Hilarious list of audiophile products

[Hi Ho]

http://www.ilikejam.dsl.pipex.com/audiophile.htm

My favorite has to be the CD/DVD "demagnetizer". Can anyone tell me why a plastic and aluminum disc has to be demagnetized?

 

[Brian_the_King]

...My favorite has to be the CD/DVD "demagnetizer". Can anyone tell me why a plastic and aluminum disc has to be demagnetized?

Because people buy them.

I would love to meet the people that buy this stuff.

 

[highfihoney]

Ive seen all this junk but i still look,kinda like a train wreck,stupid fools that buy this junk i swear.

Anyhow,does this cat's lips seem abnormally red to anybody else,looks like he's been suckin on a hot exhaust pipe to me

 

[mtrycrafts]

http://www.ilikejam.dsl.pipex.com/audiophile.htm
Can anyone tell me why a plastic and aluminum disc has to be demagnetized?

Because some of the so called 'professionals' are into this voodoo:

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/4/40646.html

Steve Hoffman is supposed to be a recording engineer?

He is the one pictured by hifihoney

 

[AdrianMills]

Actually, what gets me is the fact that, at the very least, a small proportion of the people that buy into the hokum are quite intelligent; just take a look on almost any high end forum and you'll see that there are a bunch of research scientists, doctors, lawyers and IT professionals raving about one silly tweak or another.

There must be a gullibility gene that I missed out on or something.

My pet theory is that a lot of people just will or can not accept that their senses are not utterly under their full control so they dismiss claims of perceptual bias until it's proven to them first hand in a DBT and becomes irrefutable. Even then, you can still see some of them sliding back into a subjectivist belief system once the memory of the DBT starts to fade. All I can say is that it's no wonder the world is in such a pitiful state.

 

[nick1000000]

My favorite is the Intelligent Chip because of this:

"The Intelligent Chip should be put back into the packing case after using, because the packing case can protect the quantum material of the Intelligent Chip, preventing them from leaking." The reason for the thin polycarbonate sheets will become clear later.

Quantum Material?

 

[fmw]

http://www.ilikejam.dsl.pipex.com/audiophile.htm

My favorite has to be the CD/DVD "demagnetizer". Can anyone tell me why a plastic and aluminum disc has to be demagnetized?

Thanks for posting it. I'm also a reformed audiophile so I know where he comes from. I never fooled with the tweaks but spent way, way more money than necessary to reproduce sound with excellent fidelity. I had a $3500 CD player once. It was very heavy and attractive and played CD's about like any other competently designed CD player.

My favorite tweak was the Shun Mook discs of the 1990's. These were little wooden discs that you could place on top of your components. Each one had an arrow so that you could orient the discs for the best sound and have a record of which way it was oriented in case you needed to move them to dust your equipment. Imagine having to go back through all that reorienting! They got a rave review in Stereophile and that was the day I quit reading Stereophile.

I'm still trying to get my arms around "jitter." This term is still used in the audiophile world to describe timing inconsistencies in transmiting data. I think there is some scientific basis for jitter but, of course, nothing that anyone could actually hear in a stereo system. Reduced "jitter" was and still is the justification for spending thousands of dollars on a D/A converter. I always wondered how the data got from my hard drive to my processor with 100% accuracy after error correction when it was apparently impossible to get data from a CD to a D/A converter with the same accuracy. I read several white papers filled with mumbo jumbo that was written by real scientists but was still never able to get my arms around it. Long live jitter.

 

[davo]

Hmmm, there is something familiar about all this.

People believing what ever they are told AND throwing huge amounts of cash at it.

I just can't quite put my finger on what this reminds me of.....

 

[highfihoney]

Hmmm, there is something familiar about all this.

People believing what ever they are told AND throwing huge amounts of cash at it.

I just can't quite put my finger on what this reminds me of.....

I'll take religion for $1,000 Alex !

 

[Rickster71]

Because some of the so called 'professionals' are into this voodoo:

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/4/40646.html

Steve Hoffman is supposed to be a recording engineer?

He is the one pictured by hifihoney

He's supposed to be the engineer to look for, if you want a well mastered CD.
Like his Steely Dan, Aja 1984
I guess everyone has their price.

 

[markw]

Eureka! I think I've struck the mother lode!

http://www.machinadynamica.com/

 

[markw]

I guess everyone has their price.

True, even Erik Estrada (Ponch of CHIP's) is hawking retirement homes nowadays. Robert Wagner is selling insurance, I believe.

but wait... there's more (but I forget)

 

[Rickster71]

http://www.ilikejam.dsl.pipex.com/audiophile.htm

My favorite has to be the CD/DVD "demagnetizer". Can anyone tell me why a plastic and aluminum disc has to be demagnetized?

I suppose they can always bank on the fact, some people have more money, than critical thinking skills.

 

[j_garcia]

Ive seen all this junk but i still look,kinda like a train wreck,stupid fools that buy this junk i swear.

Anyhow,does this cat's lips seem abnormally red to anybody else,looks like he's been suckin on a hot exhaust pipe to me

I have actually seen those things in a store in one of their listening rooms. I wanted to ask them to remove or move them so I could listen for any differences, but I didn't want to offend them because they were really nice about my listening session.

 

[Alex2507]

Ive seen all this junk but i still look,kinda like a train wreck,stupid fools that buy this junk i swear.

Anyhow,does this cat's lips seem abnormally red to anybody else,looks like he's been suckin on a hot exhaust pipe to me

And I bet you can guess where I think his thumb has been .
I wanted to ask for some plans to make one as a DIY project but just couldn't deal with the idea of having to explain that it was a joke. We could use a sarcastis smilie.

 

[highfihoney]

And I bet you can guess where I think his thumb has been .

Yup,i think your right,try this,slowly back your computer chair away from the monitor & watch his lip's get redder & redder,both my son's laughed their a$$es off looking at this guy's cool aid lip's.

 

[Alex2507]

LOL! This poor guy is taking a beating over here! If this is a marketing photo they should have gotten somebody with a hairstyle that's more current. This can't be a marketing photo. I'm starting to feel bad for the guy.
Where in the world did you dig this up?

 

[Halon451]

http://www.machinadynamica.com/

Holy cow... brilliant pebbles and turquoise construction paper to reduce "stray" laser optics inside the CD transport mechanism?? What will they think of next?!?

Outstanding research there... Again the question begs to be asked, who falls for this kind of stuff?

Wow...

 

[mtrycrafts]

LOL! This poor guy is taking a beating over here! If this is a marketing photo they should have gotten somebody with a hairstyle that's more current. This can't be a marketing photo. I'm starting to feel bad for the guy.
Where in the world did you dig this up?

They used him because he has some status in audio; he is a recording engineer. I guess they are not immune to voodoo either

 

[mtrycrafts]

Actually, what gets me is the fact that, at the very least, a small proportion of the people that buy into the hokum are quite intelligent; just take a look on almost any high end forum and you'll see that there are a bunch of research scientists, doctors, lawyers and IT professionals raving about one silly tweak or another.

There must be a gullibility gene that I missed out on or something.

My pet theory is that a lot of people just will or can not accept that their senses are not utterly under their full control so they dismiss claims of perceptual bias until it's proven to them first hand in a DBT and becomes irrefutable. Even then, you can still see some of them sliding back into a subjectivist belief system once the memory of the DBT starts to fade. All I can say is that it's no wonder the world is in such a pitiful state.

Reading some books by Martin Gardner about the history of the 1970s concerning the psi stuff, a number of very smart folks, perhaps even Nobel types, fell for this. Unfortunately, their fields were outside of illusions and magic tricks.