vitriol that appeared on both sides and it became not only counter-productive but downright uninviting except to those who love to fight. And fighting is not the purpose of forums - it is for the exchange of information and ideas, and sometimes entertainment (but not fighting).
(4) When a tweaker posts to promote a tweak product, they open the floor for it to be debunked. This is not the same as asking for someone's advice on the best version of X, Y, or Z or even a question as to its efficacy. Rather if the intent of the post is to promote a tweaky product, the floor is open both to support the product or to debunk it, and you have to be willing to live with both. But let's stay civil.
(5) There are those who obviously have a financial interest in the matter of these debates. I think those posters should best think carefully about what they post as the financial interest strains credibility. I would also suggest that those with a financial interest should not be seen as posting sarcastic or otherwise chaos creating posts simply to misdirect the debate so as to make it more difficult for a civil discourse on the topic to proceed. I see that going on at times as well, similarly to how Mr. Trump's tweets are intended to enflame people in order to sidetrack what might otherwise be a reasonable discourse or fair debate.
I propose these thoughts to try to parse out what is fair game in different contexts. Reasonable minds may differ.
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