This is a collection of thoughts and statements about things that annoy me. I am a big, angry man. Hear me roar, or piss off and give me peace.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Audiophools

I have been saving this rant up for a rainy day. People know I like to listen to music. People know I like my small collection of Hi-Fi things in the corner of the room. People also know I like shiny toys.

People should also know that some shiny toys are all fur coat and no knickers.

50 quid for a mains lead... Here's one for £170 That's not the worst of it... £1924.00 for a mains cable? What the fuck is the world coming to? Who buys this shit?

We even have some guy on his website telling us to remove the fuse from the plug! Well, hell mend him when his house burns down due to faulty wiring. But that's probably because he hasn't seen this wonderful product - a bargain at £47.50

They're less than a fiver from normal outlets... Sure, not gold plated, but when you consider the electrical noise in the average home ring main, what good is gold plating going to do you? Also consider the whopping great big transformers or switched mode power supply that's in your Hi-Fi... Do you seriously think that these devices which are designed to cope with fluctuations in mains voltage - since you never really get 240 V AC at 50 Hz out of that little socket on the wall.

I'm not the only person in the world who thinks this sort of thing is madness...
This chap
has a collection of interesting links - I particularly like the Shakti stone that chases away electromagnetic interference... Bwahahahahahaha!

How about this for snake oil? CD Flux, A spray that makes your CDs sound "more dynamic" whatever that means... Flux off! How about picking up some Isopropyl Alcohol instead, that will cost a lot cheaper than £75 and do just as good a job at cleaning the disk, which is all that other stuff is going to do anyway - it's not like it can make 0s and 1s magically appear where there aren't any - only remove the fingerprints and other dirt on the disk.

I am still looking for links to the solid wood volume knob which enhances sound quality by being wooden, or something. It made me laugh.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's a wooden volume knob which is one of 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets at wired.com.

Anonymous said...

Replace the fuses in your plugs and just here the difference.

Joe said...

Man, that's just crazy - everyone knows if you arrange your album collection and speakers according to the principals of Feng Shui and sit a crystal on top of your head when listening to music it will remove all interference without using gold plated doodahs :-)

Anonymous said...

You might also be interested in this site, where the author lists his favourite 'worst' audiophile components.