QSA Gemstones remind me of bump dots we place on control surfaces of appliances for my wife who is legally blind. She can sort out the microwave, washing machine and dryer settings. Shiny!
Audio nonsense
In this wonderful world of audio that we journey through folks selling stuff have sometimes been inventive in what they claim. In your trip down this road what sticks out as the most ludicrous thing you’ve seen someone try to sell?
I can point to 2 things. When I first saw a Tice clock in a store I thought it was a gag. Next- Peter Belt.
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@waytoomuchstuff , et al. I find it interesting how the debates on these forums typically depreciate into labeling, name-calling, and assigning sides between believers vs. naysayers, with no in-between. I assume there are others here like me who do in fact hear differences between components, speakers, support systems, cables, tubes, and more. It’s not that I don’t recognize that certain things can make a sonic difference, and it’s not that I don’t have an open mind to what I hear in my own system, and it’s not that I have never tried many different cables, small boxes, outlets, and other stuff including fuses by SR. Its also not that I have a poor sounding system or shitty hearing. However, I (and I assume others) believe that the effect of some things is just too miniscule in the big scheme of everything that goes into an electronic sound reproduction system to actually be reliably heard, much less create "game-changing" improvements. To the OP’s point, the prices that some of this stuff is being sold for are "ludicrous." I probably have a few of those "gemstones" around from when my daughter and her friends used to play dress-up - maybe cost all of 0.25 cents. Just this week, I auditioned the Hattor Tube Active Stage. It sounded pretty darn good. I tried it with the supplied Jan-Phillips tubes and some new Mullard tubes - both good but slightly different - I heard the difference. The TAS is a really good sounding buffer, but it didn’t quite achieve the level of sonic performance IMO that I get from my SMc Audio TLC-1 buffer, which at around $6K or so is at least 3x the price of the TAS. My point is that both my system and my ears are good enough to hear subtle differences that some things make. I can hear the differences between my individually insulated solid core OCC Harmonic Tech speaker cables, vs. my Furutech FS-Alpha stranded OCC speaker cables, vs. my DIY WE 7awg tinned copper speaker cables - they all sound good yet different. Same with ICs, servers, DACs, and speakers for sure. When it comes to digital boxes like my Bonn N8 switch, 45 feet of fiber vs. CAT8, and the Network Acoustics ENO I received a week ago, the results/differences are so subtle (if at all) that I suspect my judgement may be unreliable. Same with the six Shakti Stones and the Quiet Line and Enacom AC filters I own and use in my system. Like a lot of this stuff, I bought it because reviewers and posters said it improves the sound, and because I wanted every possible improvement for my system, but I seriously doubt I could reliably hear whether the stuff is in my system or not. However, I do believe I more reliably hear improvements from the brass damping discs I use on most of my equipment, the springs I use to decouple/support my speakers, and the SRA platforms under my amps, but maybe I am dreaming when it comes to that stuff too. I have been improving my system for a long time but to believe that somebody can accurately predict the presence of a small wafer sitting on a cable, and that the wafer can dramatically improve their system, is beyond what I can get my head around based on what I have heard, and not heard, in my system. Some folks talk about this stuff as if their systems are totally transformed each time they introduce a new dongle, disc, or doodad. But hey, why wouldn’t they believe that, the advertisers tell them it’s going to happen...
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MASSIVE leap forward - from a fuse?! How many times can a system be totally transformed? How can the sound of cable changes be subtle and yet doodads, stick-ons, small pieces of wood, and fuses can have a "massive" impact on the sound? Manufacturers are making a huge per-unit profit off of this stuff and based on what I have heard, in my own system, I can’t help believing that (at least in some cases) they are selling a puff of hope instead of a product that provides a tangible improvement to the level advertised. @jimob discussed the Duelund -Mundorf Ultra Audio purifiers earlier in this thread, saying:
In fact, the Ultra Audio Purifier is simply a Zobel network - a capacitor and resistor connected in series across the binding posts ($80 in good quality parts). It affects the electrical properties of the amplifier/speaker interface making the impedance a loudspeaker presents to the amplifier output appear as a steady resistance. It could improve the sound of some amplifier/speaker combinations, but is probably not necessary in most. To imply that it is "purifying" and "cleaning" the audio signal seems to me like another example of marketing hyperbole for the purpose of selling yet another dongle that audiophiles must have. Hey, I don’t care what people say they hear, or how they spend their money, or how manufacturers make a buck, but it sure would be nice if posters on these forums stated their cases and examples and moved on rather than labeling and name-calling, lumping everyone here into one side or another, and pitting them against each other. A while ago, I answered one of Geoff Kait’s questions correctly and he sent me some small tiles with copper foil on them. I just sat them on top of the power cables that feed my monoblocks and hey, guess what...MASSIVE improvement! Veils were lifted, fog cleared, trumpets sounded, and I was transmorphed to an audiophile utopia where there were no standing waves, RFI, or hissing tweeters - everything was clean and flat with excellent tone and dynamics. You gotta try these... |
@mitch2 POTD by some way 😀 |
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