Snake oil??

When you see the words ’snake oil’ on an audio forum, consider automatically changing it to read as the words ’sour grapes’.

sour grapes. COMMON. If you describe someone’s attitude as sour grapes, you mean that they are jealous of another person’s success and show this jealousy by criticizing that person. These accusations have been going on for some time now, but it is just sour grapes. The government says that Mr Fedorov’s criticisms are mere sour grapes. Note: In one of Aesop’s fables (= traditional stories, usually with a moral), a fox tries several times unsuccessfully to reach a bunch of delicious-looking grapes. In the end he gives up, telling himself that they are probably sour and inedible anyway.

If they can’t hear it and/or if they feel it is ’expensive’, then it’s "snake oil".

Oh, I mean "sour grapes".

Almost as if we need a script for the given forums that automatically blanks out the term ’snake oil’ and replaces it with ’sour grapes’, or blanks out the word pairing ’snake oil’ in the same way it blanks out attempts to swear.

One could also ask a forum owner or administration to enact this with their given ’granny checker’, so that it edits it out like attempts at swearing.

I suspect that audio forums would become quite a bit more civil post that change....

Even more fun... the granny checker that checks for swearing can be set so that the post will not happen until the word pairing ’snake oil’ is removed from the attempted post. Further yet...that the given post goes to vapor, and the posting script is reset....the poster loses the post into the interwebs ether. A far more stinging lesson. And far more forum peace. This can be enacted by most audio forums in mere seconds.

68pete-

How much the sound stage has opened up is just unbelievable

Unbelievable to you and some others, sure. But as for me, the only thing I find hard to believe is they somehow managed to come up with something about as good as TC. But if they did then yes indeed, it would be just as you describe. 

With TC the merest tiniest thinnest application on even just a few contacts does indeed open up the sound stage with every point source being a lot more palpable, real, and natural sounding, with more air around it, a deeper background, and the ability to hear the most subtle details with great clarity. 

The really amazing part, this all comes with a greater sense of ease. Pretty much everything else that improves clarity and detail comes with a bit of an edge or grain, hardness, whatever you want to call it. TC is the opposite, improving clarity and detail while also making the sound more liquid smooth. 

If that is what you are hearing, good. One more test to find out just how good it is. TC worked not only on the points of contact but, well, pretty much everywhere there is signal flowing. The effect seems greater where the fields are strongest and most highly fluctuating. That would be around speakers and amps. Especially speakers. Paste a very thin coating around the outside of the wires going to your drivers, on the wires, caps and inductors in the crossover, on the driver terminals or even on the driver magnet and basket.  

If you are unwilling or unable to go in there and do that then do the same inside your amp. BE VERY CAREFUL because the stuff is highly conductive. But as long as you are careful not to create a short anywhere you can apply a thin coat around the outside of signal wires, caps, transformers, anywhere like that. Does not take much. Very thin coat. Goes a long way. 

The biggie if you have what it takes, I did this to my panel. This is just to give you some idea. I have pasted this stuff around the inside of my panel and the outside of my AC wires all the way from the panel to the room. What you have done, what you are hearing, times one hundred. Yeah. And people wonder why I rave about my system. 

TC was $300 for 1.5ml. How much they give you for $600? What's it say on the label?

"I got a nice ten-receptacle power strip at Lowes to hook everything up. Before plugging everything in, I treated all of the connections with TC. Right off the bat, the sound improved immensely."

Now, that is some very good power strip.

@millercarbon,

+1 on contact enhancer. I use Acoustic Revive ECI-50 at $150 for 50 ml. Aything but snake oil and your description  of the benefits is spot-on.

That ECI stuff is more of a true contact enhancer, nano carbon particles designed to reduce the micro-arcing that occurs when the signal jumps across microscopically small gaps in between conductors. That is part of what TC does. They are similar in using some kind of oil based carrier. With TC the carrier evaporates leaving only the nano-particles behind. ECI uses an oil designed to stay oily a long time. Probably the biggest difference however is the way TC works not only on contact points but anywhere near a signal. You could paste that stuff on the inside of a AC outlet cover plate where nothing electrical touches and it would still produce about the same effect as if it was directly on the contact points. Crazy but true.