Dre, firstly I want to say that i saw no hostility in your posts
. You made a good point in that components that work for us that are tweeks could be considered as "snake oil".
Thanks. My only point was that what I understood your definition of snake oil to be is primarily based on the visual appeal of the device alone. Again this flows from your original series of posts. Hopefully I didn't misunderstand your original series of posts.
Although all of the ones that I know of, have a valid and logical reason as to their effectiveness.
However, I think my point is that we have seen numerous "snake oil" products in our hobby....just take a look at some of the gadgets from Machina Dynamica that are on A'gon on a daily basis.
I think it is unfair to place this particular device in that category. The effect is readily audible. I never said it would work in every system. What component does? What I felt the need to point out is that the device does have an audible effect. Therefore the immediate labeling seems uncalled for in this case. I think when more people have had some time with the device, they may echo my findings of audible change. Whether or not it's what the individual is looking for is another thing all together.
The little crystal that attaches to the end of your tonearm seems to have no more or less viability than the Machina Dynamica tweeks. If you can explain to me how the little crystal can have the effect on your sound that it apparently does, then I would state it is NOT "snake oil". OTOH, just by saying it does ( and I'm not disputing you here, so that we are clear) leads me to question how does this crystal bring about the effect that you are hearing...besides the obvious... ( adding a little extra weight and possibly damping the end of the head shell..which numerous other objects could accomplish).
My perception is that you are primarily attracted to, or more concerned with, the shape of the device's appearance rather than what function it performs. I mentioned earlier that I couldn't care less about it's visual appeal but there are many among us that would. Additionally I mentioned the strong desire we all have for visual appeal for most of our equipment. To some degree, we could save the manufactures a lot of money and development time by purchasing undressed cables and plain boxes for our equipment but that's not going to happen.
Davey, I could probably speculate what's going on based on my professional background but I'm not really interested in going there. After all, it's not my product so I don't see why I would extend any more effort beyond what I've done over a 4-week period to verify my initial observations. The device's effect is clearly audible to me and it's up to each potential owner to decide if it's something they want to use or not. That's what choice is about.
I will only state that I can (and have) easily substituted other things with similar mass/shape and they don't do what the device does. In all of those cases, the substitutions do what I would consider to be nothing. That's why I can say with some reasonable deduction that the one thing that, to me, seems to concern you most (it's appearance) may not be the proper reason to subscribe for its efficacy and therefore pin the premature snake oil label on it. I think if at some point you get to observe the device in operation and then removed (with proper adjustments to VTF of course) you may have a different option about it. You may or may not like what you hear but it should be clearly audible nonetheless. IMO, of course
Perhaps I should ask you what you consider to be "snake oil"??
Hmm,
Webster's or
Wiki seems good enough for me.
BTW, I'm NOT trying to be hostile with you either, simply trying to point out where my thoughts are coming from
.
Understood. They were pretty clear to me in the initial posts and continue to be now. Although, the subject has shifted a bit from it's snake oil because of it's visual form to "why this visual form" to I must now prove logically and/or explain how this thing works. (This is my interpretation of your initial communication flow)
Hope this helps,
Dre
