Audiophile scams - The world of audio is infamous for scams, what are some of the worst scams you have seen

[Prokhor Zakharov]

Techmoan did a couple of videos relating to audiophile scams, such as this CD shaver. Apparently shaving the edge of a CD at a 36 degree angle and colouring the edge in with a Sharpie is supposed to reduce light scatter from the laser, thus producing a better quality sound (spoiler alert: it does nothing except leave your CDs with a bevelled edge).

https://youtube.com/watch?v=f-QxLAxwxkM
Then there's the CD demagnetizer. You can probably guess what it does and why it's a crock.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mH4v8b1tGSQ

The CD Shaver is literally one of the best scams I have ever seen that people actually believed which couldn't literally have any effect other than placebo.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

The CD Shaver is literally one of the best scams I have ever seen that people actually believed that couldn't literally have any effect other than placebo.

I like the gimmick, like ninja death cds

The marker thing has been around for ages, too

 

[Buck Broken Chimp]

https://youtu.be/OKl5KdhxjQ4

I forgot about this video and I own and like a few of Crin's IEMs so I will take his word on this as these IEMs are rare and are probably not good. The TL;DW is that the Warbler Prelude's only used 1 Balanced armature driver, it was off the shelf and had a ton of weird engineering decisions to go with it.

No you see vacuum tubes sound warm because they get physically warm during operation. It's just common sense. Seriously though they are nothing but outdated amplifiers with objectively lousy performance that consume hundreds of watts to push out maybe ten to the speakers themselves, the rest being used to heat up the house.

The whole hi-fi/audiophile industry has always been lousy with scams and with the advent of high performance chi-fi the old school western manufacturers of high-end audio (McIntosh, Naim, Bowers & Wilkins etc.) are desperately trying to pivot to the oligarch sector since they are either unwilling or incapable of competing with what the chinks are putting out.

I think we are going to see some serious crashes in the coming years when these boutique brands keep chasing an ever smaller customer base of wealthy boomers and oil sheiks while giving regular customers the finger by designing worse and worse performing products and constantly jacking up prices.

Tube amps are not really meant to be the best way to produce sound, they add an analog warmth that people like. I myself have never been into tube amps and have limited listening time on my cousin's.

Macintosh,Bowers &? Wilkins a long with Bang and Olufsen are the kings of selling overpriced bullshit to boomers, Bang and
made this awful Xbox headset that costed 500 bucks, you can get a a pair of Audeze Maxwells for that. In the DAC/AMP space Fiio and Topping have disrupted the whole thing. Even if you want the patriotic American option Schit,JDS labs and Mayflower offer good products for a fair price.

First, an entire audio format called MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) and the company that made it, Meridian Audio. I actually attended one of the presentations for this at RMAF years ago. Basically it is a lossy audio format that was designed to replace FLAC. Now, how does that make sense since FLAC is lossless and MQA is lossy? From what I remember, they purported to bring a real-to-live-performance quality to the audio by also encoding a special "filter" section in parallel to the compressed audio, and when played back on their proprietary (or licensed) hardware, the audio would be decompressed, and then the hardware (which has the proprietary filter algorithms) would apply the special filter section in the recording, to the playback of the track. So basically the benefits would be smaller file sizes (smaller than FLAC, larger than 320 MP3) for your whole collection, and a sort of "guarantee" that each recording you listened to that was MQA certified had been mastered by audio professionals. Surprisingly they got a lot of support initially, they even got TIDAL to offer a bunch of their catalog on MQA. As far as I know now the company still exists but the format is defunct. I can't be bothered to find all of my old articles on it, but there were tons of forum threads and amateur analysis that people did to see if it was better than FLAC, and the conclusion was that unsurprisingly it wasn't.

I remember in the RMAF presentation specifically the guy kept going on and on about the research that went into restoring some Jazz record that apparently had been playing like 5 bpm too fast because the copies of the master tapes that everyone used for vinyl copies (and later CD copies) was played back on the wrong tape machine or something, and they did forensic research to find the original master tapes and the original master tape player they used in studio for the mixdown. Wish I could remember which recording it was.

Here is an article on it I found where you can get a brief history of it. ARCHIVE. Tidal also stopped support for the format this year.

MQA was the grift that kept on grifting, it was a scheme to milk money out of the audio industry but they were stopped before they could do anything. Maybe scamming Tidal is good Jay Z has scammed so many people and is Diddy's accomplice.

Bonus, the insane story of the Japanese man that got the power company to install his own power pole and line just for his audio setup.

One of the rebuttals to the power filter people, is "where do you think your power comes from ? The electric companies power is being brought to you over in bent up coat hangers, how do you account for that" well this guy thought of that.


Ok boys I just found soemthing I thought I had imagined but no it was real

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/twpf5r/audioquest_dbs_system_review_do_batteries_matter/

Audioquest actually sold cables with batteries attached to them, that you had to keep charged and they clamed this made the sound better

the reason this makes me laugh, so there was this parody tech channel called Thio Joe, he made a semi viral video where he jokingly claimed you could get faster internet by duck taping batteries to your Ethernet cable. Art imitates life I tell you what. What's funny Audioquest was one of my first introductions to hifi. My cousin had a dragon fly DAC and it was the first like really god DAC I ever heard, the dragonfly was well received at least at the time.

 

[Meriasek]

Hi-fi peaked around the year 1990 and has only been getting more expensive since then but not better.

looks fondly at his Philips 900 hifi tower mostly used to listen to underground Black Metal tapes

About 10 years ago, the guy who ran one of the biggest guitar shops in the city told me he barely sold amps to professional musicians at all, since the modeling had gotten so good that was what nearly everyone was using now.

True, most of the more professional bands I saw live in recent years went all digital. I still have tube amps mostly because I like the feel of adjusting simple physical knobs and mic positions, and also because I'm a bit of an enthusiast when it comes to building them.

Years ago I saw an audiophile shop in my university city that sold 200 bucks university-designed "resonance filters" or whatever that you place on your speakers to remove unwanted resonances via a "deterministic process". Basically two metal slabs connected by springs, I think they were. Overpriced paperweights that you put on your speakers until they stop rattling. They also had special filtered power strips and shit. I can see having power conditioners in your guitar rig when you play dive bars with really shitty power lines because you can get noise there, but these days it rarely happens anymore anyway.

 

[JusesJeece]

My cousin had a dragon fly DAC and it was the first like really god DAC I ever heard, the dragonfly was well received at least at the time.

The Dragonfly Cobalt is a really decent sounding dongle DAC, that can cover up some of the worst atrocities of Chinese IEMs. It doesn't measure that well though, so it generates unbelievable amounts of Audio Science sperging on Reddit, and ASR forums. These people literally spend their lives obsessing over 0.0000001 % of THD.

 

[Cowboy Kim]

Never trust a reviewer who doesn't A) Suggest using an EQ

Speaking of EQ's, I'd like to recommend AutoEQ. I use the EasyEffects Diffuse Field 5128 (-1 dB/oct) preset on my CD900ST's and was shocked at how good things sounded.

Everyone describing how great they are use many paragraphs of nothing to explain how the "valve sound warmth texture clipping distortion" is more natural or something.

The "analog warmth" audiophiles gush over is literally distortion from old equipment. Vacuum tubes add harmonics, which are quite literally frequencies that weren't present in the original signal, creating what I can best describe as a "blurry/smeared" sound (describing sound is a massive pain in the ass, just download Audacity and a vacuum tube emulator, then do some back to back testing with a song you know the sound of well, bonus if you apply multiple amounts of distortion) alongside a very subtle change to the frequencies themselves. The other form of "warmth" is wow-and-flutter, which is minor speed variations in the song brought by the less than precise motors used in tape recorders, vinyl cutting lathes, and vinyl record players. If an audiophile claims digital is too "harsh", what they really mean is its too accurate to their ears, which are accustomed to the highly distorted sound of legacy equipment. Thread Tax:

(PreserveTube)

(PreserveTube)

 

[itogi]

British YouTuber Mend It Mark recently got his video (archive) copystriked by audiophile equipment manufacturer Tom Evans Audio Design after Mark made a repair video with reverse engeneering of Tom Evans' £25,000 (over $30,000) Mastergroove SR Mk III phono pre amp (which manufacturer wasn't even able to repair ). The pre amp was made from off-the-shelf components (some of them had their part numbers ground off) and based on suggested circuit configurations by parts manufacturers.

 

[ParasiteSteve]

Amongst my musical "collection", I own a Marshall guitar amp.
I had an "enthusiastic" person telling me how much he loved that "classic Marshall valve tone" earlier this year.
It's a solid state one.

Thats nothing.

I had one of my girlfriends fellas remark about the guitar tone on one of my EPs, and how I got a great tone out of my "trip" (he means a mesa boogie triple, but I think he actually confused it with the double). I didnt say anything because I am polite, but I used a VST. And it was a model of a Peavy 5150. I also care so little about amp shit I just pick something i like and barely do anything more with it as I think its gay to over produce something. Either way, sometimes people get strange ideas into their head when they gear slut too much. "gotta get my boutie pedal, mad with sealed tramps farts and blessed by a dead nigger in a dustbin" when my bog standard VST setup does fine.

I think its a problem of over production more than anything.

But yeah, as to the topic at hand...

Audiophiles are gay. Worse they they try to use "science" to back up claims. Just try out a few different bitrates and see what your ok with, see if 192k actually makes any difference (it doesnt, Arch Enemy still fucking sucks). I am fine with 320kbs MPS in my 20 pound headphones, or my standard consumer hifi. Over bluetooth as well, for maximum cybercum in my speakers.

I swear these people never had to deal with tapes, and how much of a nightmare they are at times. Even CD is off limits for me, got rid of the 5cd changer in my car and just use bluetooth, its fine. I listen to mostly 80s and 90s black and death metal anyway, so it sounds shit already.

 

[Rodeo Roadrunner]

I am fine with 320kbs MPS in my 20 pound headphones

Eh I can hear a difference in some songs between 320 MP3s and FLAC. You aren't going to hear a difference though without good gear and good listening environment. But I have a very high end headphone setup that I got cheap from a guy that was selling everything, otherwise I wouldn't have spent that much on my setup piecemeal.

and based on suggested circuit configurations by parts manufacturers.

There is an entire youtube career to be made from some audio/electronics engineer taking these scam audiophile products and taking them apart and analyzing them. Don't know how that would happen though as so many of them cost a fortune and I doubt any of the people who own them would just give them up to be dissected.

 

[Pee Cola]

Remember how Tom Evans Audio Design tried to take down Mend It Mark's video about their Mastergroove SR Mk III phono pre amp?

Well, not only did Louis Rossmann reupload the original video... so did many others. (A)

 

[FamicomGorby]

There is no way that the vacuum tubes that are on the thousand dollar AMPs are not scams. Everyone describing how great they are use many paragraphs of nothing to explain how the "valve sound warmth texture clipping distortion" is more natural or something.

But muh warmth! I think there technically could be something to it but it's not anything that couldn't be replicated by just adjusting the Treble/Bass settings on an amp or different speakers. Like there are speaker brands that tend to emphasize certain ranges of sound instead of just being completely neutral.

Then again it could be like people who insist that LP's are better even when they're just objectively not. Like I'm into records and have a 70's hi-fi setup but it's more for the collecting aspect than just pure sound quality.

 

[Vecr]

valve sound warmth texture clipping distortion

If you're anywhere near clipping or distortion you've got your setup messed up. Digital is fine, just get the levels right.

 

[斯尼 德之王]

Bose sound systems on cars.

 

[Rodeo Roadrunner]

But muh warmth! I think there technically could be something to it but it's not anything that couldn't be replicated by just adjusting the Treble/Bass settings on an amp or different speakers. Like there are speaker brands that tend to emphasize certain ranges of sound instead of just being completely neutral.

Then again it could be like people who insist that LP's are better even when they're just objectively not. Like I'm into records and have a 70's hi-fi setup but it's more for the collecting aspect than just pure sound quality.

You can't replicate tubes with just an EQ setting. This goes for tube amps for anything, not just speakers. Like guitar amps. It is applying distortion and other 'warmth' factors, like additional harmonics (part of the "rich" sound). Also depending on the tubes they can be affected by current differently, so they can respond to loud parts of music differently than quiet parts. Now I think (almost) all of that can be replicated with digital, but certain tube setups can't just be replicated by eq.

It can be really fun to play around with digital replicas of tube amps and how it can affect music. Just take a track, drop it into your DAW and load up different tube VSTs to see how it sounds. Honestly can sound cool, so I understand why people get tube setups. Not for me personally due to cost and lack of accuracy; the closer you get to the "tube" sound, the music becomes less "accurate" to the recording, which is fun occasionally to play around with but not something I want consistently.

 

[itogi]

An update on Mend It Mark situation: iFixit also reuploaded Mark's video