Hifi snake oil

[I'm With Stupid]

Would have thought putting snake oil into your hifi would create some sort of hiss ....

 

[manchester blue]

Been in Currys loads in the past and salesman trying to flog £50 hdmi cable to an old couple to get their sales mark up, when he went away I said you can get same thing for a £5 on eBay.

Currys gave me a free one that had a £40 tag on it when I bought a TV. I didn't ask, they just gave it me. Don't think I ever used it.

 

[fulabeer]

The simple fact of most magazine reviews/reviewers are sponsored in some way.
Even those who claim to be unbiased have still come out with some whoppers.
You only have to look back through some old "What hi-fi" magazines to see it now.

I remember one review of a stupidly expensive HDMI lead on a Pioneer plasma.
The review extolled how the lead improved colours, reduced noise and added detail!

So i challenged it publicly. I asked for the scientific data that would explain how a digital lead could alter a picture in that way. Especially how it knew what parts of the picture improvements would be beneficial.

Not one reply.

It is too simplistic just to describe an HDMI lead as just a digital data cable. (even though that is what it is)
It has to be built in such as way to handle the bandwidth required of it. Environment/interference/shielding and length all determine how much data successfully gets through.
Error correction can only do so much before the picture does alter or breaks down. But not in the way that these reviews say the benefits of a expensive cable avoids.

The thing is, i was in contact with the engineers and inventors of the very first HDMI lead.
I have actually held it.
These guys were extremely nervous as our group passed it around!
I was one of the first people to have an all digital home cinema setup. It was DVI based with a Pioneer DVD player and a Marantz digital projector.
The hoops i had to jump through to get a long enough DVI lead that would work at 10m was immense.
Fortunately because i was in the loop, i was getting sent different cables weekly as manufacturers wanted me to beta test them in a home environment before they released them. Only two worked. A broadcast standard lead that cost a few grand. And one of the cheapest from LINDY at £70. Even then, they didn't improve the picture. They just stopped the "sparklies" and "asteroids" zooming across the screen.

I think they have just got so used to how analogue leads effect the final output, that they just couldn't adapt to the digital era.
That, and the fact that these sellers needed to shift gear and magazines needed to sell advertising space!

 

[Chippy_boy]

Yeah, it's the same in photography or video production. Nobody really needs 8K or even in most cases 4K in their home, but it's still useful to have in the production process, because it means it can be edited and manipulated while still maintaining the quality.

Very true. Even if you have 20-20 vision there are limits as to what the human eye can resolve and there is no discernible difference between HD and 4k if your TV is smallish (say 55" or less) and you are sitting a reasonable distance away (say 10 feet). Yet the industry pushes out 4k sets as if they are absolutely required for screen sizes above 40" when clearly that is not the case.

As an experiment, I downsized some 4k video content to HD and played the clips to me and the mrs on our 65" OLED and we could not tell the difference.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

The simple fact of most magazine reviews/reviewers are sponsored in some way.
Even those who claim to be unbiased have still come out with some whoppers.
You only have to look back through some old "What hi-fi" magazines to see it now.

I remember reading a feature in Edge Magazine (the computer game magazine for grown ups) in the 90s that talked about this. Actual sponsored content is pretty rare and typically has to be declared as such. What actually happens is far more insidious. Basically if you write bad things about a product, you won't be invited to future press events, won't be given advance copies of things, and therefore won't have important features in your magazine. It's even worse now on Youtube, where being first is everything and it's usually just individuals rather than big publishing companies. I follow a few different photography channels and when there's a big launch, you'll see a bunch of them mysteriously release a video about the same product within 10 minutes of each other. The videos will only tell you about the features and nothing about any flaws it might have. Then about a week later you'll get proper reviews from people who haven't been given an advance copy by the company. But Youtube is all about views and getting in there first gets you the most viewers and the most money.

 

[mindmyp's_n_q's]

Very true. Even if you have 20-20 vision there are limits as to what the human eye can resolve and there is no discernible difference between HD and 4k if your TV is smallish (say 55" or less) and you are sitting a reasonable distance away (say 10 feet). Yet the industry pushes out 4k sets as if they are absolutely required for screen sizes above 40" when clearly that is not the case.

As an experiment, I downsized some 4k video content to HD and played the clips to me and the mrs on our 65" OLED and we could not tell the difference.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The hifi press are not only bent, they are completely out of ideas. The reviews you read on the likes of What Hifi are frankly laughable. The same old hackneyed cliches rolled out time and time again.

Guff like pro's "Great sense of timing" and cons "Unforgiving of poor sources". I mean honestly what tripe. Like a human whose reaction time is measured in fractions of a second can discern that one component which responds to signals in 1/20,000th of second has better "timing" than another? Utter garbage. Or that your system can be made to sound *worse* by putting a better (all other things being equal) component in it? Nonsense, absolute nonsense.

You can just cut and paste this guff from one edition to another, one year to the next. It's moronic nonsense.

 

[fulabeer]

Placebo effect. Put an expensive price tag on something, therefore it must be good.

Tell somebody something is better and they believe you. Say it often enough and it becomes fact.
Well that's what works for the rags and dippers!

 

[Chippy_boy]

And some of that is at 720p not even 1080p !

 

[fulabeer]

I remember reading a feature in Edge Magazine (the computer game magazine for grown ups) in the 90s that talked about this. Actual sponsored content is pretty rare and typically has to be declared as such. What actually happens is far more insidious. Basically if you write bad things about a product, you won't be invited to future press events, won't be given advance copies of things, and therefore won't have important features in your magazine. It's even worse now on Youtube, where being first is everything and it's usually just individuals rather than big publishing companies. I follow a few different photography channels and when there's a big launch, you'll see a bunch of them mysteriously release a video about the same product within 10 minutes of each other. The videos will only tell you about the features and nothing about any flaws it might have. Then about a week later you'll get proper reviews from people who haven't been given an advance copy by the company. But Youtube is all about views and getting in there first gets you the most viewers and the most money.

I was told my an owner (of a well known AV magazine i had a six page spread of my system in!), that they let a manufacturer know they were doing an upcoming review. Of course it would be glowing. And would they like an advert in the following pages.
It was all about selling advertising space.