Mcondon, I tend to agree with you about the flimsy nature of the scientific basis for these products. I read the Lessloss description of the Blackbodies and was thoroughly unimpressed. I can see how the technological nature of the discussion would prove impressive to many audiophiles. A lot of conceptualization with little evidence that an audible change would result.
A half hour of intense listening to Blackbodies in and out of a system convinced me I wasn't going to spend any more time on them. Even if they did *something* it was so insipid that it wouldn't be worth my time. One can get a far greater benefit by swapping a pair of interconnects, imo.
I am not anti-tweak in my perspective, but I demand that a product pass what I call my Law of Efficacy; it has to make a significant, immediate, easily discernible, repeatable difference - to the casual listener as well as the audiophile. One "tweak" which has consistently passed the Law of Efficacy is treatment of CDs. Though there is debate over the proposed benefit from a technological/scientific standpoint, the result audibly is clear, and so I treat every disc.
The second you think, "Well, there MAY be a difference," or "... I don't care for the sound, but I'll have to let it break in for a few weeks," or "... wait, let's try placing them here (after the third time)," the product is unworthy of consideration regardless of price. That is, if your goal is to eschew marginal improvements in favor of major improvements to the rig. The ART system demoed for me at RMAF the and Blackbodies both failed such simple testing.
I wrote "nearly" instead of "clearly" as I have not used every tweak out there and there is a (perhaps remote) possibility that some technologically driven tweak guru has developed a seriously beneficial product. I try to base my conclusions on products I have heard versus those which I think cannot be beneficial, that precludes making a universal statement about them all being ineffectual.
