Subject: complaint about cargo-culting audiophools and the #marketers that exploit them
I saw a new #scam yesterday. Well, new to me. It's probably been around forever.
There are many, many #fraudulent products and ideas out there that target the self-described "audiophiles". And because such #audiophools never do double-blind tests, they always convince themselves of just how well the #scammy products work ("you are the easiest person for you to fool").
Examples of long standing:
Super-thick "oxygen-free copper" #cables for #speakers or #interconnects, being sold at 100x the price of regular cables.
Electrically shielded fiber-optic cables (!).
Paint pens to colour in the outer edge of CDs and DVDs.
Systems to run your equipment from #batteries so as not to contaminate them with that dirty mains #AC.
#Tubes / #valves instead of solid-state #amplification.
... and on and on.
Well, yesterday I was looking for some opamps (tiny little chips, used everywhere), and came across a place selling replacement #opamps for use inside stereo equipment. You can get perfectly good designed-for-audio opamps of good quality for a few bucks each. Upgrading your equipment to better opamps sometimes made sense in the 1970s, but not now. The ones used from the factory are fine.
But no, this one was selling fancy opamps, designed for *RF* use, not audio, which normally cost $10-20 each, in fancy little metal packages, for hundreds of dollars apiece.
"A fool and his money ..."