Is the snake oil slowly retreating from the Hi-Fi industry?

Ryan-3 said:
Guys, everyone knows that the Gucci belt wearers of HiFi don't just stop at super. They go MEGA. Or MEGA++.

I seriously doubt the sanity of any person who buys any of their plugs.
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I seriously doubt the sanity of anyone who only buys the superfuse.

Super? I am only hoping that Russ releases the Mega++fuse.

Until then I am forced to listen to the practically dangerous levels of hiss and hum produced by the standard fuses...
 
Ryan-3 said:
Guys, everyone knows that the Gucci belt wearers of HiFi don't just stop at super. They go MEGA. Or MEGA++.

I seriously doubt the sanity of any person who buys any of their plugs.
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In their September 2009 issue, Hi-Fi Choice magazine agreed that the Mini Purifier really does make a significant improvement in mains noise reduction. They found “remarkably consistent” results across the wide range of kit they tested the Mini Purifier on, noting that sounds were “generally clearer and better defined” and, more importantly, rhythm is “more precise and convincing”.

For anyone wondering whether the difference achieved by the Mini Purifier will add anything more than good quality cables already do, they state that the “differences are qualitatively different from cable changes”. “The sound seems to acquire an extra delicacy and refinement, as if some rather rough-sounding distortion has been removed”.

In addition to mains noise, The Mini Purifier also deals with spikes and surges on the mains via its internal Superclamp (which can be upgraded to the Megaclamp for even more protection). HI-FI CHOICE notes that this “provides very rapid reaction to over-voltage spikes on the mains, adding to the general high-frequency filtering provided by the capacitors also included”.

Overall, they were very impressed with the results, summing up by saying that “just plugging a little box in near your hi-fi may sound like magic but the theory holds water and the results speak for themselves”.



Magazine: Hi-Fi Choice
Issue: September 2009
Verdict: 4 Stars
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IN YOUR FACE.







LOL
 
I am somewhat amazed that something easily quantifiable (like air pressure changes) aren't evaluated in an empirical way when reviewing audio equipment.

It's almost like it would prove that the actual differences between a lot of extremely expensive hifi equipment is nonsense...
 
The irony here, as always, is that a lot of you are poking fun at the fringe elements of the Hi-Fi enthusiast from the "safe ground" of the centre of the hobby. All the while, the rest of the country thinks we're all mad to spend more than £100 on a complete audio system. Who is 'right' exactly?
 
lucid said:
The irony here, as always, is that a lot of you are poking fun at the fringe elements of the Hi-Fi enthusiast from the "safe ground" of the centre of the hobby. All the while, the rest of the country thinks we're all mad to spend more than £100 on a complete audio system. Who is 'right' exactly?
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I own and have owned headphones worth around the £800-1200 mark, as well as the DAC/AMP setups required for them, as well as much more moderate stereo systems. I've always considered myself to be barely scraping the mid-level of the hobby in terms of investment. There comes a point where you start to hit diminishing returns hard, and in my experience that's around the £200-400 mark for headphones. Most people are best off finding a sound signature they like and buying something suitable within a more sensible budget. The thing is, you get people that often go from very entry level/crap gear to buying a decent quality pair of speakers or headphones, and there's a massive difference. So they expect that there will be another massive leap in quality by spending the same or more again, only that's very rarely the case.

You get a lot of snake oil being thrown at people because there's very little appreciable science to be found regarding the audio world for the home consumer. They've experienced that aforementioned primary high of going from 20 buck headphones or a £100 all in one stereo system to something better, and they're constantly told and marketed to that they can have that again and MORE by investing in X or Y. So they keep buying into it, and that's where it gets murky, how much is buyers denial or placebo? Then you've the extreme cases of unhealthy addiction, such as what you see in the video posted by @Poneros.

When you're living in a tiny one room apartment and wearing 15 year old clothes in order to satisfy your hobby addiction I'd say the people pointing and laughing are the ones ultimately, if but a little cruelly in this case, in the right. When you have people spending £2000 + on a power lead, I hope it's a case where they've more money than sense and the person isn't otherwise living as someone in poverty would.
 
Gray2233 said:
I own and have owned headphones worth around the £800-1200 mark, as well as the DAC/AMP setups required for them, as well as much more moderate stereo systems. I've always considered myself to be barely scraping the mid-level of the hobby in terms of investment. There comes a point where you start to hit diminishing returns hard, and in my experience that's around the £200-400 mark for headphones. Most people are best off finding a sound signature they like and buying something suitable within a more sensible budget. The thing is, you get people that often go from very entry level/crap gear to buying a decent quality pair of speakers or headphones, and there's a massive difference. So they expect that there will be another massive leap in quality by spending the same or more again, only that's very rarely the case.

You get a lot of snake oil being thrown at people because there's very little appreciable science to be found regarding the audio world for the home consumer. They've experienced that aforementioned primary high of going from 20 buck headphones or a £100 all in one stereo system to something better, and they're constantly told and marketed to that they can have that again and MORE by investing in X or Y. So they keep buying into it, and that's where it gets murky, how much is buyers denial or placebo? Then you've the extreme cases of unhealthy addiction, such as what you see in the video posted by @Poneros.

When you're living in a tiny one room apartment and wearing 15 year old clothes in order to satisfy your hobby addiction I'd say the people pointing and laughing are the ones ultimately, if but a little cruelly in this case, in the right. When you have people spending £2000 + on a power lead, I hope it's a case where they've more money than sense and the person isn't otherwise living as someone in poverty would.
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Agreed, it's easy for the unwary to get into diminishing returns and then into the madness of prestige pricing.

To take the dread issue of analogue interconnects, yes I have bought them rather than use the thin supplied cables because there seemed to be some logic behind using them to get the most out of the signal and frankly when you are connecting up separates costing hundreds of pounds each it's nice to do it with some decent looking cables. However, I never got sucked into believing that you needed to pay crazy money for exotic materials (platinum connectors really bring out the high end you know) and I have never bought upmarket digital optical cables or whatever.

It's good to know that if you do need a cheap lead to plug in your old CD player you can still snap up a bargain from Richer Sounds:

https://www.richersounds.com/hi-fi/.../chord-company-signature-tuned-aray-1-5m.html
 
And yet the studio that the record was recorded it will have used reasonably priced patch cables, XLR cables etc because aside from the lowest of the low which will come with damaged wires, terrible connections etc, the recording studio's primary concern is longevity, which you get for not a huge amount of money with cables. Can't have a bad XLR cable interrupting a recording session because a wire has failed after being used and put away 50 times.
 
Gray2233 said:
I own and have owned headphones worth around the £800-1200 mark, as well as the DAC/AMP setups required for them, as well as much more moderate stereo systems. I've always considered myself to be barely scraping the mid-level of the hobby in terms of investment. There comes a point where you start to hit diminishing returns hard, and in my experience that's around the £200-400 mark for headphones. Most people are best off finding a sound signature they like and buying something suitable within a more sensible budget. The thing is, you get people that often go from very entry level/crap gear to buying a decent quality pair of speakers or headphones, and there's a massive difference. So they expect that there will be another massive leap in quality by spending the same or more again, only that's very rarely the case.
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I can't see anything there than any reasonable person could disagree with. The Law of Diminishing Returns is well established in most areas of life. Hi-Fi gear is no exception; on that I think we can all agree.

Gray2233 said:
You get a lot of snake oil being thrown at people because there's very little appreciable science to be found regarding the audio world for the home consumer.
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Quite. It's all very subjective.

Even when there are measurable difference - and, for the sake of clarity, I'm saying something easy to measure such as the distortion levels comparing a £200 shelf system against a decent but-budget Hi-Fi system at say £1000 - even then, there are people who would prefer the cheaper system because it fulfils their expectation of what it should sound like, or maybe they can hear the difference but there are some other factors that keep them from accepting it as better for them. Subjectivity is a bitch :D

That's sort of the problem though. Many of our decisions are not rational. There are other factors at play.

The other issue is science itself. To the layman, science is absolute. Speak to a scientist though, and especially those very close to the boundaries of our knowledge, and they'll tell you that a lot of what we 'know' is simply best-guess based on some theories that seem to fit the world as we observe it. They're only in place until some better theory comes along.

The science then is incomplete, and our decisions are not truly objective.

The science tells me that a higher-end ARCAM amp measures broadly the same as a similarly priced Naim amp. The objectivists in the Hi-Fi camp (surely an oxymoron?) insist that all amplifiers sound the same fundamentally. The science is close enough to validate their world view. I'm not looking to buy either, so have no vested interest either way. Yet why do I find the sound of the ARCAM slow, ploddy and 'safe' compared to the Naim which seems faster, more agile and exciting?

The science hasn't yet got the complete vocabulary to make predictions based on adding up the collective effect of all the components involved in an amp or any other device. It's no wonder then that ordinary everyday language is equally incomplete.

This brings us to the next problem, and perhaps the source of much snake-oilery: The people making gear are often much-removed from the people buying the gear. There's a language issue.

I think that there are many facets to this, so what follows is just my view based on 35 years in the retail/commercial/broadcast electronics industry. From the consumer point of view I'll sum it up in one phrase; glassy-eyed. Every technical bod will have experienced it; that moment when the prospective purchaser's eyes glaze over because they just don't care about what they perceive to be small details. They want the big picture in a language they understand.





Gray2233 said:
They've experienced that aforementioned primary high of going from 20 buck headphones or a £100 all in one stereo system to something better, and they're constantly told and marketed to that they can have that again and MORE by investing in X or Y. So they keep buying into it, and that's where it gets murky, how much is buyers denial or placebo?
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That's pretty-much consumerism summed up in a nutshell though.

Gray2233 said:
Then you've the extreme cases of unhealthy addiction, such as what you see in the video posted by @Poneros.

When you're living in a tiny one room apartment and wearing 15 year old clothes in order to satisfy your hobby addiction I'd say the people pointing and laughing are the ones ultimately, if but a little cruelly in this case, in the right. When you have people spending £2000 + on a power lead, I hope it's a case where they've more money than sense and the person isn't otherwise living as someone in poverty would.
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Yes, it's extreme. But it isn't the general state for all Hi-Fi enthusiasts, or even a small fraction of them. Still, I wouldn't point and laugh.
 
Mr Badger said:
Isn't the point of digital devices that fundamentally they either work or they don't? If the picture or sound has interference or is breaking up that's one thing, but if everything is working properly to start with, how do people convince themselves that adding a "super fuse" or other extraneous component has improved the quality? Unless the super fuse upgraded their TV from HD to 4K or added HDR...
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I used to think that it works or it doesn't with digital but found out that is wrong. The quality of the cable can impact quality and cause other problems. It can be 100% worthwhile paying extra for a good quality HDMI cable though those £100+ cables are pointless.

Along with upgrading HDMI to a more pricy cable I was very surprised at the massive difference full copper audio cable makes compared to the cheap fake ones that are copper coated only. Up to a point it is worth while paying more for better quality cable.
 
Pottsey said:
I used to think that it works or it doesn't with digital but found out that is wrong. The quality of the cable can impact quality and cause other problems. It can be 100% worthwhile paying extra for a good quality HDMI cable though those £100+ cables are pointless.

Along with upgrading HDMI to a more pricy cable I was very surprised at the massive difference full copper audio cable makes compared to the cheap fake ones that are copper coated only. Up to a point it is worth while paying more for better quality cable.
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I haven't actually used HDMI with Hi Fi equipment. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, once you have digital gear working properly then in theory upgrades to connections or power supplies are pointless. Yes you can fix a problem with interference, fluctuating power, a substandard component or whatever, but as long as all the 010101 are getting through correctly then no further improvement should be possible.

If you read my other post I have admitted to buying upgraded analogue interconnects, and of course speaker cable too.
 
Gray2233 said:
I thought the guy with his own electricity pole was bad, then the guy in the tiny bedsit with $100,000 speakers taking up half the space came along.
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Not to mention that all that money is wasted when listening to said speakers in such a small overcrowded space the sound is so dampened it becomes pointless. He needs a relatively fairly large sparse room to take full advantage. Anyway, I've seen loads of experiments on YouTube with audiophiles and it's pretty conclusive that you really can't hear any difference once you pass spending $10,000 on a hi-fi in terms of audio quality. They really struggle in blindfold tests.
 
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