Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

I'd rather buy a couple supercars or a house for that kind of money but that video thing is really cool.

that looks like they took apart robocop and rebuilt him as a turntable

talking elsewhere about audiophile digital players i did a quick google to see if they exist and found a bunch of things. particularly funny were the portable players, all of which have that clunky audiophile aesthetic...

http://www.mavromatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/c4_front.jpg
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0109/5672/products/hm801_medium.jpg?1157
http://hifipig.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/studio-1-300x244.jpg

The top one looks like what an MP3 player would have looked like if they were making them in 1970

HiFiMan is supposed to be pretty damn good, and insanely expensive.

Considered by many to be the world's finest headphone, without regard to price, the HiFiMAN HE-6 features the company's proprietary planar magnetic technology in a no-compromise design. With sensitivity of 83.5dB, the HE-6 must be paired with a headphone amplifier of comparable quality such as the HiFiMAN EF5 which delivers 2 watts per channel. The HE-6 is the reference choice of critical listeners around the world.

that first thing is actually pretty appealing to me, it looks like it both carries cigars & performs longform scientific calculations, which is pretty much optically what i want from an accessory

that and the smell of Rich Mahogany wherever you go...

and accidental volume changes whenever you put it in your pocket.

The name "HiFiMAN" kinda kills me. Like, if I spent years developing the most perfectly forged, ergonomic, precise, sharp, amazing knives ever. And then I decided to call the line "FoodieBAWSE."

that top one, very steampunk i thought, is the Colorfly C4:

http://www.colorfly.eu/

and here's the other one i tried to post (the image url on it's own chokes the ilx parser)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/QLS-QA-550-SD-Card-WAV-Digital-Audio-Player-Portable-player-free-2GB-SD-memoery-/180776312623

says it's a portable but then has a coax socket sticking out the top...

Wow I kind of love the Colorfly C4. I'm gonna guess... $600 U.S.?

RRP is 655... euros. £590 on amazon.co.uk

Colorfly cases look steampunk but the product itself more generic 1970s tech aesthetic, more like what Sony, Panasonic, and Atari had going on during that era:

Early Advent cassette deck, 1971
http://urbandwells.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Advent-201.jpg

Early Panasonic VHS VCR, 1977
http://retrothing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/beta.jpg

Atari Video Computer System, 1978
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/atari_2600_1.jpg

A Colorfly would have fit in nicely.

that atari is the best thing

and also what most resembles the Colorfly

and accidental volume changes whenever you put it in your pocket.

― kmfdotm (ledge), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 14:14 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

c'mon you know there is a artisan brushed-leather holster accessory for this thing

Finally, something that will do justice to that six-hour Morton Feldman 24/48k stereo DVD that I own! If it fits on there.

And so glad someone has finally addressed the need for 108dB dynamic range in a portable audio device. I often walk around anechoic chambers wearing an iPod.

also these Marantz HQ mobile cassette decks that I used extensively in the '70s and early '80s for recording my bands:
http://www.audio-ideas.com/reviews/analog-sources/graphics/marantz-pmd430-2

http://www.hifiengine.com/images/model/marantz_pmd420.jpg

These things made you look serious. Sounded pretty good too.

better pic:

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/files/marantz_cp_230_104.jpg

That's really nice.

unfortunately I traded that in for a suposedly improved Tascam ministudio 4-track cassette that gave you four tracks running the same direction (so only one side of the tape could be used), and all recorded using the DBX compression/expansion technique that gave wow! measured specs with great signal-to-noise ratios and inaudible background noise. But in real use, it subtlely corrupted everything recorded on it, by applying that gawdawful dbx companding algorithm to everything, yielding unnatural sound and weird artifacts - like a singer's voice would suddenly get louder if an instrument came in while she was singing. I'd have rather used Dolby or no NR at all, put up with the limited dynamic range and tape hiss, but had the music intrinsically sound good.

by serendipity i had to look up this company

http://thebuttkicker.com/

seems real-ish but still mighty snake oily imo

I had the idea a few years ago to make lo-techy looking mp3 players, surmising that it was the only effective way to compete with the iPod since no one was ever going to design a cooler looking nu-techy one than Apple.

like a singer's voice would suddenly get louder if an instrument came in while she was singing

AAAHGH this drives me crazy though I feel like I hear it the other way round-- a quiet, steady instrumental accompaniment fluctuating in volume whenever the singer is singing.

The example that comes to mind is one of my favorite songs - 'Triangle Song' by Thin White Rope

Ah, so there's no problem with the Colorfly volume, if you replace the humidor lid before you slip it in your waistcoat

http://www.colorfly.eu/images/PRODUCT_c4.jpg

Wow I kind of love the Colorfly C4. I'm gonna guess... $600 U.S.?

Only $100 more than what I paid for my first iPod...

Introducing... audiophile shoes!
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WsE6M_RjBIY/TDKe4bDsfSI/AAAAAAAAbS8/L_9OnPCx67I/s1600/get_smart_shoe_phone.jpg

$10,000 Gold-Braided Vacuum Tech Laces with special mahogany lace-tips to cut negative vibrations

I sort of love that 70s, next to the drinks cabinet aesthetic

Yes, the "I openly read Playboy" aesthetic

via get bent

http://www.hammacher.com/Product/Default.aspx?sku=11987&promo=Electronics-Media-Accessories&catid=104

SPEEDSNAIL!!! My Accept albums are gonna sound so good coming out of those.

Requires four separate amplifiers per speaker (not included).

hahahahahaha... I love this line so much

only 3 grand for the acoustic immersion pod!

http://digital.hammacher.com/Items/11727/11727_1000x1000.jpg

re: ok, about that very first that very first link on this thread

i mean i will i no way attest to whether or not that very first piece of stupid audio snake oil works, BUT.

as a guy running a p decent home studio in the third world, i can attest that electrical issues absolutely can screw up/degrade the sound of yer stereo signal. i mean, i doubt that outlet thing would make a hell of a difference, but in certain dire electrical situations i could imagine a bit of well placed electrical shielding could help sound quality, perhaps even to the point where you'd actually notice.

please! i'm not defending the usefulness of this particular product per se. but i'm pretty sure some of my (reputable, high end) gear touts it electrical shielding as part of it's awesomeness. and i've def had some gigs, and even studio sessions, all but ruined cause of crappy electrical interference fuckin with our sound

i'm not saying you should rush out and buy that $500 electrical outlet cover, mind. but i wonder what it's made of and if there might be ANY use to it. like, if it was made with a small faraday cage (page?) coated in highly non-conductive ceramic or something?

just a thought. ianaei electronic geeks please feel free to explain why this would be actually be impossible/useless in scientific terms for all of out edification :)

Oh for sure. You just need your equipment isolated or on a real, grounded and isolated circuit. Basically comes down to proper wiring, not audiophile gear. Ground hum is a thing.

xxp wanna buy that pod

Why does it have teeth?

The teeth are sound absorbing foam to prevent echos and reflections caused by the chair and speakers being inside a semi-enclosed pod. Although a better solution would be to, er, not have the chair and speakers in a semi-enclosed pod.

http://the-egg-chair.com/wp-content/uploads/men_in_black_stereo_egg.jpg
in stereo...

I don't think the stuff in this revive qualifies as snake oil. Snake oil is ineffective. The stuff in the revive may be effective. They've just ignored the cost portion of the cost-performance trade-off. The tru-tone duplex covers, however, make no scientific sense. The website says they can provide shielding beyond steel duplex covers. A sheet of steel is pretty conductive. I don't believe that the areas surrounding your wall outlets are the most effective emitters of EM noise in your room anyway.

the "snail" speaker looks ridiculous. but one can give a scientific argument for the design. The active vs. passive crossover argument is odd to me, though. I'd think that a passive filter has much lower noise limits than a circuit with an active device, which is its own source of noise.

There probably exists a group of dudes that becomes excited over the idea of using the most amplifiers ever with their snail speakers, though.

So, uh, this thing called SoundPimp. It doesn't qualify as vanilla snake oil obv, as it very clearly does something audible -- I was just wondering whether greater audiophiles than me have anything to say about it; e.g. whether the idea seems legit or whether it actually does something dubious to the signal for a (claimed) superficially pleasant effect?

The premise, as I understand it, is that the stereo field as heard through earphones is seen as the baseline ideal. However, when using loudspeakers, crosstalk (ie left ear hearing the right channel and right ear hearing the left) confuses the stereo field. This piece of software is supposed to correct for this in some way. (The claim is that it works significantly better the crappier your speakers are. Also, it seems reasonable to assume it works best for recordings aiming to recreate some sort of physical space perhaps.) There's a demo video on the site with samples in normal stereo/treated stereo.

Any thoughts? Anyone used it? Am I gullible for even asking? ;)

Any thoughts?

Heh, disregard last line, it fell beneath the editing horizon.

yeah i dunno, if you had good speakers and a good amp and good placement of your speakers, how is this even an issue?

i bought an "audio enhancer" thing, this box thing from audioquest and it was kind of a ripoff

this is a terrible solution to the bad speaker placement 'problem'

Yeah fair points; I guess it's about when you don't have good stuff & placement, see my mention of crappy speakers. I read about this thing in a Norwegian tech magazine, where the journo claimed to get notable separation even from a tablet-type device...

i dunno, the extreme separation of headphones doesn't really exist in real life anyway

seems like there are a lot of things you could spend money on to make your setup sound better that would be money better spent