What’s your vote for the most ridiculous, overpriced, and useless tweak?


My vote: Furutech Outlet Cover 105 NCF $220, with “special crystalline material that has two “active” properties.” https://www.thecableco.com/outlet-cover-105-ncf.html

glow_worm
Geoffkait, prove it to us that wire is directional!  Just cause you say its so does NOT make it a reality.  You ever try and ask your power company to correct the direction of the wires connecting your house to the local transformer?  Interesting these same wires do NOT have little arrows on them to assist with this too.  Its only high prices audio cable that have them.
The evidence for directionality is in the listening. Empirical evidence, after all, is one of the corner stones of the scientific method. The easiest way to proceed IMHO is to reverse interconnects and see if one way sounds better than the other. Then, if so inclined, you can do the same with speaker cables and fuses. As Bob Dylan says at the end of all his songs, good luck to you.
Some of these gullible people that mocks all "tweaks", the bad with the good,wheat and tares, bought the reviews or bought the marketing engineering spins, without knowing that the same product, does not sound the same, in different mechanical audio grid, in different electrical house grid, in different acoustical room grid, in different qualitative information grid... Then instead of experimenting by themselves they changed their gear in so called "upgrade", in the pursuit of an elusive experience of sound and music that was not always only positive,because it is first and foremost necessary to "tweak" the 4 grids, the mechanical,the electrical, the acoustical and the information grid to get optimal results with their actual components... Or you can buy for sure a 100,000 dollars system if you can and lives without any question about "how to get the maximum results with the minimum money ".... And remember that "tweaks" is not a synonym for "snake oil"...My best to all...


Geofkait, how would one reverse the direction of a balanced cable?  the ends are different, should i send them back to the company who made them and have the wire direction reversed?  Assuming they would not laugh at me how would they prove that they did it without little arrows on the wire??

I recently had to disconnect the main power at my house from the street transformer, i asked the guy from the power company about reversing the wires to get the directionality right and he laughed at me, asked what the hell i was talking about.  I mentioned your name Geoff, said you were an expert about wire directionality!  Seriously though, he asked how you measured the difference.  He also mentioned the fact that AC current goes back and forth at 60HZ so half the time it would be WRONG if wire were directional.

It seems the guys who work on AC current every single day have not been trained on wire directionality OR, maybe it just does not exist!
azbrd

Geofkait, how would one reverse the direction of a balanced cable? the ends are different, should i send them back to the company who made them and have the wire direction reversed? Assuming they would not laugh at me how would they prove that they did it without little arrows on the wire??

>>>>The general idea is to control wire and cable directionality during manufacturing. That way you can have your cake 🍰 and eat it too. The cable will then be balanced AND in the correct direction. Otherwise, it’s a compromise. Obviously, you can’t reverse balanced cables or power cords to check on directionality. Duh! 🙄

I recently had to disconnect the main power at my house from the street transformer, i asked the guy from the power company about reversing the wires to get the directionality right and he laughed at me, asked what the hell i was talking about. I mentioned your name Geoff, said you were an expert about wire directionality! Seriously though, he asked how you measured the difference. He also mentioned the fact that AC current goes back and forth at 60HZ so half the time it would be WRONG if wire were directional.

>>>>You measure the difference by measuring the drop in voltage one way, then the other. It’s the direction for which the resistance is less that sounds better. Follow? The AC signal does go back and forth, the power dude was absolutely right about that. But we only care about the signal when it’s traveling toward the speakers. Who cares about the signal going in the opposite direction? 🔛 Hel-loo! That’s why Audioquest controls directionality for their high end power cords. Because in all AC circuits wire is directional. 

It seems the guys who work on AC current every single day have not been trained on wire directionality OR, maybe it just does not exist!

>>>>>So what? People play CDs every day but don’t know that the CD laser is a Quantum device or how quantum physics works. People drive cars every day without knowing how a combustion engine works. 😳 Wire directionality is strictly an audiophile phenomenon. Obviously, electricity “works” in either direction.