Quack System Upgrades

ivanj
Worst I’ve seen follows. Some years ago: How about the audio show where these wizards, you know "fung shue" (sp) patchouli type folks, who were putting little pieces of paper, some even different colors and shapes under amps, around the demo room, and everyone was transfixed. I think this came out of the UK; if I not I apologize to my British friends. Does anyone remember that grift?

Huh? If everyone at the demo was transfixed wouldn’t that indicate placing colored paper under amps and around the demo room was uh, effective? Oh, you’re probably one of those group hypnosis or placebo effect advocates. Never mind.

Note to self: on a thread about Quack System Upgrades and Snake Oil it’s kind of bizarre that noone has mentioned PWB (Peter Belt) stuff up until now. E.g., the Red X Pen, the Quantum Clip, Cream Electret and Silver Rainbow Foil, last two on Stereophile’s recommended components list for a few years.

geoffkait,

A former friend of mine believed in the Peter Belt stuff.

Cable elevators.  Pure snake oil.  I would use them for aesthetic purposes and as a conversation piece; nothing more.

Blue Jeans cable are a great product.  Canare, Belden and Canare are all studio grade(and used in studios).  BJC makes no wild snake oil claims.  

I have yet to hear a difference between twisted-pair speaker wires of the same gauge.  I find it funny that someone will spend thousands on an interconnect that feeds an RCA jack that then uses bulk copper wire inside the component from the jack to the innerds.  If you upgrade your internal wiring I'll give partial tweeker credit to you.

I also find it funny that people spend big money on digital interconnects.  It's 1's and 0's, folks...as long as they arrive intact, a 99 cent cable is as good as a $10,000 digital cable.  My free Comcast HDMI cable performs as well as a price-no-object cable on my 4K HDTV.  Digital Audio is no different.  1's and 0's...

im a big fan of blind listening evaluations.  My wife and I do them all the time when evaluating choices.  Speakers, pre-amps (tube vs. SS) and phono stages all have very audible differences to my ears.  Cables?  Meh...just buy proper gauge twisted speaker wire and decent gauge analog interconnects and call it good.  Lampcord works fine in a pinch.  

@astro58go

Your reply is well articulated and more than fair enough to warrant a response. Thanks for that, as some others on the forum immediately take offense and can never "agree to disagree". Please allow me to answer your points/questions.

No, I am not an electrical engineer. However, I did study electrical engineering at Thomas Edison Technical/Vocational high school for four years and as a general rule tend to give more "weight" to all things that can be explained scientifically/objectively as opposed to opinions/subjectively.

As you indicate "listening is truth" and this is the basis of your assertion regarding cable performance, you certainly are entitled in that case to claim one is "better" than another. Whatever your preference and pragmatic findings, so be it. Nevertheless, there is nothing "quack" about BJC, because, among other things, they do not claim (in writing) their cable sounds or is better than anyone else's. The merely point out that resistance is by far the most dominant factor.

I personally do not believe in cable "burn-in". I do believe if you run more current through it than it is rated to handle, you can/will notice something burning.

As for directionality, there are numerous threads on the forum about this. One recent thread https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/interconnects-some-have-directional-indicatorss-why? suggests this could be the result of one end being shielded to ground. However, this is something that could apply to RCA interconnects, not speaker wire. There is (or should be) no directionality where speaker wire is concerned. 

But again, given the "positive sonic differences" you are hearing, by all means use whatever you prefer. I believe I also pointed out elsewhere in this thread that while "differences" can be heard, I simply question whether or not they are truly "positive".