Simple snake oil detection


Hi there were soooo many posts asking af any given device, toy, tweak or component is snake oil.
I’m not considered to be disbeliever or engineering guru at all. All I know and use is elementary math.

If an amp worth more than new Bmw, I can kinda take that with grain of salt, but if a wire is worth more than stainway grand, I am DEFINITELY sure snake oil is there without even questioning if this particular product makes sense 

So now any audio device can be plugged into the detection formula above to truthfully define snake oil. All you need to know is product name, description and asking price.

czarivey
czarivey
All you need to know is product name, description and asking price.
Perhaps that’s all that you need to know, but I don’t judge effectiveness based on price. What you describe seems to be a formula for evaluating value, not "snake oil," which is a term bandied about here with much too great ease, imo.

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Czarivey, Other people choices don’t bother me. If they can hear improvement from $1k cable to $10k cable - good for them. If this improvement was only a placebo effect - net result is still the same. Bottle of wine can cost way more than grand Steinway (some wines are $300k), but if somebody can afford it then why not. I would not be able to tell the difference, but I would not call it a snake oil.

There are people on this forum who cannot tell the difference between cables because of their hearing, system or room, but feel very defensive about it and claim that nobody else can hear it. Such people place "snake oil" post all the time on Cable forum. They created sort of club and enjoy each other posts. It makes them feel much better knowing that other people cannot hear it as well. In a sense a feel sorry for them and not because of hearing, but because of attitude.

As for me, I found big improvement with more expensive SCs and not so much with 10x more expensive ICs. It is most likely point of diminishing returns for my hearing ability. From now I will only work to improve rest of the system and the room acoustics.