DMacri wrote:

But the speaker wires have to be raised from the floor on special wooden blocks to really hear the improvement.

I have some 2"x 4" in the shop, Mexican Christmas tree quality, do you think I can use that, I will of course polish and treat with Danish Oil.

Do you remember back in the 80's when somebody claimed that if you painted the edge of the CD's green you'd get a improvement in sound..? 🤔
You could even buy special marker pen's for the purpose. No -ofcourse you could not just use a green marker pen from the local bookseller...😂

Steffen wrote:

Do you remember back in the 80's when somebody claimed that if you painted the edge of the CD's green you'd get a improvement in sound..? 🤔
You could even buy special marker pen's for the purpose. No -ofcourse you could not just use a green marker pen from the local bookseller...😂

That doesn't work?

DMacri wrote:

I think it has to be Mpingo wood to really work.

No the wood must be from apple

Best. B&O vs Apple Joke.  Ever.

I could bore you for hours about this.  Back in the 80's through to the mid 90's I worked at one of the leading UK audiophile retailers. 

We  supplied the real-deal UK specialist kit that was clearly and demonstrably so much better than any high street crap - this was the time of the "stack" system - and kit by Rega, Arcam, Royd, Creek etc was not too expensive and was just really good - well made ( in the UK!!), reliable and sounded so good.

BUT - as you got further up the "Hi-Fi" ladder, the 'Rule of Diminishing Returns' certainly applied.

So, a UK seperates system for about £1000 ( eg a Rega Turntable, Arcam CD/Amp/tuner and  a pair of Royd Speakers)  was a world away from a £500 stacker system.  Just so much better to listen to, better made, longer lasting... easily justified by any measure.

However, a £10K system was not better than the £1000 one by anything like the same degree, because the systems like the one detailed above were really very good indeed, so the next level up ( Linn/Naim/Chord/Meridian etc )  were much dearer. However, they were still better systems and ( like cars/clothes/guitars etc etc) it is the buyer who decides if that extra 5-10 % of performance is worth another 30 - 50 - 100% or more in price.

The ''accessories' are where the snake oil and smoke and mirrors kick in - for both retailers and hobbyists ... and I admit to getting so fed up with it all that the "tweaking" and "mods" were directly responsible for me changing jobs🙁.  

Grown men spending -literally- days on end comparing the 'sound ' of all sorts of "tweaks"  may sound fun, and we were initially at the vanguard, with  Peter Belt/Malcolm Steward & various other writers/reviewers/guru's coming along to show us the latest whacky mod, but after a while it got MAD...  pseudo science and mumbo jumbo.

it got to be that each day was a round of fiddling and tweaking perfectly good systems with all manner of nonsense - I got bored & frustrated as, to me, it all started to lose focus from the main issue, ie for only a modest amount more than a pile of plastic crap from Comet, people could get really good audio kit that promoted love of/buying music.

B&O never really got "tweaked" - probably because it was quite an insular brand then - unique connections and not ideally suited to the "mix&match" fiddling of the audiophiles.

Evan wrote:

On the topic of cables, anyone remember the $3000 USB cable from Locus? Still being sold.

Hmm - LOCUS...LudiCrOUS...🤔

Just remove some letters and rearrange a few...😂 Wonder if those who might have bought the cables ever realised the correlation...

What about the 2000 dollar golden and platinum acoustic resonators? You need at least 6 for a real improvement and acoustic room correction. ;-)

Link: http://www.francktchang.com/acousticresonators.html

Desmo wrote:

What about the 2000 dollar golden and platinum acoustic resonators? You need at least 6 for a real improvement and acoustic room correction. ;-)

Link: http://www.francktchang.com/acousticresonators.html

I have to get these, my music sounds wet in rainy weather