Audio snake oil
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Posted on Mar 22, 2009 11:41 pm
Tadpui
I am not a crook's head
Member Since: Mar 14, 2003
I was posting in a forum thread about favorite brands of instrument cables when I ended up going off on a tirade about Monster Cable and their total worthlessness as a company. If its one thing that gets me worked up is the downright silly business practices of this horrible company.
They make a good cable and guarantee it for life. That's good. But their lame excuses for why their cable is better than others, their ridiculous retail markup, and their dispicable business practices concerning their preservation of brand image make them absolutely deplorable as a company.
So I got to hating Monster Cable so much that I started Googling around looking for other obvious examples of total bullshit aimed at the ignorant audiophile with money burning a hole in his pocket. I stumbled across this page a ILikeJam.org:
www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html
Oh man read some of those links. Some of them have to be practical jokes of monumental proportions. Some of them have to be real though, aimed at dumbasses that simply don't know any better than to get suckered into buying incredibly expensive hoaxes and unproven, juvenile takes on new technology/theoretical sciences.
Its funny to read people actually trying to defend these products in the comments at the bottom of that page. I guess if I spent $3500 on a 3' length of cable and $50 on Machina Dynamica's "The New Intelligent Chip MD-20", then I'd probably be quick to defend my parting with hard-earned money too.
I guess when P.T. Barnum said that there's a sucker born every minute, he had NO FREAKING IDEA how true it was! Because there's obviously a whole ****-ton of suckers being born that actually buy into this total racket of an industry.
Boooooo to snake oil audiophile tweaks!
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Mar 23, 2009 01:07 am He's updated his site since last I saw it. Good stuff though. I actually know a guy with those Hallograph things... I just want to hang my jacket on them. Magic green markers, chips that you wave over discs, $30,000 speaker cables...
I wish I could invent something like those and just sell a few a year.
Mar 23, 2009 07:20 am The term is audiophool.
Seems I remember one study where the subjects were told they were listening to speakers connected with $3000 cables, when in fact, the amp was connected to the speakers via coat hanger wire. They were convinced that the high $$$ cables sounded superior.
A mind is a terrible thing.
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Mar 23, 2009 08:19 am Audiophool! Absolutely!
Placebo effect is a powerful psychological force and no doubt it accounts for the majority of the "results" from any listening tests for these hoax products.
Mar 23, 2009 08:38 am We had a similar situation going around Philly for a few years.
There was a company that was going around in white vans. Selling these speakers that they claimed were worth $2200.
Fox news bought a pair, and brought them to us. We disassembled them only to find out that the total cost of materials was a whooping $22.
The company since disappeared. But not bad if you can get it. A 1000% mark up! Now that's balls!
Mar 23, 2009 08:44 am Well, I bought a pair of speakers from the man in the van in the parking lot, they were great...I used them for a long time, then sold them for more than I bought them for.
Not saying they were the greatest speakers ever, but they most certainly were better than any in the price range I bought them for.
Mar 23, 2009 10:11 am I'm not saying that they didn't work. Or that they sounded terrible.
It just the fact that they were charging $2200 for a $22 box.
That just wrong!
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Mar 23, 2009 10:21 am Same thing for all of the botique cable brands. $150 for a $10 cable. I don't know what's worse: a company that marks up its products so much or a public that's ignorant enough to support it.
J-botByte-MixerMember
Since: Dec 04, 2007
Mar 23, 2009 02:44 pm Was it that last post I made in the recording thread that sparked this? ;)
But yeah, like I said in that post, I went to Sound Ideas here in town, which I still call a hi-fi-snob-store. Now I know they don't deal with studio equipment so much, but I figured I'd ask about XLR cables anyway. Guy said the only pair he had were a 10ft. pair. He wanted $600 for them. I didn't say it at the time, but I was thinking like "what, do they master my own music for me?" The first and last purchase I ever made at that place was to get a 1/4"->1/8" converter for my headphones. 10 bucks....for a converter....yeah.
It's a shame that the Discount Hi-Fi shop closed down. Now they had some good deals, and even had a number of customers who were DJs and the like.
Anyway, I got my XLR cables at Lipham music here in town; a pair of 3ft. cables. Think the make is Beldin, but don't quote me on that. $15 for the pair.
Mar 23, 2009 02:47 pm $600 for a 10' RCA cable...wow...
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Mar 23, 2009 03:20 pm That is pretty bad. But linked on the page I linked to above are some even more egregious crimes against suckers:
Quote:
Segue to the subject of this review, Music Interface Technology's Oracle v.2.1 interconnects and speaker cables. The total retail price of the products provided to me for review is a shade under $19,000 USD -- the interconnects cost $2995 and $3595 per single-ended and balanced pair respectively, while the speaker cables run a cool $8995.
Or Opus MM2 speaker cable for a cool $33,000 USD:
www.hifi-products.com/Tra...7,PicFront.html
It doesn't even say what the cable length is. But unless it can stretch around the world 1.5 times, I can guarantee that its not worth 33 grand.
Or how about $13,000 for a 5-foot speaker wire?
www.virtualdynamics.ca/co...secondary_id=43
Oh, its 60% off now! Wow, now its only $2,000! What a bargain!
Some of these scam artists deserve to get cancer of the lukemia of the AIDS of the eyes.
It's funny how the sites that review this stuff don't have a user comments section unless you email in your comments. Then the scammer gets to screen through the hundreds of people calling schenannigans to post the few nutballs' comments that praise this stuff. No user forums to be seen either. They can't afford to have an open debate about their products or actual user reviews because they're selling total BS.
J-botByte-MixerMember
Since: Dec 04, 2007
Mar 23, 2009 04:22 pm Man, I honestly don't know which disgusts me more. The bastards who peddle the stuff on the unwary, or the idiot sheep who vehemently defend the product.
-sigh-
Mar 23, 2009 04:46 pm That right folks. Step right up for the New H rc cables.
Not only will these cables carry your audio signal. But, it will do the voltage, and current all at the same time!
That's right! No more having to hook-up three different cables to do all. The new, and Improved H rc cables can do it all for you in just one connection.
All for the very very low price of $100.000 dollars the H rc cable will free you from the wire nightmares of yesterday.
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Mar 23, 2009 04:53 pm Seriously folks, he speaks the truth! I've used HRC brand oxygen-free bi-directional electron-aligned copper cable interconnects in my own home studio and I can't believe the difference! They use state-of-the-art technology to harness the power of gravitons and graviolis to really let you hear what you've been missing (assuming that you've been recently cured of total deafness).
Previously I had been using no cables at all so you can imagine that my signals were very difficult to hear. But once I plugged in with HRC brand cables, I can now hear such dynamic depth and articulate bass notes. Midrange sounds erupt from a cloud of blackness and surround me in a blanket of electron-aligned auditory hallucinations (did I mention that each HRC cable comes with a handful of magic mushrooms?).
$100,000 is really a low, low price for a cable that you'd pay $35,000,000 for elsewhere. Get them before they're gone!
zekthedeadcowEat Spam before it eats YOU!!!Member
Since: May 11, 2002
Mar 23, 2009 06:12 pm Ah! HRC brand oxygen-free bi-directional electron-aligned copper cable interconnects!!! With those I have reached an Signal to Noise Ratio of 1/99999!
Mar 23, 2009 06:25 pm Quote:
Man, I honestly don't know which disgusts me more. The bastards who peddle the stuff on the unwary, or the idiot sheep who vehemently defend the product.
Don't I know it. Between religion, politics, the media, and the Internet, I smile once a day when I get out of bed just to get it over with.
Mar 23, 2009 11:02 pm HRC cable disclaimer.
All sales are final even though it is a fictional product. Hospital wrist band and a valid Lithium prescription are required at the time of purchase. Any perception that this product actually exists or even can be purchased is purely based on your perception of reality. Minimum purchase amount is 10 per idiot. Any persons feeling that they are not an idiot and still wishes to make a purchase, can make a one time credit card payment of $1,000,000 dollars to the HRC and expect not to receive any product in the near future.
Mar 24, 2009 12:00 am Do yourselves a favor though and bookmark a few of those pages. With wives, GF's, even CPA's, they can come in handy.
My wife doesn't do my business finances, but she sees my inventory sheets every year.
When she knows that I spent around $.20 a foot on the speaker cables for "her" home theatre and $200 on the speaker cables on "my" system here, sometimes she asks questions on why mine are "so expensive."
Show here a pair of $30,000 speaker cables and suddenly $200 is a bargain.
A $20,000 monitoring chain is paltry compared to a $40,000 per channel amplifier.
Leave a page like that open on the computer once in a while before you leave in the morning. It "conditions" them over time to handle the shock better.
Mar 24, 2009 05:41 am OK, guys, any use or association of the HRC name or logo requires the expressed consent of...ME, I certainly don't consent to the name being associated with this stuff. :-)
...I'm just saying...
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Mar 24, 2009 10:10 am But all you have to do is sell ONE and you're set for life!*
*Minus court fees and any liability via lawsuit due to fraudulent advertising and shoddy merchandise.
