What, if anything, is the harm in "unusual" audio products?

[jj]

In the high end audio industry, there are a variety of products that are touted to have particularly extraordinary effects, as well as prices. While I won't name any particular one product, it does seem likely that some of these products, err, transcend the boundary between invention and fantasy. Said products are most often sold to folks who have shown great enthusiasm for such products, and who routinely reject the need for things like Double-Blind Tests in audio products.

The questions:

Is there any harm accrued by having these products built, sold, and used?

Is this a case of "buyer beware"?

If there is harm, what is the harm, and where does it accrue?

I have my own position, which is fairly well known, but I'll throw this open for discussion for now.

Some examples of things to consider, either real or imaginary as they may be:

http://www.omigaaudio.co.uk/Services.htm

http://www.omigaaudio.co.uk/Defiant.htm

http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/product/quantum/quantum.html

http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/priceus.html

http://www.bybeetech.com/

http://www.puristaudiodesign.com/rls.htm

Or perhaps an "information" site such as:

http://users.informatik.haw-hamburg.de/~windle_c/Logologie/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-risk.html

[Darat]

From reading some of your links isn't it really something that should be covered in general consumer and advertising legislation & regulation?

After all if they are making a claim for their product then they should be obligated to be able to prove that claim is true.

The idea of spending £400 quid on a “Digital interconnect” cable that somehow (magically I suppose) has been treated to ensure the 1 and 0s flow....

Just stopped for a second to get a quote from the site to finish that sentence and re-read the blurb (http://www.omigaaudio.co.uk/Defiant.htm) and realised it is very well put together.

The only specific claims made about their product are "The Defiant is culmination of several key areas of Omiga Audios research combining together to produce a cable that really is something quite special." and "So a little a care is required when selecting a digital interconnect, for contrary to popular thoughts not all cables were created the same. A few stand out from the crowd and begged to heard."

The rest is a very flowery description of any “Digital interconnect” cable but slanted to seems as if it is unique to the Defiant cable!

It certainly insidiously tries to make a specific impression. I suspect they are on the borderline of UK consumer “truth in advertising” guidelines.

(Anyone interested I can provide a 2m “Digital interconnect” – that’s twice the length of the Defiant cable for only £600.00 – that’s a saving of £200.)

JJ – I understand with your background why these magical paraphernalia bother you but I do think it has to be a matter of “truthfulness in advertising” and “buyer beware” that provides the protection.




But goodness me I didn’t realise that so much of it existed!(Edited to reduce the reliance on justs.)

[Zep]

How about a little call/email to Choice and Which? magazines, outlining your salient points? I'm sure they would really like to hear from someone with genuine qualifications on the subject...

[El Greco]

A popular audio magazine here with experienced hi-fidelitists organized a double blind test a few years ago when provoked from a computer magazine. They couldn't even tell 320bit MP3s from original reference recordings. Cable testing was a disaster for the testers of the audio magazine.

The harm I see is of about the same type as the one homeopathic products cause.

[Darat]

Originally posted by El Greco
...snip...

The harm I see is of about the same type as the one homeopathic products cause.

I don't really agree. These deprive someone of just money whilst as we know all to well homeopathy can deprive people of their life.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Darat


I don't really agree. These deprive someone of just money whilst as we know all to well homeopathy can deprive people of their life.
It depends on what condition is being "treated." For most people, they are simply wasting their money. For those with serious conditions, they are risking their lives. There is also, however, the problem of serious and dangerous mislabeling. This problem is growing in both "naturopathy" and "homeopathy." Real medicines are being slipped into "all-natural" nostrums. (One can only speculate why.) Homeopathic nostrums sometimes contain very non-homeopathic concentrations. IIRC, Rosemary Jacobs, for example, was given supposedly homeopathic colloidal silver as a young girl. One look at her argyria and there is little doubt that it was not homeopathic.

[El Greco]

Originally posted by Darat

I don't really agree. These deprive someone of just money whilst as we know all to well homeopathy can deprive people of their life.

I said of the same type, not same magnitude.

[Reb]

jj, I was wondering if you could give us your opinion about the Wilson speakers I brought up in this thread:
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=1869996609

Reb

[jj]

Originally posted by Reb
jj, I was wondering if you could give us your opinion about the Wilson speakers I brought up in this thread:
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=1869996609

Reb

Um, do you like them? I don't do product reviews for a lot of reasons, but especially with loudspeakers, if you like them, they're what you want. No loudspeaker is anything like "perfect", they can't be because having information only from one point in space coming in by itself means that they don't have the information.

[jj]

Originally posted by Darat
But goodness me I didn’t realise that so much of it existed!(Edited to reduce the reliance on justs.)

FYI, I just put up one or two of them. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of these things. Did you check out the "Quantum Clip"?

[jj]

Originally posted by Zep
How about a little call/email to Choice and Which? magazines, outlining your salient points? I'm sure they would really like to hear from someone with genuine qualifications on the subject...

What's "Choice" and "Which"?

[Reb]

Originally posted by jj
Um, do you like them?
<grin>
I've never even listened to them. They're way out of my price range.

I don't do product reviews for a lot of reasons, but especially with loudspeakers, if you like them, they're what you want. No loudspeaker is anything like "perfect", they can't be because having information only from one point in space coming in by itself means that they don't have the information.

OK, granted.
I wasn't really interested in a product review as much as a general opinion as to whether any loudspeaker was worth that kind of money.

Thanks,
Reb

[Rolfe]

I've heard it suggested that audio improvements are genuinely "quantum" - meaning that the early steps are large and easy to appreciate, but later steps get closer and closer and the increments may be difficult to pick up.

Certainly the difference between a real budget system ("the speakers would have difficulty obtaining type approval for use as shoeboxes" was one memorable quote) and good-quality audio is easy for anyone to hear. But after a certain point, you do have to wonder how much is real and how much snobbery.

I read one trial which showed fairly conclusively that a budget tuner and a top-of-the-range Galaxy aerial array was consistently rated much superior to a "high-quality" tuner and an ordinary roof-top FM aerial. Which does make you think.

I have got some sort of fancy biwiring on my speakers, but since there's something wrong with my LP12, it's not really showing to best advantage.

Rolfe.

[epepke]

Originally posted by jj
Is there any harm accrued by having these products built, sold, and used?

That's a difficult question.

I think they cause harm.

However, as I get older, especially during such periods when this involves getting poorer, which are my current conditions, I care less and less about the harm that they cause.

There are only so many times that I am willing, for free, to argue with somebody who has absolute faith in how their green pen improve the quality of their CDs, without deriving any personal benefit from the exchange, before I decide that there is no profit in it.

[Zep]

Originally posted by jj


What's "Choice" and "Which"? Consumer advocate associations. They laboratory test products without fear or favour and publish an similarly named magazine showing these test results. Usually it is consumer-orientated stuff: washing machines, vaccuum-cleaners, stereos, cleaners, baby products, peanut butters, etc, etc.

Look at www.choice.com.au and http://www.which.co.uk/

[jj]

Originally posted by epepke
There are only so many times that I am willing, for free, to argue with somebody who has absolute faith in how their green pen improve the quality of their CDs, without deriving any personal benefit from the exchange, before I decide that there is no profit in it.

Now, I find that position so sensible as to be unremarkable. I hope you don't mind. :)

[jj]

I find that the harm is to the science, and to the knowledge base. A great deal of money goes into oddities (quackery or not), that might instead go into real research and understanding.

Some of that might (and has, i.e. "Resound", etc) play directly into how to deal with hearing loss, etc.

That isn't, though, the primary loss, as medical research does still happen, although the process is mostly intractable from the scientific viewpoint. The primary loss is in basic understanding of what people do and do not like.

[epepke]

Originally posted by jj
I find that the harm is to the science, and to the knowledge base. A great deal of money goes into oddities (quackery or not), that might instead go into real research and understanding.

Some of that might (and has, i.e. "Resound", etc) play directly into how to deal with hearing loss, etc.

That isn't, though, the primary loss, as medical research does still happen, although the process is mostly intractable from the scientific viewpoint. The primary loss is in basic understanding of what people do and do not like.

Oh, well, that's primarily economics. I don't know economics. What's worse is that I know that I don't know economics, as I've dealt with the numeric behavior of some of the equations that they use. Not to mention trying to find the determinants of these huge matrices before the sun burns out.

But given that there doesn't seem to be much public interest in funding research, the question seems to me to revolve around who, intuitively speaking, would find a better use for the money.

I remember seeing a teevee show about rich people. One of the rich people had a $3M pizza oven. From the video, it was nothing special. Now, it just so happens that a pizza oven is one of the things I want when I get rich. (I also want one of those wok stations, where the gas burner is inside the sink and there's a faucet over the wok, but I digress.) A really good, gas-fired, commercial quality pizza oven will set you back anywhere between $4000 and $10,000. So, that means there's a $2,990,000 deficit. Add in another $20,000 for a nice piece of marble and some installation. That still leaves $2,970,000.

Now, who gets it? Personally, I think that I'd rather see it in the hands of someone smart enough to bilk someone out of $3M for a pizza oven than someone stupid enough to pay that. This may be considered harsh, but it's my gut feeling.

Gibbon pointed out in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire way back when that luxury is probably the best means of distributing the wealth that anybody has come up with so far. Now, you can take your Marx, but I still think he's right.

[jj]

Originally posted by epepke

Now, who gets it? Personally, I think that I'd rather see it in the hands of someone smart enough to bilk someone out of $3M for a pizza oven than someone stupid enough to pay that. This may be considered harsh, but it's my gut feeling.


No, it's not harsh, it's Darwinian. The only problem I have with it is when the person who got the 3 mil uses it to bilk others, instead of spending it on something productive.


Gibbon pointed out in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire way back when that luxury is probably the best means of distributing the wealth that anybody has come up with so far. Now, you can take your Marx, but I still think he's right.

Gibbon has a few points in his favor, yes. :D

[epepke]

Originally posted by jj
No, it's not harsh, it's Darwinian. The only problem I have with it is when the person who got the 3 mil uses it to bilk others, instead of spending it on something productive.

I don't know how Darwinian it is. But I do like craftsmen, and if some of that money got to craftsmen, that's OK by me.

As for the rest, I don't know how to judge the investment decisions of pizza-oven-makers versus the investment decisions of CEOs of internet-bubble companies.

[jj]

Originally posted by epepke


I don't know how Darwinian it is. But I do like craftsmen, and if some of that money got to craftsmen, that's OK by me.


Agreed, to that extent.


As for the rest, I don't know how to judge the investment decisions of pizza-oven-makers versus the investment decisions of CEOs of internet-bubble companies.


***chuckle*** Well, at least in the first case you still have the pizza oven, eh?

[DrMatt]

Has anybody here ever actually heard a Bose Wave CD alarm clock?

Does it have any stereo separation?
Does it accomplish anything beyond what adding a 20-dollar set of speakers with subwoofer will do for a boom box?

[Darat]

Originally posted by DrMatt
Has anybody here ever actually heard a Bose Wave CD alarm clock?

Does it have any stereo separation?
Does it accomplish anything beyond what adding a 20-dollar set of speakers with subwoofer will do for a boom box?

No idea but I have a pair (1st gen) of their noise-cancelation headphones and they were worth every single penny I paid for them.

[Monketey Ghost]

Originally posted by DrMatt
Has anybody here ever actually heard a Bose Wave CD alarm clock?

Does it have any stereo separation?
Does it accomplish anything beyond what adding a 20-dollar set of speakers with subwoofer will do for a boom box?

I recall hearing one at a girlfriend's house. From around the corner, unseen, I thought it sounded like ... good sound. I can't say though, if it's really better than a boombox setup.

[davefoc]

I think the claims made for the high end video cables are about as bogus as the claims for the high end audio cables.

There is an interesting marketing technique associated with these cables. I notice that some electronic stores that obviously have very small margins on the electronic equipment they sell because of the competetiveness of the market sell fancy looking cables that obviously have very high margins.

Some of these stores don't even carry routine inexpensive video cables. I also notice that the salesmen in these stores have practiced pitches about these cables that certainly edge toward making fraudulent claims.

[Beanbag]

I've used everything from solid bell wire to 12 AWG lamp cord to (borrowed) premium speaker cables in my stereos for about the past 30 years. According to my ears, the lamp cord was indistinguishable from the welding cables cleverly re-labeled as speaker wire, and at a fraction of the cost. It's what I use today. Cheap, rugged, easily available, and UL listed.

In the past, I worked as an engineering tech with a major defense contractor, and spent a lot of time rubbing elbows with engineers of various levels of education and experience. We worked mainly in the gigahertz range, but there was a large percentage of audiophiles among the group. "Monster" cables were just starting to some out, and some time was spent discussing their benefits. The gist of the conversation was that, yes, there was a MEASURABLE difference with the new cables, but it took a lot of very expensive testing equipment to detect the difference. Technically, there is data to support most claims for the high-end audio products, but as far as your ears go, it's all the same.

What really makes me laugh are the tube audio nuts who say that vacuum tube amplifiers give the best reproduction of sound. Hogwash. They have a lousy transfer across the audio spectrum. They just distort the sound in a way that's pleasing to some people's ears. About the silliest thing I ever saw was a CD player with a built-in 2-tube amplifier. Sort of like taking your purified, distilled water and adding a handful of mud to it.

Still, I can't complain too loudly. I work in a field where my income depends on people's propensity to spend absurd amounts of money on mechanical watches whose timekeeping properties are about three orders of magnitude worse than a $10.00 quartz watch from Wal-Mart.

Regards;
Beanbag

[Walter Wayne]

Originally posted by Beanbag
What really makes me laugh are the tube audio nuts who say that vacuum tube amplifiers give the best reproduction of sound. Hogwash. They have a lousy transfer across the audio spectrum. They just distort the sound in a way that's pleasing to some people's ears. About the silliest thing I ever saw was a CD player with a built-in 2-tube amplifier. Sort of like taking your purified, distilled water and adding a handful of mud to it.
Oh, I wish I remembered the website, but somewhere out there, one can get a PC sound card with tubes.

Walt

[davefoc]

I sent this email to maker of the cable cooker:
I can not see any possible physical mechanism to explain why your cable cooker product would work.

I am an electrical engineer, which of course doesn't mean that I know everything even about electronics, but in all of my thirty years as an engineer I have rarely seen a theory that seemed less likely to be valid than the theory behind your cable cooker.

Do you have any test data to back up the theory behind your product? Do you think that you could tell the difference between a cable which has been treated with your cable cooker and one that hasn't using any testing technology whatsoever?

I don't suppose you will have any interest in responding to an email like this, but if you decide to thank you in advance for your time.

Best Regards,
Dave

I received a polite sincere reply where person responded that they believed there was a small but detectable difference between a cooked and uncooked cable.

I would quote the email, but the email contained a statement claiming privacy for the response, so out of respect for the person that took the time to reply and his company's claims of privacy with respect to the email I won't.

[jj]

I've occasionally sent polite questions to some of the folks on the web sites, but since I'm pretty well known in the field, I don't often get answers, and when I do they are often of the "hi, jj, how are you" nature.

[EvilYeti]

Originally posted by jj

Is there any harm accrued by having these products built, sold, and used?

Is this a case of "buyer beware"?

If there is harm, what is the harm, and where does it accrue?

I have my own position, which is fairly well known, but I'll throw this open for discussion for now.


This is in an interesting discussion, as I think we can all agree the products are bullsh!t, but the question of whom is being harmed is much more difficult.

Its obvious that the person purchasing the cables is being defrauded, but since most, if not all, are happy with their purchase its unclear how they are actually being "harmed". One might even argue, though I would disagree, that the seller is merely catering to a specific lifestyle with his grandiose claims. But what to do? Send in government troops to raid high-end audio salons? In that case the cure is worse than the disease, IMHO.

Lately I've been reading about the philosophy behind free markets. Fraudlent product claims break free market transactions, as the buyer and sellers knowledge of the product is asymmetric. As such I feel the correct solution is to even the balance. Create a certification program for advertising that requires any claims to be subject to scientifc scrutiny by an independant party. Require all advertising to carry a clear warning if its claims to not stand up to scrutiny.

I have no problem if a consumer still decides to purchase goods advertised in a fraudulent manner as long as there was full disclosure.

[Luke T.]

jj, are you sure some of these "products" aren't deliberate hoaxes, as in parodies?

The Quantum Clip had me cracking up, but they didn't appear to be actually selling it. It read more like a humor article.

The Cable Cooker. :D

Priceless.

[jj]

Originally posted by Luke T.
jj, are you sure some of these "products" aren't deliberate hoaxes, as in parodies?

The Quantum Clip had me cracking up, but they didn't appear to be actually selling it. It read more like a humor article.

The Cable Cooker. :D

Priceless.

Testamonials exist for each of these that I listed. In most of the really odd cases, the inventor appears quite sincere.

I'm not aware of any of them being wind-ups, in fact PWB has sent copies of their "rainbow quantum foil" to people on request a few times, for instance, on their own nickel.

Go to www.audioasylum.com and read the cable asylum, or the stunning hostility toward science and DBT's that runs throughout the entire site, if you have trouble believing that people actually buy this stuff.

[Soapy Sam]

If people buy this stuff, I can't understand why I got no interest in my ads for RV-proof Saranwrap two years ago.

The world is a hard place for the psientific entrepreneur.

[Scott Wheeler]

JJ

We are limmiting this discussion to products that are unquestionably not making any difference in the sound correct?
If so we have to look at what is the result of dishonesty and what is the result of self-dellusion. I think the deliberate sales of snake oil with the undertanding that the maker fully knows he or she is selling garbage is harmful. It is consumer fraud. OTOH what about the honest sales of products that are believed to make a sonic difference but really make a psychological difference? And what of that difference? If someone feels better about their stereo are they not benefiting from the sales of some product that doesn't really make an audible difference? A classic case of this would be the percieved differences in speakers based on their looks. If better looking speakers make people think they sound better I think there is some value in that illusion. I have heard that in some cases when the "objectivists" and "subjectivists" get together to settle the score over the sound of amps that in sighted comparisons even the "objectivists" have reported hearing differences that seem to not be present in controled tests. Now this brings up an interesting question. If the non-believers think they hear a difference in sighted tests is there not reason to believe that the percieved difference has value?

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by Darat
I don't really agree. These deprive someone of just money ...

I don't think it's even that. It's merely an expensive fetish, and after all music appreciation is purely subjective anyway.

[hammegk]

I'd say Scott is right on: just the usual snake-oil con artists who've chosen "audio science" to sell to the marks.

As long as nobody's buying but trust-fund babies, who cares? If middle class workers are the preferred targets, the scammers should be horsewhipped & ridden out of town on a rail. (Actually, just jail 'em for fraud & toss 'em in with the prison general population.)

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by hammegk
I'd say Scott is right on: just the usual snake-oil con artists who've chosen "audio science" to sell to the marks.


If not "trust fund babies" then people who can afford it anyway. I think it's mostly a question of conspicuous consumption more than woowooism.

Just knowing that your gear cost $20,000 makes it twice as good as if it cost $10,000. Like that.

There are people who are like that about clothes and haircuts, and while you might not admire such people, you don't say they're being ripped off.

Why not audio equipment?

[hammegk]

No problem whatsoever -- until the rabble & barbarians storm the barricades -- in protest of the ridiculously unequal distribution and expenditure of wealth.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by hammegk
No problem whatsoever -- until the rabble & barbarians storm the barricades -- in protest of the ridiculously unequal distribution and expenditure of wealth.

Do I detect a note of sarcasm?

Personally I'd rather be middle class and sell overpriced audio equipment to rich bastards than storm the barricades. But that's just me.

[hammegk]

Er, me too. It's the billions who have scarcely exceeded the subsistence level (or not) that worry me.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by hammegk
Er, me too. It's the billions who have scarcely exceeded the subsistence level (or not) that worry me.

Even our poor people excite their envy. I doubt that they've heard of high end audio, or would care.

It reminds me of the story, possibly apocryphal, of a Stalin era Soviet propaganda newsreel of strikers in the USA getting beat up by police.
They had to stop showing it. Too many comments along the line of "Will you look at the shoes on those workers!"

Niche piggishness like audiophiles has little to do with third world attitudes, IMO.

And Muslim types are more offended by our attitudes about sex than our prosperity.

[hammegk]

Agreed. This is but a teeny tiny straw vis-a-vis a camel's back.

[Beerina]

Speaking of audio products, my mother in law has been battling cancer, and has been recommended to get a prescription audio device, that, when listening to it, it supposedly reduces nausea.

If it's prescription, it must be effective, right? Yet it sounds hokey. I'm sorry, I know nothing more about this.