What is the Silliest Accessory You Have Ever Seen.

Between these two main things this thread suggest to me:

1-The rethorical often non sensical marketing discourse associated with costly audiophile products, which may or may not be effective to some degree, which only a listening experiments can determine,

2-The sarcasm created around a product that someone has NEVER use in his own setting,but nevertheless condemn,

between these two elements, i myself hesitate to choose which should be quantified as being the highest on the scale of stupidity...




I will ask for help M. Carlo Cipola, an italian economist, that has written the best book ever about stupidity...
(You can read it free on the internet )
A very brief summary coming from wikipedia:

«These are Cipolla’s five fundamental laws of stupidity:

1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.»

Then with the help of my clairvoyant economist friend, i will suggest to all to read attentively many times point number three...


i will myself said only that: we cannot judge a product only by the marketing discourse around it, or from his seemingly "exagerated" price, we must try it to be sure...

Concluding to the uselessness of a product in spite of our own ignorance of the product on the basis of our lecture of his marketing text and price is unfair...Extrapolating this to ALL other "strange" audiophile products is more than unfair...


I am sorry, but i dont like crowd unanimity toward a victim of choice, being it an individual, or a trade mark product...Except for recognized murderers or recognized pile of trash product....

I concur with the OP that the price of some product are ridiculous or seems so to me also and the explanation around the product non sensical in many case...

Anyway, i never buy them, in some case tough i replicated or inspired myself with them with astonishing success....

The question then of the real value of a product is ANOTHER whole other thing than the publicity explanation around it; confusing the 2 is misleading to say the least...Acoustic in particular is very complex subject...I know it by my own experiments in my own room...

Trying to be wise myself i will not judge without trying...Or i will say: i dont trust this product by my "hunch" BUT i dont know it really ....This will be wise....Bashing all products indicriminately together without knowing them in a thread is not my politic in an audio forum...

By the way i tried myself at peanuts cost many acoustical devices of my own, and i am almost sure that this too costly product called Hallograph can gives results... Is it worth the price? It is another question, the same amount of money does not have the same value for 2 people....

Judging too swiftly and unwisely can produce someone else losses, this company losses for example, but mocking a product without knowing it ourself by experience can be OUR lost about something important in acoustical embeddings controls that we will miss to learn about by the force of our own prejudices......


All seemingly "silliest" audio products are not all of them scams....

My best....

"Like any boundary intersection the Holographs will react differently to drywall, plaster, glass,wood,book cases,record jackets. They all have a varied shear velocity and shape or contour that will react differently to the varied shape and shear velocites of the Holographs."

Wouldn’t it be better to make them from one wood/material depending on the wall surface one is placing them next to?

Even if four different woods are used, how does it go if a person has a plaster wall with a painting hanging on it? Or two paintings, one covered with glass? It may end up in any number of combinations. How to assure that whatever shear wave from a certain material will hit the right area of the Hallograph? How does that work?

Do, let’s say, GIK room treatments increase or decrease the perceived benefits of Hallographs?

What scientific methods could be used to verify this performance? Where does one even start with that?

By the way, Shakti website mentions "patent pending" which is about what reviews from 2003 mentioned, too. What happened with that?

These are the right questions to ask.... Judgement without trials or by the book are not enlightened process....

I know an informed opinion is really offensive to some people who are unable to make one. I apologize for having a fairly strong background in acoustics. I guess I should be apologizing for my audio privilege and work harder to provide a safe space for disadvantaged audiophiles.

I will go back and play with my 200mpg carburettor, who cares if it violates the laws of thermodynamics, and when I am bored of it, I will go back to playing with the $200 black box that will reduce my electricity usage 30%, again, who cares if it violates the laws of thermodynamics.

If you will note above, I did suggest that I could possible measure its presence (with/without), something I suspect the people who "designed" it have not done. However, for $1500, you could actually buy some real acoustics that make a significant measurable and audible change that truly could make a dramatic improvement.