Synergistic Red Fuse ...

Unfortunately what we have here is just another situation where some folks just can’t hear the difference. It happens all the time. It happens with many tweaks, especially the more controversial or preposterous tweaks, you know the ones I’m talking about. Things like Mpingo disc, green pen, holographic foil, intelligent chip, tiny bowl resonators, you know, things that either don’t APPEAR to be in the audio path OR actually AREN'T IN THE AUDIO PATH. It's frequently a pretty obvious case of the Backfire Effect, I.e., the more you try to convince someone he’s wrong the more convinced he is that he’s right. Moreover, some folks have invested a lot of energy defending their position, years. Is that a self fulfilling prophecy or what?

Unfortunately what we have here is just another situation where some folks just can’t hear the difference. It happens all the time. It happens with many tweaks, especially the more controversial or preposterous tweaks, you know the ones I’m talking about. Things like Mpingo disc, green pen, holographic foil, intelligent chip, tiny bowl resonators, you know, things that either don’t APPEAR to be in the audio path OR actually AREN'T IN THE AUDIO PATH. It's frequently a pretty obvious case of the Backfire Effect, I.e., the more you try to convince someone he’s wrong the more convinced he is that he’s right. Moreover, some folks have invested a lot of energy defending their position, years. Is that a self fulfilling prophecy or what?

+1, well said geoff !

"Expectation bias" works for the naysayers as well.
If you do not expect to hear a difference, you won't.

If I don't spend money on it, it cannot possibly work, for I am a genius!! ;^)

+1 Jim. They are certain to be 'unknowns geniuses but we al know for sure they are stupid and useless.

Years ago I was visiting my neighbor, the late Lars Friedel (friend of Stereophile’s Sam Tellig), and the Sun Mook dudes had recently installed a bunch of Mpingo disc things in his sound room (Lars reviewed gear for Euro mags). We both thought the whole thing was pretty strange, and after having them in his system for a while he was certain they were utterly useless. Geoffkait mentions a pile of silly "take it on faith" tweaks that have been deemed useless by many listeners who actually hear as well as anybody, but by simply repeating over and over that something illogical, unproven , and maybe dangerous (improperly rated fuses) that is designed to remove money from the pockets of "naive seekers" provides a path to better sound doesn’t make the tweak actually work. I’ve been delighted to hear differences I didn’t expect from various cables, tubes, active gear of all sorts, and designer recommended setup suggestions, and welcome all of that, but I will continue to question fraudulent imaginary nonsensical products as insulting to the professional designers who do the actual good work , and who don’t need to compromise their integrity with inexplicable pseudo tweaks to make a buck.

Wolfman, Gee, I thought you were the only one who can’t hear. You mean there’s a lot more?  

😎