Yea that stuff Jason posted had me doing a doubletake. I had to search the rest of the site to see if it was some kind of giant hoax.

Sadly, I think its real

Anyone want to buy some pebbles in a jar? I can guarantee to beat machina dynamica's price. No ordinary rocks either - they are stones handpicked from the radioactive riverbed of the river liffey and is scientifically proven to not only be an effective bass trap, but close contact will also enlarge your penis and make you more attractive to women.

What more could you possibly want you zealots?!

Oh yea, heres the $485 wooden knob:

http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/M..._Code=NOB_C37_C

quote:

Good vibrations, Bad vibrations it’s all about vibrations!! RAM would like to introduce a new signature level knob developed for the mighty Silver Rock potentiometer. The standard bakelite knob is certainly the best sounding compromise... but now Audio Consulting has taken this aspect of the Silver Rock much further. The new knobs are custom made with beech wood and bronze where the bronze is used as the insert to mount to the stem of the volume pot. The beech wood is coated several times with C37 lacquer for best sound as pointed out by Dieter Ennemoser. How can this make a difference??? Well, hearing is believing as we always say. The sound becomes much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution. Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!

And oh look! Its our American friends at nordost again...

I present to you, the $40 dollar anti static spraycan -

http://www.musicdirect.com/products...&sku=ANORSTATIC

Just spray your interconnects with it.

quote:

ECO-3 is the first (and perhaps only) spray designed to reduce static charge from the surfaces of interconnects, speaker cables and power cords. We love how this spray lowered the noise floor of every cable we tested – from super cheap to super revealing cables, the ECO-3 improved them with every listen! “I’ve never seen it fail to make a difference…this one is mandatory, and not just for the systems where the elite meet to eat.” -- Harry Pearson in the August/September Absolute Sound.

Im in a pisstake mood. Anyone else got any weird rip off hifi gimmicks they want to share? When I heard about those $400 wooden knobs I was expecting them to be hand carved in the shape of chicken's heads or something. It might be half worth it to have loads of miniature wooden heads on my amp - with the Mount Rushmore 4 on the gain and 3 equalizer pots. Hell YEA. Imagine my disappointment when they looked like any other regular IKEA knobs...BAH.

As they say:

quote:

"There's a sucker born every minute." - David Hannum, 1870

Last edited by Derivative on Jun-17-2006 at 01:29

Ok this one deserved a post all to itself. Thanks Jason for posting the link to that Machina Dynamica site because I havent laughed my arse off so hard in months.

This one is a tweeter that does absolutely nothing.

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina28.htm

Heres the science:

quote:

Description/Theory: Ultra Tweeters are remarkable new audio accessories from the makers of the Intelligent Chip and Magic Ring. Each Ultra Tweeter (sold in pairs) is 4x3x1.5 inches with beautifully finished wood veneer. While having all outward appearances of being super-tweeters, Ultra Tweeters are actually no such thing, producing no acoustic frequencies in the audio band (20 Hz- 20KHz), not even frequencies in the 20KHz - 100KHz range of high quality super-tweeters. The Ultra Tweeters' principle of operation is very unconventional, and unique, having nothing whatsoever to do with reinforcing the treble frequencies of the primary speakers or attenuating EMI/RFI.

This is the first time I have ever seen anyone attempt to sell 2 peices of inert wood for 800 bucks. The genius part of it is, you cant hear it working. You cant even tell if its on or off or even broken!

Last edited by Derivative on Jun-17-2006 at 02:00

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative This is the first time I have ever seen anyone attempt to sell 2 peices of inert wood for 800 bucks. The genius part of it is, you cant hear it working. You cant even tell if its on or off or even broken!

Now now.. if you can't hear it working you just aren't a true golden ear

Well hmm, that's what they all are based on.. right? "The emperors new clothes"-effect.

___________________
-
Matti Kotala
-mk-
www.mkdr.net

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative Yea that stuff Jason posted had me doing a doubletake. I had to search the rest of the site to see if it was some kind of giant hoax. Sadly, I think its real Anyone want to buy some pebbles in a jar? I can guarantee to beat machina dynamica's price. No ordinary rocks either - they are stones handpicked from the radioactive riverbed of the river liffey and is scientifically proven to not only be an effective bass trap, but close contact will also enlarge your penis and make you more attractive to women. What more could you possibly want you zealots?!

LOL. I really don't know who are the suckers here them for making this stuff up or people for buying it. I mean £400 for a wooden knob?

And it looks just like the one on my wardrobe door! And even worse I bet theres a market for it as well!!

Anyone else got any more links?

This picture from one of the links posted by Jason_R (www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm) made me laugh:

___________________

My iTunes album
My dance-industries page
My myspace page

Last edited by DJ_Sea on Jun-17-2006 at 11:18

quote:

Originally posted by Jason_R Anyone else got any more links?

Check out the GSIC. A guy called Michael Anda tried to win the JREF million dollar prize by testing it but things didn't get that far: link 1 link 2

And this... £4500 for a fucking tonearm?

What the hell is the GSIC? I couldnt find much info on it except for some paper on it by an engineering grad on machina dynamica's website. Heavy on theory. Low on practical application and reproducible, realworld testing.

Am I right in saying you get this chip, place it on top of your CD player for 2 seconds and it makes digital 1s and 0s appear on the disk that werent there before?

I couldnt find a price for the GSIC either but its going to have a hard time beating the $1000 Shakti Hallograph (read: glorified wooden stands), the $800 Golden Sound Ultratweater (read: the tweater that doesnt do a fucking thing) and the $250 jars full of pebbles that act as bass traps (read: jars full of pebbles).

This whole thing sounds like a huge industry and it comes back to HiFi again. How do you separate the myth from what actually works (albeit subtly) and what is a fraudulent gimmick?

On the subject of the £4500 tone arm - I love this selling point:

quote:

New armtube incorporating Formula 1 racing car technology

HAH! I mean, why do people get a hard on for stuff because it is part NASA technology/Formula 1 Technology/Alien Technology? If it contributes nothing to the sound reproduction of the product other than giving the owner an erection for being a part of an F1 car at some point in the material's life - what really is the point?

I suggest a new idea for the TA production forums to make some money. Lets all go out and pick up some pebbles. Paint them all with a thin layer of flourescent paint and put them in glass jars. Sell them as 'Brilliant pebbles - Meteoric Rock Edition' where the bass trapping ability of the stones is enhanced by its contact with space dust and ice crystals from the trails of distant comets.

Who can fucking resist?

Last edited by Derivative on Jun-17-2006 at 18:48

F1 = Minardi too don't forget. And what is F1 tecnology anyway? is it wire? coz I'm sure they use wire at some point ...

Don't get me wrong. I am all for music sounding as good as it possibly can. Good speakers, headphones, cables, etc.

But this is beyond the stupid.

What winds me up is that music isnt meant to be heard this way. It won't give the bass an incredible & natural deep sound.

It will (if anything) make the music sound worse because as mentioned even the most high end studio wont give a shiney shit about this stuff. So your only highlighting flaws of the original compositions.

Pisses me off.