Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

A+

Chock-full of ridiculous nonsense.

liked newton's essay but wasn't really able to follow her last section or how it related to the rest of her piece.

Re mansplaining audiophiles, it gives me such joy that the classic unquantifiable bullshit "measure" of power cords, cable hangers et al. is "pace, rhythm and timing", or PRAT for short.

lolll at the foil stickers

P.W.B. Electronics Cream Electret: £20 per 15ml jar
The active ingredient of this nontoxic, odorless balm was discovered by Peter W. Belt to improve the listening experience by relieving stress. AD heard slight increases in nuance and force when he spread the cream under the front edge of his preamp, but heard no change in the sound when he spread the cream on his speaker stands. "No one with an open mind, a sense of whimsy, and $40 in his pocket should fail to try this tweak, which is made my two of the most sincere people in the industry," sums up AD. Write to f✧✧✧@pwbelectron✧✧✧.c✧.u✧ for a free sample of Cream Electret. (Vol.35 No.5 WWW)
Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/2016-recommended-components-miscellaneous#jz3s0uP0wZOtc8I8.99

holy shit what??

http://pwbelectronics.co.uk/product/ref/ref.html

Amazing that a disc spinning at half a Hertz has energy patterns adjacent to hundreds of terahertz

great find, these guys are nuts http://pwbelectronics.co.uk/product/mmf/PWB_Morphic_Message_Foils.pdf

http://pwbelectronics.co.uk/product/images/safe_hole.jpg

I'm safe hole

that site is magic - check this: http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/cable-controversy

thread is a cornucopia of nuttery

is it safe?

*glances at turntable*
is it safe?
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/de/61/f2/de61f297b97e8b7589080a7005d5f0a1.jpg

"No one with an open mind, a sense of whimsy, and $40 in his pocket should fail to try this tweak, which is made my two of the most sincere people in the industry," sums up AD

But, nevertheless, subconsciously, we are still attempting to resolve these energy patterns and anything we cannot resolve causes us to remain under tension. Or, we are actually interpreting these (new, strange) energy patterns to mean, ‘danger’, ‘predator’, ‘intruder’ and we therefore remain under tension because we can never resolve them.

That because of everything in the modern environment (and this includes the very audio equipment and wiring) and because of the resulting tension we (human beings) are under, we cannot perceive correctly all the information which IS IN THE ROOM and which has been in the room all the time we are attempting to listen. This is why the more you treat items of equipment, wiring and cabling and objects in the environment to give a ‘friendly’ ‘relaxing’ energy pattern the more the quality of the sound improves, the more the quality of the TV picture improves and why live music sounds so much better.

that whole stereophile article is a goldmine

Ayre Acoustics Irrational But Efficacious System Enhancement CD: $20 ★
Ayre's test CD includes five tracks of various white, pink, and brown noise, as well as two glide tones that sweep from 5Hz to 20kHz. The disc produced a less electronic sound in JM's system, while lowering the noise floor and improving microdynamics. "I am flabbergasted," said he. "Highly recommended."AD adds that this CD should be used "with caution, and with the understanding that, as with trying to measure a transformer with a DVM and unintentionally magnetizing the core, negative results may ensue and may take a few days to fade away." ST points out that "weird shit goes on in hi-fi. Don't dismiss it until you try it. I use this thing, too.

these last few are the best yet because they really drop the veneer of science and truly embrace the religiosity that's core to trv kvlt audiophile snake oil...."weird shit goes on", "irrational", "sense of whimsey" - it's all strange forces beyond our understanding that must be appeased with weird little reflective stickers

yeah, getting very close to winona ryder grasping at bundles of christmas tree lights in Stranger Things. I know...it sounds... crazy.

but she was right

SO ARE THESE GUYS

I assume they're all guys.

of course they're all guys

#notallguys

the PWB electronics people are a married couple and she does the interviews

http://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-112#gT0C8Yqk3trqGfGO.97

that's the other thing about it is that...they ARE right...or they are at least right about some of it...at least in terms i guarantee if you went to these ppl's house and heard their home stereo it would sound amazing, the problem is the old advertisor's maxim - "i know half of my adverstising money is wasted, the problem is i don't know which half"....because objectively to them -- or to anyone that would hear it -- it IS working, these systems sound amazing, but is it the speakers? the cables? the turntable? the cartridge? the needle? the record mat? the vibration isolation feet under the turntable? the power conditioner? all of them?

so to them they know we think they are insane but on another level the end result of their efforts is exactly what expect - an amazing sounding stereo and they hear it with their own ears

i could see how you could go down this rabbit hole and frankly there's times like even as i laugh at this shit sometime pulls at me...what about those little stickers....could it make a difference?....who knows......weird shit happens everyday

*arrives at office with stickers on face*

with 94k, bennies, and a sense of whimsy

well, uh, there are the known physical and audio properties of materials when it comes to electrical conductivity, isolation, and media sample rate, etc

the known unknowns, like quality of particular components that they're hedging by getting super high quality versions of cables or whatever, buying a receiver that costs 10x more just in case

then there are possible unknown unknowns when you're hedging against factors that may or may not be real, which is where most of this thread falls. lots of misrepresentations of material science and electrical engineering, or hedging against a lack of scientific knowledge by buying wholesale into concepts with no backing whatsoever

you can spend all your time optimizing the first part, and spending a little cash on part two, and everything will sound great. if you need a woo sticker to really get the best sound, go for it

so saying "they're right" is bonkers to me because yeah they have a great sounding stereo but the crap in this thread is like homeopathy only these ppl luckily aren't affecting anything other than their financial health

Absolutely mental.

I kind of don't doubt that there's something in, let's say, the 'mindfulness' of listening; if you're comfortably, happy, relaxed, able to pay attention, than your perception of sound is bound to be better. I kind of think that's what they're doing, they're just doing it with a cream chemical or a piece of tinfoil?

xposts

imo it's a lot like homeopathy in that they're drinking water, everyone drinks water, but they think the special properties of their water make it do things for you

the "USB signal cleaner" things that are definitely a growing audiophile obsession really kill me

so saying "they're right" is bonkers to me because yeah they have a great sounding stereo but the crap in this thread is like homeopathy only these ppl luckily aren't affecting anything other than their financial health

― mh, Wednesday, August 24, 2016 9:33 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no i was trying to put myself in their shoes is what i'm saying, not that stickers make any difference but like putting myself down the rabbit hole of this...their stereos sound good because good equipment sounds really good! but then if you are doing like 10 million weird tweaks and constantly upgrading your equipment etc then you get into this whole trap of "well which element of this complex soup of actual good equipment and high quality but questionably effective stuff like $500 cables and out-and-out snakeoil is actually make *the difference*", i understand how people could fall into this rabbit hole is all

oh sure, there are lots of little obsessions, I definitely have a few. I try to keep scientific rationalizations out of my irrationality but it's a slippery slope

like did you guys just ignore my previous post or what?

these last few are the best yet because they really drop the veneer of science and truly embrace the religiosity that's core to trv kvlt audiophile snake oil...."weird shit goes on", "irrational", "sense of whimsey" - it's all strange forces beyond our understanding that must be appeased with weird little reflective stickers

― Pull your head on out your hippy haze (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 23, 2016 9:29 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well they're sending me a free sample so I'm gonna put it to the underrated aero test which as we all know is the only truly objective test for sound

Good posts, ums. As always.

But could you get behavioral psychologists in and try and assess what's going on that way? Or biochemists and systems biology people? "Presence of this chemical increases brain activity in the 'hearing sounds' bit of your noggin" for instance? ie there's more to science than electrical engineering.

imo appeasing strange forces is the best pursuit

You guys could also just visit an audiophile, realistic scenario (as pointed out xp): he will himself doubt the "science" behind a lot of the choices in his setup, but it will sound fantastic

Unless it's a woman in which case different pronouns

what does fantastic sound like

yeah we're getting into complicated problems in phenomenal consciousness here

i sacrifice rabbits to make my albums sound better

I want to collaborate with Karl Malone on a site that uses the spotify api to seem official but really just shows you some surreal shit that is supposed to fix the "energy spectrum of your spotify".

pictured: me listening to an original pressing of Bitches Brew on my Rega P1

http://66.media.tumblr.com/c0a2ca49b66b431964cbff7bf402ecee/tumblr_mzf1lgiwaM1ralxhxo1_500.jpg

haha :D

anyway, I'm all for having fun w/ snake oil - it's just... maybe sometimes this thread is derailed towards a type og scientific skepticism that I associate with scientism and anti-spiritualism

and while I'm an atheist myself, I never took much pleasure in mocking religious beliefs

would maybe feel that way if the profit margins on the snake oil were lower

As usual, a distinction between a religious movement and an exploitative cult is that religions aren't strictly pay-to-play.

eh i mean i doubt this isn't anyone who ain't got it to begin with and is this or buying luxury cars or boats or bigger TVs a "worse" for of consumerism, it's i know ppl who are obsessed with golf club tech and like weird little permutations of how they arrange the dimples on a golf ball for "better aerodynamics"

i wonder how this song sounds with morphic message foils

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqAxXOBYxCw