Zaph Audio - Snake Oil and Lies

[Sonnie]

I was plundering around the Zaph Audio site, mainly snooping for Zaph's measurements... and ran across his "About Me" page. Pretty interesting stuff:

Audiophile Snake Oil. Wild and unverified claims in advertising literature and magazine reviews. The wannabee audiophiles who try to believe it. I have feelings about it.

I used to have several all-out rant pages. I was harsh, brutal, and unforgiving. I made enemies and I made friends, I helped form sides for the believers and non-believers, all in the quest to dispell snake oil. Some people would defend snake oil as if they were defending their religion or political views.

Well, I took my old rant pages down because you just don't go and tell someone their god isn't real.

Welcome to the new and improved less offensive rants page. I'll just summarize my views with one-liners:

• I think that CD's sound better than vinyl. I realize both formats have problems.
  
• I am strictly a two channel Audiophile, even with video sources. I hate 5.1 setups.
  
• All single driver crossoverless systems sound terrible. They exist because people fear crossovers.
  
• I think that for a given price point, solid state amps are generally better than tube amps.
  
• I believe there is no substantial difference in high end speaker cables or interconnects.
  
• I do not read audio magazines because the reviewers are as inventive as they are clueless.
  
• I've never let an audio salesperson talk me into buying something. Commission = pushy.
  
• "Service" is never an excuse for higher prices at local dealers. Never pay list price.
  
• I hate ridiculous pricing. People are starving. Don't buy a $12k 8 watt tube amp.
  
• Half the high end companies are pushing products that are not worth a fraction the price.
  
• I think vintage audio is a waste of money and can't even match the sound of today's mid-fi.
  
• People who use the term Pace, Rhythm and Timing (PRAT) completely fail to impress me.
  
• I despise the current state of car audio. High SPL doesn't trip my trigger.
  
• Big dollar crossover components are a waste of money and offer NO improvement in sound.

[eugovector]

I don't know what this means:

"I do not read audio magazines because the reviewers are as inventive as they are clueless."

Are they Inventive and Clueless, or neither? Do they invent because they are clueless?

[Sonnie]

DS-21 wrote:

'"Service" is never an excuse for higher prices at local dealers."

I'm willing to pay more for service in general.

I firmly believe in shopping for the best price, but in some cases I don't mind paying for service, depending on what service it is. As far as home theater products go, which I assume he is referring to audio, video, etc., there is not much service from a dealer that I see any need to pay extra for. I suppose if we had local dealers here where I live and they could do warranty repair work, it might be a benefit to shop there. I'm just really not sure what else they could offer that would make it worth paying more for, but I'm probably missing something.

DS-21 wrote:

"I despise the current state of car audio. High SPL doesn't trip my trigger."

There are plenty of subcultures in car-fi, including several focused on everything but thumping SPLs at stoplights.

Agree... when I was younger, it was all about SPL, but after only a few years of that I started working more towards sound quality. Sure there are quite a few SPL'ers out there, but I'd say there are just as many or more looking for SQ.

eugovector wrote:

I don't know what this means:

"I do not read audio magazines because the reviewers are as inventive as they are clueless."

Are they Inventive and Clueless, or neither? Do they invent because they are clueless?

I think he means that they invent things to write about when they are actually clueless about whether it's the truth or not.

I'm not sure I would agree that all reviewers are this way. I suppose I'm not educated enough to know when some things are accurate or invented, but there is no doubt some reviews are full of snake oil and lies.