Roger Skoff: a moment. Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society Gala. Buena Park, CA, 2024 (photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson)
Roger Skoff writes about glad tidings from HiFi Land...
Happy Holidays! Now's the time to enjoy family, good food, good friends, and good music, played in great sound.
But, even now, when least expected, Trolls abound, apparently to spoil as much fun for as many people as possible. The ones I particularly find most to be avoided, not just during these happy days, but all year 'round, are the know-it-all HiFi Trolls who, from the pinnacle of their ignorance, attack anything they've never heard, never understood, or never been able to explain as—you guessed it—either Voodoo or Snake Oil. Yes, it's always either the one or the other, which reminds those of us who weren't asleep in our High School English classes of something about foolish consistency and little minds.
Maybe, as a HiFi cable manufacturer, I'm more than usually exposed to the "show me" mentality and the people who have it, and stick to it even after being shown that whatever they're attacking, not only works but has good reason to. Or maybe I'm just more touchy about it than other people, but I really do get upset, not so much by people who have different thoughts or beliefs than mine, as by those who insist, even without reason or proof, that, If I don't agree with them, I must be wrong.
"I Know What I think." Dan Zimmerman, 2022
There seems to be a whole contingent of people out there who claim to be audiophiles but derive their greatest pleasure from proving that much or all of our hobby is either an illusion or an outright scam. You know them; among other things, they're the ones who are certain that whatever they've jiggered together DIY, with their own hands, with or without a kit or a manual, is at least as good as the best the professionals have to offer. That applies whether or not they have any specific knowledge of the principles behind whatever it is that they've made, and often even applies—in what might be akin to the "sour grapes" syndrome—to less expensive stuff they've bought, as compared to other, more expensive, products that, just because they're more expensive, they know can't possibly be worth the extra price.
Well, what would you say if I were to tell you that I've got good news for everybody?
"Audio Voo Doo". Drawing by Bruce Walker, 1992.
For the Trolls, I have this to say: You're absolutely right, HiFi is an illusion. When you listen to music, there really aren't a bunch of little people hiding in those grille-cloth-fronted boxes, making the music that you hear coming out of them. And there really are things out there that are the absolute epitome of Snake Oil or Voodoo. Other than to trigger "placebo effect"—where your mind tricks you into hearing what you want to hear because that's what you want and expect, rather than because it's actually there—a whole lot of HiFi "products" (magic discs, magic stick-on dots, and dealies, magic little brass bowls, magic acoustical treatments, and a whole panoply of stuff from the legendary Peter Belt) simply don't work at all.
In fact, Belt, an Englishman of marvelous creativity and imagination, who should have been a troll's delight, offered, back in the 1980s and early 90s, such "system enhancements" as a safety pin with a resistor body formed around it that, if you pinned it to the back of your listening chair, was claimed to improve the sound at your listening position. There were other bits and doodads, too, but Peter Belt's masterpiece—at a time when the mainstream audio press was touting green paint applied around the edge of each of your CDs as a way to eliminate internal reflections and improve the sound—was a magic purple marking pen that, if you applied a one centimeter long mark from it to the edge of just one of your, CDs or LPs, was said to make all of your entire collection of recordings sound better.
And Peter Belt wasn't the only player in his league: Some other audio genius, blessedly unknown, went even farther, and came up with a special, proprietary cream called "Ear Wax" (Yes, really) that you were supposed to put a dab of on your fingers and rub into your ear holes. This would, the makers claimed, lubricate your auditory canals, allow sound waves to pass through them more quickly and freely, and make, not your system but your actual hearing better!
The good news for the non-Trolls out there—the music lovers and audiophiles who constitute the overwhelming majority of our hobby—is that, while some HiFi tweaks and goodies are certainly just the frauds or delusions that their detractors claim them to be, there are plenty of others that really do work and that will help you—often at little or even no cost—to make sure that you get all of the performance and enjoyment that your system is capable of delivering.
Just making sure that your system is set up properly, and that your speakers are properly placed is one of those that, for just a little effort, can make a colossal difference.
As a cable designer myself (XLO previously and now RSX Technologies), I can say that good cables are another, and they can be—unless you're already using them—among the cheapest and most effective ways to improve your system from whatever level it's at now. There are good, scientific, reasons for that, too, but, because I am a cable manufacturer; because it might seem braggadocious (I do love that word!); and because there are things about cable design that, frankly, I want my competitors to stay in the dark about, I'm not going to tell them to you. Suffice it to say that, at HiFi Shows, where manufacturers or dealers are spending thousands of dollars to make the very best sound they possibly can because they want to impress you with their brand or their store to gain you as a customer, you'll never, ever, see or hear an exhibit that doesn't use premium, brand name cables.
Another product that works but that the trolls love to hoot and giggle about is cable lifters—the things that smart audiophiles use to keep their speaker cables from coming in contact with the floor.
These, initially just short lengths of 2 x 4 wooden studs—were first written about by Enid Lumley, The Absolute Sound's first female reviewer, back in the 1980s. Enid was regarded, even by her colleagues, even back then, as a bit of a loon, but she was mightily respected for her hearing and for her ability to dial-in on real improvements in sound quality and what made them happen. Even though it was years before anybody came up with a reasonable explanation of what cable lifters do or how, they do definitely work and, despite the fact that there are now commercially produced versions selling for as much as several hundred dollars per set, good results can still be gotten from just cut pieces of wood or by using short, wide, Old-Fashioned-style (the drink) glasses as lifters, set right side-up, with the cables set across the mouths and held in place with Scotch tape. The important thing is not the material that they're made of, but the air gap that they put between the cable and the floor.
Besides cables and cable lifters, there are many other things that, even though they can make real improvement to the sound of your system, are regularly overlooked or even attacked by people who don't know any better. There's a solution, though, at least for your own system: Use your ears.
Reason can only be trusted if supported by sufficient fact or observation. Reviewers may have different tastes or preferences than you do, either in the music they listen to or in what they think is great sound. Specifications or test reports can be misleading, and "Double Blind Testing" is only of value where a single variable can be isolated and compared. Music is nothing like that.
Fortunately, and here's the best news of all: In the end, the only opinion that matters is our own. Listen to what you want, with your own ears, for your own enjoyment, based on your own standards, and if, especially at this holiday time of year, anybody tells you otherwise, tell them…
"Bah! Humbug!"
