Egregious-O-Rama

[thebes]

As we all know, the world of audio marketing is full of blather, lies, scandalous mis-representation and a host of other scams, flim-flams and cons.

 

Here's the latest to amuse me. A $5,600 (gee-what a deal!) record clamp.  The price alone is an assault on the senses, but the verbiage to justify the price is both hilarious and nonsensical. Enjoy:

 

"A legendary Shun Mook product now being made in very, very limited numbers. This record clamp is made from extremely rare pieces of dried ebony briar. The extra heavy century old ebony root which were immersed in the swamps of Africa has a unique power that no other wood possesses. The vibration generated by the diamond stylus in the vinyl groove besides inducing an electroflux through the phono-cartridge also excites the ebony molecules, causing it to resonate. This in turn is feed back through the stylus and is reproduced as expanded sound staging, enhanced separation, sharpened focus and enriched tonal balance of the music. "

 

 

[CWelsh]

I suspect the ebony briar, before being hand-crafted into the mystical clamp, is aged in a hermetically sealed chamber designed and built using the Golden Mean and filled with dragon farts.

[Fido]

But can you get it in a carbon fiber finish? 🤣

[Peacemaker]

When I read that I think to myself, who in their right mind falls for this rubbish? 

[The Dude]

13 minutes ago, thebes said:

The price alone is an assault on the senses

This is true as the price should be more in the tens of thousands. 

[wetowne]

That's nothing. I 've got a ancient pyramid atop my Pi streamer that focuses the positive energy of the entire universe onto it. It sounds magnificent and only cost a buck at a yard sale. 

[Davecv41]

30 minutes ago, thebes said:

 

"A legendary Shun Mook product now being made in very, very limited numbers. This record clamp is made from extremely rare pieces of dried ebony briar. The extra heavy century old ebony root which were immersed in the swamps of Africa has a unique power that no other wood possesses. The vibration generated by the diamond stylus in the vinyl groove besides inducing an electroflux through the phono-cartridge also excites the ebony molecules, causing it to resonate. This in turn is feed back through the stylus and is reproduced as expanded sound staging, enhanced separation, sharpened focus and enriched tonal balance of the music. "

 

 

So this magic wood induces a resonant hum into your tone arm that gets picked up by the stylus and gets amplified and reproduced by your speakers. Why didn't I think of doing that? I've been wasting my time dealing with 60 cycle hum.

[thebes]

It is my understanding that there are some people who are retrieving sunken logs from the bottom of the Hudson River that go back almost to the time of the founding of New Amsterdam (New York City today). Almost all of Upstate New York (especially the Adirondacks) was essentially stripped bare and floated down that river to build that metropolis. For not that much money I could buy a retrieved tree or two, mill it, shape it, put a hole in it's bottom and sell it for less than a Benjamin and still make a profit.  I would, of course, not market it with crap like "it imparts a sonicaly submursive sound that makes you float above the water".

 

 

[captainbeefheart]

The holes in which to poke with what is said in their supposed technical explanation are vast.

 

First very simple issue would be the term resonate, while yes objects do have a resonant frequency it is all but one frequency at which this phenomenon happens at. If when the stylus vibrates the record at the specific resonant frequency of the wooden clamp what molecules are released? How are they attracted back at the cartridge? Even IF there was some molecular interaction with the air around the clamp it would be at the resonant frequency. I fancy they are implying the interaction is physical not electrical akin to pressure waves expelling out from the clamp, it is strong enough to reach the cartridge and vibrate it again? Why don't we then hear this resonant molecular wave pulse? And again it would only occur at the resonant frequency so how does one frequency help? So now you have one random frequency most likely so high you cannot hear it being amplified through your gear? This ultra high resonant frequency would most likely wouldn't even make it past the first amplification stage as us engineers do set an upper frequency pole on purpose for stability.

 

I try seriously to give anyone the benefit of the doubt on these claims but almost always they are never proven and shown to do the things they say they do and physics usually just tells us this can't happen or it plain old just doesn't even make sense in our predictable Newtonian physics world.

 

Anyway thanks for a good laugh!!!

[wetowne]

12 hours ago, thebes said:

sunken logs

People pay extra for guitars made from sinker mahogany. Supposedly it makes very good tone wood. In this instance(as regards to guitars) there is probably some truth to the claims made.