Are they taking the f'n p^ss?

[Terry Bites]

https://ripcaster.co.uk/Nordost_Odin_Gold_Loudspeaker_Cable?v=4406
The dog's blx indeed. We're obviously all working in the wrong chuffin' sector. 

Stick this in your plughole.
ripcaster.co.uk/Nordost_QKORE3_Ground_Unit_Power_Supply

Get the Fusion BLX4Q2M8 while stocks last, only $9999k

[Gyro]

We have a Dodgy Technology section for such posts / threads.

[Terry Bites]

We do?

[CaptDon]

Years ago there was a double blind intensive study done with all of the normal cheap speaker wires and the grossly overpriced cables. The funniest part of it all was that 12/2 NM (No bare ground as with 12/2 + G) was the clear hands down winner!!! And available cheaply at the neighborhood hardware store!! I hate Audiophools!! If ever there was a hardheaded idiot who thinks outrageous prices insure outrageous quality it is the Audiophile! It is amazing in double blind studies what you can lash up 'behind the curtain' and get reviews like "The most transparent sound stage I have ever heard"...."The highs were so open and airy"....."The lows were so fast and accurate". With sources like Krako, Spark-O-Matic, Capehart from K-Mart etc. etc.!! I am a sound engineer with trained ears as well as a working musician and I can get as good of sound for a total investment of around $1000 as an Audiophool can get at $30,000+. Afterall, look at how bad the on stage equipment was when the recording was made!! Do we really need to spend $30,000 to preserve that shitty sound and generate no 'unwanted' artifacts!!! Hehehehe, a fool and his money are soon parted, especially an Audiophool. Cheers mates, support local live music because we need the bucks!!

[mikerj]

We do?

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/

[samofab]

Think of this product as a two part item. One part is the wire that caries the signal. That costs a few quid. The other part (and the rest of the price) is "it looks really, really nice and makes the buyer tingle inside with joy and hapiness". Granted, the second part doesn't work on everbody, but who are we to judge.

[xrunner]

Mmm Hmmm ... yea the market is there. But buying that cable will not be enough. You'll need to buy speaker wire blocks or supports so it won't run along the floor which will corrupt the signal because of the carpet fairies or whatever badness exists there. Spend another couple thousand for those supports. It never will be enough.

Oh wait ... did the artists in the studio or live recording have their speaker wires supported so the sound wasn't distorted? This is all very complicated! 

[fourfathom]

Years ago there was a double blind intensive study done with all of the normal cheap speaker wires and the grossly overpriced cables. The funniest part of it all was that 12/2 NM (No bare ground as with 12/2 + G) was the clear hands down winner!!!

I remember seeing this.  What puzzles me is that there *was* a "hands down winner".  Unless the audiophool cables were ridiculously undersized (which I doubt) then there should have been no perceivable difference.  So while I think the fancy cables are a waste of money and provide no advantage over plain fat copper wire, I do have to question this study.

Unless of course the winning criteria included a performance vs price factor, but I don't recall seeing those details.

[CJay]

I went through a short phase of being 'into HiFi' 30 or so years ago but rapidly fell out of it when I realised how much bullshit was being talked in the various mags.

I do however have a memory of a prank that caught out some rather well respected golden ears reviewers, someone placed an ad for a product that would transform your turntable, all you had to do was send them a sum of money (£17 lights a dim memory, not a lot but also not a small amount 30 years ago) and they'd send you their miracle product.

Said miracle product was to be placed under one, only one, foot of your turntable and they guaranteed you'd be amazed but did suggest you might have to experiment to discover which foot it needed to be under.

The product got rave reviews published (no, it wasn't April) and started to sell.

A lot.

It came out that it had been a prank and that the miracle product was a couple of square inches of polyethylene which had been cut from some unusual colour bin bags.

Then there was a lot of face saving debate about why it sounded so good by the reviewers who'd been fooled.

[langwadt]

I'm sure it is some elaborate money laundering scheme

[Simon]

Yes, yes, they are taking the piss. It's either a joke or people are dumb enough to pay those sums. If people are dumb enough to part with those sums then you would hope that they can afford it if it makes them happy. My sisters father in law in one of those, we just have to agree to differ on the fact that he can tell tell the difference when there is a skew between 2 10MHz clock signals.

[MrMobodies]

ripcaster.co.uk/Nordost_QKORE3_Ground_Unit_Power_Supply
Get the Fusion BLX4Q2M8 while stocks last, only $9999k

These imperfections may be generated by airborne pollution on the AC line....:

ripcaster.co.uk
Joke: They go fishing. When they catch someone using like the wild claims above they cast them in and rip them off.

[amyk]

What puzzles me is that there *was* a "hands down winner".  Unless the audiophool cables were ridiculously undersized (which I doubt) then there should have been no perceivable difference.  So while I think the fancy cables are a waste of money and provide no advantage over plain fat copper wire, I do have to question this study.

I wonder if they also contained passive components like resistors or capacitors, which would certainly change the sound audibly (and possibly not in a good way, but after someone spent that amount of money, it's easy to convince oneself that the different sound is "better" somehow.)

Recent example: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/wooden-electrolytic-capacitors/

[DavidAlfa]

Need this in Spanish to sneakily post thousands of them in the EE department.
Yes, must be in spanish, those idiots had a box of Allen keys tagged "All In keys", imagine the rest.

Thought about this joke on Friday when coming back home from a tiresome week.
I'll be posting this in the testing racks tomorrow! (I translated it for posting here).