Why is the snake oil topic closed?

@greg22lz  +1

Ha, buncha funny guys! Tweaks are just experiments, some of which maybe marginal, some profound, but experimental science none the less. Some become accepted practices, which are used in the industry. Why all of the hubbub bub? If it makes no sense to you then fine, if it does then look for an answer as to why, but the name calling and insulting, mostly by the naysayers does not a rebuttal make. 

Why not just tweak twerps? 

why invest in tweeks when you can invest in twerks?

That’s the way it goes. In any case, knowledge is what’s left after you subtract out all the stuff you forgot from school, anyway.

He not busy being born is busy dying. - old audio axiom

Indeed, shardorrne .
Though I got the impression he meant they had no desire to read anything.
 And that at a University that is in top world 50 !

@schubert

Your Prof is right. Universities have become big profit centers with large marketing departments. The cost of books and tuition and salaries of those in the administration have sky rocketed in the last three decades. Student debt is at an all time high. After food and lodging I doubt students have money for much in the way of books or anything.

Kindle should have made thngs cheaper but that never happened as corporate greed took the lower distribution costs as profit.

The much maligned Trump University is symptomatic and not an exception.

A Professor  I know at a major American university told me recently that is the norm for students to graduate without ever reading a book outside their major and oft not even that .

Mikado and Nonoise said it all. Actually, believe or not, despite the technical & information evolution in so many ways, the world is much worse than fifty-sixty years ago. Remember it ? Back in the swirling sixties Manking had some hope (people like Beatles sang about it), the seventies saw its slow journey to depression, cynicism it was to be exact culminating not only in politics but namely in punk rock and all that rubbish in pop culture. I call it lazy and negative attitude to almost anything so in many ways really. And now finally in the brave new Millenium Mankind has given the power to those who deeply hate democracy, practically everywhere around the globe.
Mankind has learned nothing, unfortunately.

The fate of Mankind is in the hands of fools. Quite literally.

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and dreams.
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
As silence drowns the screams.

Between the iron gates of fate
The seeds of time were sown.
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known;
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path.
If we make it we can all sit back
and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I´ll be crying.
Yes I fear tomorrow I´ll be crying.

- Greg Lake, 1969

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.

psag wrote,

”We have all invested in our setups, financially and emotionally. Some then go the extra step and invest in tweaks. What we crave is certainty as to what these devices are doing to our listening experience. When clear answers are not forthcoming, we tend to force the issue, by forming fixed opinions and ideaologies, partially based on what we want to hear rather than what we are really hearing. When challenged, some of us become angry, i.e., defensive at the suggestion that we might have fallen victim to the snake oil salesman.

I have had several costly tweaks in my system for some years now. Were I to suddenly toss them all, I seriously doubt that I would miss them. Maybe someday I’ll try it, if I can find the time and motivation to do so.

>>>>>>>That sounds like an operator error. No offense. Since most tweaks, especially expensive ones, have a 30 day money back guarantee you should have established whether the expensive tweaks you invested in worked in the first place. Think of tweaks like components, you’ll be better off in the long run.  It’s a little silly to express buyer’s remorse when you didn’t do your due diligence.

We don’t want unmotivated tuna. Sorry Charlie. 🐬

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? 

Gee whiz, Moopers, I thought you was all all dried out. Now you got me thinkin’. Maybe youse oughta consider turning herself in again.

So I took my 6 foot California King out of his cage today. I didn’t get any oil , but he deficated on my shirt . And I’ve stood toe to toe with Charles Manson . He is  ( was ) a skinny,  whiny little Ditch Bank Okie . He spent his life in protective custody ( called SENSATIVE NEEDS in the Ca. System) . He was a Window Warrior , that’s a loud mouth that hides behind something safe . Does it really matter wether  someone wears a pocket protector or drags their knuckles ?   It’s Audiogon.                                                So here’s an unrelated SNAKE OIL STORY - My brother in law is a chiropractor, a very good one . So I’m watching him work on a patient using “ MUSCLE REFLEX TESTING “. Basically , he puts a patient in a position of poor leverage and asks them to push . Then he places a sample of a supplement under their tongue and repeats the process . If their strength to push does not increase , he tries a different supplement and repeats . When he concludes what works , he sells them that supplement .  It looks phony .           So now I decide to try it . Because I’m Family the treatment is free and supplements are at his cost . So we do the dance and it really works . I’ve done it many times over the years . But check this out . Just before a session I get a full blood panel done per my MD, like 6 vials of blood . Then he tests me and we write it all down . About 10 days later I get my labs back . Although the labs address significantly more items , the handful of deficiencies he notes coincide with my lab results . So my point is I BELIEVE in his testing . But I don’t need to make you believe or get offended if you don’t ! I Suggest things to others , but their experience my be different . Some tweaks are free , like putting a blanket over my 50” glass TV screen . Or listening to my stereo in the middle of the night when “ The Electricity is Quiet “. Some things work and some things don’t , that’s the fun . Some of you guys are way over my head intellectually , that’s cool . But it’s ALL ABOUT LOVE AND RESPECT ! So if anybody can loan me a little snake oil , I’d appreciate it . Now I have to go change my shirt . PS , I LOVE ALL OF YOU AND YOU CANT DO A DAMN THING ABOUT IT ! Mike. Hey Wolfie, I went to Foo Fighters last night , it was fantastic!

I suspect there are more people out there talking about fighting windmills than tele or clock tweaks or most any MD product for that matter.

psag
What tweaks purportedly do cannot be quantitated or otherwise objectively measured. They are by their very nature elusive. That can cause problems for certain personality types.

>>>>>>I’m not sure I totally agree with your detective work. I divide tweaks up into two groups. One group can be quantitated and objectively measured, assuming someone actually did measure them, which as I’ve pointed out previously no one ever does, or rarely does. Tweaks I put into this group are vibration isolation devices, tiny little bowl resonators, even crystals in some applications (Room Acoustics), Helmholtz resonators. Audiophiles often assume certain tweaks like crystals can’t be measured or quantified.

OK, so the second group is the one that gets audiophiles’ panties in a bunch. This is the group of tweaks that includes but is not limited to things that go bump in the night, OR things that would be very difficult to measure even though they sort of make sense. This group includes of course the Peter Belt foils and pens and message labels, Machina Dynamica’s Clock and the Teleportation Tweak (duh!), the Tice Clock, contact enhancers, but also more mundane tweaks such as cones and other footers, CD treatments, CD demagnetizers, power cords, power conditioners, fuses, and cryogenics in general, and of course wire directionality.

OK, let the angst and hand wringing commence. 😩

I have had several costly tweaks in my system for some years now. Were I to suddenly toss them all, I seriously doubt that I would miss them.

Well said. +1

Cheers George

Tit for tat. This is why we still have tribalism and wars.
This thread would make Jonathan Swift proud.

What tweaks purportedly do cannot be quantitated or otherwise objectively measured. They are by their very nature elusive. That can cause problems for certain personality types.

We have all invested in our setups, financially and emotionally. Some then go the extra step and invest in tweaks. What we crave is certainty as to what these devices are doing to our listening experience. When clear answers are not forthcoming, we tend to force the issue, by forming fixed opinions and ideaologies, partially based on what we want to hear rather than what we are really hearing. When challenged, some of us become angry, i.e., defensive at the suggestion that we might have fallen victim to the snake oil salesman.

I have had several costly tweaks in my system for some years now. Were I to suddenly toss them all, I seriously doubt that I would miss them. Maybe someday I'll try it, if I can find the time and motivation to do so.

Moops - you say I was challenged? When? By whom? What topic?  😀

You can always tell a losing proposition in any area when the purveyor instinctively turns to personal attacks and namecalling when challenged on a topic.

Did the floodgates just open for the knuckledraggers to come into the discussion? 😳

"Never engage in conversation with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"  - Mark Twain

Whitestix wrote,

” Yet if you, for example, choose to purchase one or a dozen of GK’s tweaks and find them to enhance to a considerable degree your listening pleasure, then by all means do so and don’t give a thought to the snake oil deniers. But don’t get your nose out of joint when these folks provide contrary rational responses to those perceptions you are having.”

Huh? That’s pretty weird since you are one of the most vociferous of the anti tweakers. This is just another excellent example of the new Do What I Say not What I Do style of naysayers and tweakaphobes, pretending to seek the high ground. Pretending to be open minded.

Some examples of Whitestix not so moderate posting,

“Kosst is my audio muse and tells it like it is.  GK espouses nothing but nonsense as usual. I certainly get the notion of run-in of gear -- speakers for darn sure, and tubes and electronics to a lesser degree, as well as wire.”

“High anxiety and OCD runs rampant in society, with sellers guilting folks into buying products of little or no utility.  It is nowhere worse than among audio-fools.  The "fuse-heads" have got the syndrome to a greater degree than most others.  I think for some folks, the propensity for self-delusion is rather unbridled.  At any rate, I like the way you think. “

“Geoff has as comrade in arms with Teo weighing in on the question raised by the OP.  I hear nothing but pablum from the two of them.  Kooky nonsense, really.  However, if there is some benefit from elevating speaker cable, then get a saw and cut u...”

“Geoff, regardless of the SR tweaks I have auditioned and returned, I have never lost my senses to the degree that would motivate me to try a single one of your idiotic tweaks.  Your stuff takes the cake for getting audio-fools to part with their c...”

Frankly, I thought the OP was a troll trying to pull our chain.  Clearly that was not the case.  I have weighed the evidence presented by both sides of the argument, and come down on the sides of Kosst, Georgehi, and Teo_Audio.  No bricks rest on top of my electronics, nor silly dots stuck on my wall, nor crystals taped to my myriad cabling.  I am quite fascinated with the Dunning-Kruger Effect --- news to me, but Tyversky and Kahneman, in a similar vein of awareness, have extensively documented the cognitive bases for common errors in judgement and their work is completely germane to this discussion of snake oil audio products.  The degree to which we allow ourselves to be deluded, about foolish audio gear and lots of other consumer purchases we make, is endless.  I think the aims and objectives of the snake oil deniers are quite noble... trying to add some rational thinking to the subject so that the devotees of these very often senseless tweaks can hold on to their hard-earned cash.  Yet if you, for example, choose to purchase one or a dozen of GK's tweaks and find them to enhance to a considerable degree your listening pleasure, then by all means do so and don't give a thought to the snake oil deniers.  But don't get your nose out of joint when these folks provide contrary rational responses to those perceptions you are having. 

Looks like this subject is officially taboo. Makes everyone too nervous. It’s our old friend, the Controversial Tweak syndrome.

“You can’t kill kill.” - Charles Manson

A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.

“Shut the cave door and back to pigmy country!” - Mo Gambo (The Old Philosopher)

”The greatest humbug of all is the man who believes—or pretends to believe—that everything and everybody are humbugs.”  - P.T. Barnum

OP,
You're very good law maker, but I'm very good common sense maker and do not like when laws replace common sense which does not make any sense paaal.

Take it EEE-z yo!

That’s beautiful. 

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.  

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.

<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.

jl35

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+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.

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.

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.

The old glaucma scam, eh? I'm hip.

Gotta move to Colorado and farm it first.
I'm happy with my 'medical' supply for now coz ain't no snake oil there only CBD.

How 'bout sending me a kilo of whatever you smoke when you post. 

@geoffkait, do you need weed? It helps.

Uh, oh. I’m starting to get a bad feeling.  Really bad. 😧

+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...

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.

Mapman, nice to see you out and about. Here's hoping for a full recovery. 😷

Nobody appreciates the naive, gullible tenderfoot audiophile more than I do. They’re my favourite. Hi, there. Want some candy?

Sounds just like a comment from a Scientology recruitment officer?

PS: Glad to see this thread is now placed in the Misc Audio section +1 for the mods.

Cheers George

@ teo_audio, do you even read your own post?? How can someone take your products seriously?  

@testpilot 

Thank you for your lovely post regarding matters of cognition and a reflection thereof.

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?

😩

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.

@cd318

"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.)