Funniest snake oil theories

Status
Not open for further replies.
Religion thus Appleisme have no place in this house!

I've had plenty of problems with my S7, reliability and service. I will be going back to Apple next phone. With my previous phones, even though another provider was supposed to service my i5S, and didn't, the Applestore on 3 different occasions, said there was just too much going on to fix instore,and asked who my provider was, and my account number with said provider. The genius then apologised that a provider they dealt with wouldn't look after the issues, and said they didn't wish me to be without a phone while it was being fixed, and gave me a new phone to place my own sim card in.
Had no idea the Samsung Store would laugh at me, when I walked in hoping for similar service.
 
As per my recent post in another thread, I have been busy with work/shows and other experimentations, I will get back to it soon.

This evening I caught up with the local health store naturopath/dietician etc chick to check up on her now long term experience/findings of using my modded Sony elcheapo earbud headphones.
The result is overwhelmingly positive preference for the treated pair, and other associated observations that I won't go into here.

Dan.
 
By chance I watched the Youtube videos of the 2018 CES yesterday and to me the demonstrated differences were abundantly clear (on laptop speakers), so much so that 'Blind Freddie' would have no trouble distinguishing the two.

Analogplanet reader comment -
Whatever claims of snake oil and witchcraft, a true scientific attitude necessitates both skepticism and an open mind. I routinely demonstrate this experiment in my studio and the difference is clear as night and day. Not everyone has a good set of ears, nor a system capable of resolving it (does not have to be an expensive system, just a resolving, well-setup one).
So which is it....do you suffer negative expectation bias or lousy (non resolving) system or lousy (non resolving) ears or all of the above ?....polite question.

Post of the year...
Mike has put up with a lot of idiots over the years, and he allows them to post here, so we can give him a pass. Many of the smartest people I've known (in some areas) are also the most profoundly ignorant in other areas, because they are know-it-alls. You can't teach a know-it-all. They're worse than mere idiots as some idiots can be taught new things.
I've had the same experience with a couple of well-credentialed men. One, a Cal Tech grad, very successful in his work, but a know-it-all, outright insulting on the issue of cables and interconnects. He has zero experience with different cables and interconnects, and is impervious to new information. I finally asked his, when he was a horny teenage virgin, did he claim to tell the sexually active what it was *really* like? Because he had no skin in this game (no pun intended), either.

If know-it-alls come here and post drivel at Mike's site, he has the right to call them out in any manner he chooses.

Dan.
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2017
I'm currently watching Star Trek DS9 on dvd that is hooked up to a vintage tv set and an inbuilt mono speaker. As far as I'm concerned the audio and video quality is the best I've ever heard despite watching the same material on a big screen brand new Panasonic LCD tv set. Probably because I grew up watching tv on this type of television in this type of aspect ratio, but I suppose its also because the color range of a CRT is better than LCD, and also because the dvd player plays all frames correctly in an interlaced format which reproduces the original framerate perfectly.

The point is, if I'm convinced that this television is the best thing since sliced bread then I'm pretty sure that people can be convinced without a doubt that a power cable can make a difference.
 
Last edited:
By chance I watched the Youtube videos of the 2018 CES yesterday and to me the demonstrated differences were abundantly clear (on laptop speakers), so much so that 'Blind Freddie' would have no trouble distinguishing the two.
.

I watched the video. The good cable correlated with the hi-fi getting about 3db louder and something started distorting too, either the hi-fi or the mic picking up the sound.

Not a very clever trick, power cables don't cause ~3dB loudness changes. It's just enough that people don't notice it's louder, but they notice it sounds "better."

That's my take on it, my opinion only of course.
 
I have no doubt power cables will make a difference. But the price vs performance is really a value issue and will differ. I have tested many cables on CD players, and most often just going to thicker cables gave a thicker sound, and I have changed a few to get a better balance. What I have not done yet is spend the time to figure out what measurement will show a difference. Originally I though maybe the ground is effected, but in my room, there is no line ground. So there must be something else. Do the cables change the power factor in any way was my next guess, but I have not gone into detail to study the issue. It will probably remain that way for a while.
 
I have to admit, soon after entering diy audio and failing to get it right after much money spent, the idea of the cd demagnetizer, the paper foil copper capacitor and coloring the other side of the cd with a black marker suddenly looked appealing.

Although I never succumbed to the hifi power cord nor the hifi cables being an electrician, I invested in this component which is almost impossible to single out, the capacitor, the biggest enigma in the audio business.
 
I have no doubt power cables will make a difference. But the price vs performance is really a value issue and will differ. I have tested many cables on CD players, and most often just going to thicker cables gave a thicker sound, and I have changed a few to get a better balance. What I have not done yet is spend the time to figure out what measurement will show a difference. Originally I though maybe the ground is effected, but in my room, there is no line ground. So there must be something else. Do the cables change the power factor in any way was my next guess, but I have not gone into detail to study the issue. It will probably remain that way for a while.

This is self hypnotism
 
I think the measurement part is important to at least get into the ball park of optimizing a match. However, for now, I am quite satisfied with the thickest cable commonly available at commodity prices. I am starting to look at USB cables though, just experienced a device that actually reverses my experience among the same cables when used in other devices.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.