The shams, scams and dead ends of the High Fidelity hobbie/passion/adiction


I am not real current so I may have missed a few. The ones I remember are SQ and any other name for "Quadraphonic", Perfect sound forever, and I will see what my fellow A’goNers can come up with. As a bit of a variation on a theme, I wonder what the most profitable B.S. audio trend/product was?...certianly the 8-track tapes sold well.....and ate themselves rather quickly.   

Sould likely have included the second D in addiction...


whatjd
Or, perhaps, audio gear that has "balanced" inputs that when you look inside are just wired to be seen as unbalanced?  Oh, am I saying that many GM and Ford cars of the '70s were simply Chevys and Fords with different bumpers....Americans would never be fooled by that!

+1 JC.  had some fat ass monster cables maybe 25 yrs.  (the old cheapy ones with the clear jacket), then got some skinny ass Kimber PBJ.  no comparison. 
How About the Zune..I chose that over the Apple offerings.I was told this would be the thing for Classrooms etc,and such..there went $250.00!!
Myth has it that the Porn Industry chose VHS and the rest is history.
But,Sony Won The Bluray HD Wars and 4k.We'll never know why Sony neglected to put out a 4k player those first few years[I had to buy a Samsung 4K] or why Sony did not include a 4k Player in the PS4??
"djones511,439 posts02-28-2020 9:14pmI had an 8 track it took careful placing of the matchbook so two songs didn't play at the same time."
Ah yes, the good old days.

I've yet to figure out how to quote on this forum. Some really vintage software here.



For a tweak to be deemed magical or a hoax the technology only has to be just beyond the ken of the average knucklehead. On the Kalahari you don’t have to be the fastest wildebeest, just a little bit faster than the slowest one. My rule no. 1 - Never get into a technical argument with a History major. Or a drum major, for that matter. 
@wolf_garcia Note that Millercarbonresidue owns piles of what many consider to be useless tweaks from the profit margin marginalized mind of Ted Denny, and he pontificates ad nauseam about this stuff often...for this guy to single out Kaitty as one who promotes audio quackery is ironic, yet sort of fun.

Not only is it kind of fun, but Millercarbon was actually able to make a post without including another link to his virtual system.  Hope he is feeling OK.









Any cable risers that purport incredible sonic clarity. Unless you have cotton pile carpet and unshielded copper cables, you're not going to build up any electrogook interference. I used to use Thomas the Tank Engine riser blocks before regaining sanity. 
JVC was smart and gave the technology away to a bunch of companies. VHS saturated the market so fast Beta never had a chance. Sometimes you have to ask less to make more. At the time I was a poor medical student and all my moonlighting money went into Hi Fi. I did not even have a TV. Life was bliss. 
As for the other junk, I do not have any of it. I make my own cables and spend any extra money on better electronics, speakers, subwoofers and analog stuff. Now That I have more income I will occasionally by a tweak that seems to make sense. None of it has made a difference I can hear. Altering frequency response and delays make a huge difference in comparison. 
In the early days I had both a Beta and VHS player, the TV station I recorded commercials at used a pro form of Beta.  This could be folklore, but I had been told that Sony wanted royalties for Beta and JVC did not for VHS...hence the success of VHS? 


Same old bull #### by the same old artists:

  • "I haven’t tried any of the SR products, but I, you see, am an expert, and I just know this stuff is a scam, a sham, a con, and nothing but oil of snake. And, anyone who says otherwise is a shill."

Frank
Actually he dismisses a lot of the good ones. He’s more like a....shill for SR. 
I agree that millercarbon's stance on tweaks would hold more weight if he didnt blather on at great lengths about Synergistic stuff. It is one thing if you promote one particular product in a line, but a total buy in is cause for concern.
djones51, your post has me concerned. Are you saying my 8-track, Thunderlizard 3000 radio/cd player and blender is no longer SOTA? I may have to lay down.


Thinking about it I had an 8 track, minidisc, laserdisc. Betamax. I had a knack for picking winning formats.
I had a great laser disc of Santana Live in Mexico City. Pioneer unit didn't have to flip the disc the head rotated. 
Minidisc
DAT tape
8 track
Laserdisc
Betamax
Actually that's not truly fair to beta as it was really a better format than VHS.
Yes, the Hobbie should have had the "s" I intended.  My keyboard is old and having problems with sticking letters and ones that sometimes do not work, like the "s".  I will try to be more diligent so as not to cause anyone sleepless nights or ulcers. 

Note that Millercarbonresidue owns piles of what many consider to be useless tweaks from the profit margin marginalized mind of Ted Denny, and he pontificates ad nauseam about this stuff often...for this guy to single out Kaitty as one who promotes audio quackery is ironic, yet sort of fun.
Lately USB reclockers seem to popular along with anything NOS in a DAC. I think expensive  fat cables and directional fuses probably do more. 
Graphene twisted just the right way does become a superconductor.....

at a few degrees above absolute zero

how very useful 

or useFULL 
A sufficiently advanced technology will be ridiculed as a hoax or deemed magic by the average yahoo. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: I looked for it but I was unable to find it anywhere. 
Most high end accessories/tweaks especially, wires, fuses, risers, etc. one will find advertised all over the place here.
+1 Millercarbon! That stuff is like the Goop products Gweneth Paltrow flogs to the brainless

Yes and by what a coincidence, Gweneth Paltrow is as much a theoretical physicist as gk.

Sould likely have included the second D in addiction...

>>>>>Soulda woulda coulda
spinaker01
+1 Millercarbon! That stuff is like the Goop products Gweneth Paltrow flogs to the brainless

>>>>This is your brain. 🧠 This is your brain on drugs. 🍟
+1 Millercarbon! That stuff is like the Goop products Gweneth Paltrow flogs to the brainless
Those? Amateurs! The cornucopia, motherlode, Raider's of the Ark warehouse, of word salad audio shams scams and dead ends ... Behold!
http://machinadynamica.com


The fatter the speaker cables, the better they sounded.  But they sure looked impressive!
..ah yes, the 8-track crosstalk was state of the art.  I am so old I remember 4-track tapes before 8-track.  Interesting that with the "net", CD, SACD. et. al. the old analog tape recorded then pressed to vinyl LP/album is still the "Sound of (real) Music".
I had an 8 track it took careful placing of the matchbook so two songs didn't  play at the same time.