Nomination for Stupidest Lamest Audio Product, SLAP (TM)

[macboy]

I nominate Creative to receive a SLAP(TM), the award for designing and marketting the Stupidest Lamest Audio Product.

Creative's "Home Theater Connect" is a product which lets you connect the 5.1 channel analog outputs of your computer's soundcard, to the digital input of your surround receiver. The box digitises the 6 channels, encodes them into DTS, and sends this to your receiver for decoding. With this box you can:

1. Get an extra A/D -> D/A conversion
2. Get an extra lossy compression cycle
3. Do nothing you couldn't do with an analog connection to the receiver
4. Use even more cables than before
5. Avoid using the crappy DACs in your soundcard and analog connectio... wait, no, you still need all that.
6. Spend extra money

Some favourite marketting-speak quoted from the website:

"Without DTS-610 connecting your PC to your home theater involves ... the chore of figuring out how to connect the multitude of cables to the back of your receiver."

Um, no comment. That's just too stupid.

"Play... DRM-protected content, such as ... DVD-Audio disks."

Excellent. I can use this prouct to re-digitise (at an inferior sampling rate) the DVD-A signal coming from my crappy soundcard DACs and send this noisy distorted mess to my receiver instead. I could have used the analog connections from my souncard to my receiver, or even the digital connection, and played the DVD-video portion of the disc, but this is so much better.


Any other nominations for companies deserving a SLAP(TM) for designing audio products for a non-extistant market, or otherwise being horribly stupid?

[Cal Weldon]

Excellent example.

I'd like to nominate some of the people who buy $1000 plus audio cable. If ever there was a need for a slap...

Wait a minute. it's not the product's fault. It doesn't deserve the slap.

Cal

[macboy]

I'd like to nominate some of the people who buy $1000 plus audio cable. If ever there was a need for a slap...

Wait a minute. it's not the product's fault. It doesn't deserve the slap.

In my opinion, all makers of "directional" cables deserve to receive a SLAPTM.

[derf]

Shakti Stones, C37.....

But as Cal said, it's the people who buy these products that need a slappin', not the product itself.

[ThorstenL]

Konnichiwa,

Originally posted by macboy
Any other nominations for companies deserving a SLAP(TM) for designing audio products for a non-extistant market, or otherwise being horribly stupid?

I nominate all companies who make speakers that cannot provide a reasonable reproduction in acostically small rooms, that is all making conventional HiFi Speakers that do not have a reasonably well controlled and even directivity from the lowest range all the way up. That is an awfull lot of companies BTW.

Sayonara

[The Peasant]

http://www.gcaudio.com/cgi-bin/store...uct.cgi?id=190

From another current thread...

[Enzo]

I apologize in advance, but after the Tice Clock, everything else seems tame.

[derf]

What's a Tice clock, link us up....

I nominate all companies who make speakers that cannot provide a reasonable reproduction in acostically small rooms, that is all making conventional HiFi Speakers that do not have a reasonably well controlled and even directivity from the lowest range all the way up. That is an awfull lot of companies BTW.

Hey, no fair, that's like all speaker companies, isn't it?

[DigitalJunkie]

Originally posted by derf
What's a Tice clock, link us up....



Hey, no fair, that's like all speaker companies, isn't it?

And I thought bass was non-directional?


I dunno..I think my speakers sound darn good,Like a concert in my small bedroom.
But they weren't made by a company,just my Dad.

[derf]

Well, if you use some kind of dipole design, the output coming from the front of the driver meets the output coming from the rear at the edges of the baffle, and they cancel each other out to an extent.

How high they start canceling each other out depends on the size of the baffle.