You're gonna love these:

http://www.oregondv.com/High_End_Speaker_Cable_Accessories.htm

I read somewhere that these were originally produced for power lines, and are threaded on the bottom to screw onto power poles.

There was the guy who sold amber beads, claiming that placing them on or around audio equipment improved sound quality by a huge margin.

One commentator wrote about it thusly:

"I checked it out and I would suggest that it's particularly effective if you use it as a suppository. While this may be a touch awkward or embarrassing, especially if friends are present, I think you'll find that the improvements in soundstage depth, intertransient silences, and transparency make it all worthwhile. (An added benefit is an overall improvement in regularity, not an inconsiderable benefit at our age)."

The amber-tweaker's webpage has since vanished.

And then, there's "Rainbow Foil."

http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/product/ref/ref.html

And how about those gadgets, priced at $1500 to $2500, that demagnetize your LPs and CDs, resulting in a vastly improved sound quality that BLOWS AWAY the sound from the same discs, untreated. Michael Fremer in Stereophile magazine is particularly enamored with these. Yes, they cost a lot but he says they work, so we should therefore "GET OVER" the expense.

Yeh...

And then there is the "Intelligent Chip".

"The New Intelligent Chip is a small plastic, adhesive-backed rectangle that is attached to surface of the lower portion of the CD tray. This allows the chip to be inserted inside the player along with the CD to be treated. The CD is allowed to play for 1-2 seconds. The CD will then be permanently upgraded; the CD will sound more open, detailed, dynamic. The chip can be left in place and more CD treated or the chip can be stored in its protective wrapper. The New Intelligent Chip treats 20 CDs, DVDs or SACDs and is available only from Machina Dynamica. Price $50 + Shipping, $1 First Class Mail or $5 Priority Mail."

The "How It Works" page of the seller's website:

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina64.htm

Have fun in Fantasyland as you read about entangled photons and coherent quantum superposition!

At least it's cheap, only fifty bucks, but I'd rather spend that money on more discs (both black and silver ones).

Here is a nice site that compares voodoo speaker wire to regular speaker wire.


http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#introduction

I have a friend whose interconnect cables (CD transport -> DAC unit and also DAC unit -> amplifier) costs almost as much as three complete ST-70 kits. I'll keep the brand name of said cables and purveyor thereof to myself lest the subject of lawsuits come up in the conversation. Suffice to say, my SECRET opinion of "listening" to these would be that he could have spent his money far more wisely - for the life of me I cannot hear a difference between those and a set of el cheapo ($60!!!) Monster cable products...

Also, the Transport -> DAC cable is optical cable that obviously transports a DIGITALLY-ENCODED signal. 'Nuff said...

-- 'Jan

Here's one of my personal favourites, one which I took a lot of flack over when I posted my diatribe on the company's web-site. Check this out here; http://www.haglabs.com/frybaby.html

I changed my account from bizi to this one since I have moved. I couldn't seem to use my old user name-bizi. Anyhow, I am concerned with snake oil, hyperbole, and outright deceit in this hobby. I'm going to see if I can come up with some other humdingers.

Captain Coconut wrote:...I'm going to see if I can come up with some other humdingers.

Now here's a thought for you: How about making the FryBaby work with a full array of triodes ;-) ? Surely the sound will have even MORE "fuller tones", FURTHER "refined treble" and not to mention "instruments with a MASSIVE body" (veritably turning a violin into a cello?) etc etc.

Seriously, though - I am surprised that Hagerman would market this gadget. I have built one of their op-amp based phono pre-amp kits (the Bugle) and it works astoundingly good - better than many VERY expensive phono pre-amps I have heard - and I have a healthy respect for the company, so this gadget is a bit of a shocker to me.

- Junky

Here's another dubious product. Absolute Sound (man, are they still around!) says this thing has extraordinary effects on the sound of your system. Extraordinary? At that price? Maybe subtle if anything. Check it out : http://www.musicdirect.com/product/73160

those $ 485.00 knobs are meant to be ordered with the $6900.00 Silver Rock pot....
....It's just God's way of letting someone know that they have way too much money...

http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?store_code=RAM&screen=PROD&product_code=SLVR_RCK_SGNTR

bizi wrote:Here's one of my personal favourites, one which I took a lot of flack over when I posted my diatribe on the company's web-site. Check this out here; http://www.haglabs.com/frybaby.html

I was googling about DIY line conditioners -- a topic about which I'm skeptical, though thought I might try and build one if was cheap to do so...

I came across a Haglund design, but when I saw the Fry Baby on his site...

Well, I was disappointed.

Welp, think I'll go polish my connectors with some Venom-tronics extract of snake skin. Gives more bite to the highs, and the lows? Well, you can rest assured you're getting the lowest of the lows!

Brenton

I've got an idea -- since the premise of the fry baby is that running electricity through the wire somehow changes it...breaks it in -- if we take this to it's logical extreme, then eventually speaker wires and interconnects will wear out from use.

Because these cables are expensive, what the speaker wire industry really needs now is an alternative to new cables. Yes, you guessed it, ladies and gentlement, a "reverse FryBaby", to restore cables to new. Or, better yet, just-about-new (ie, freshly broken in) standing.

I actually saw a devise like that several years ago and I believe it was tested
in Stereophile. It was a CD that you played for several days in your system. It
was supposed to make your system sound like new again by removing all the
electronic "spider webbs" that build up over time. According to the reviewer it played
odd harmonic intervals and screeching notes that made it uncomfortable to stay in the room
The reviewer stated that it worked so well that he thought he had to break in his system
again because now it sounded a bit too new.