Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler An Encounter With "Audio Snake Oil"

We've all seen devices which make astounding claims about improving sound systems. Here's a thread from Ars Technica about an encounter someone had with a REAL audio "snake oil" salesman, and his attitude towards his product:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=67909965&m=57800723427

That's pretty cool. Thanks for the link, Blooz.

I have one! An Acme cryo treated, silver outlet for my tube 2 channel system. I also use Mapleshade double golden helix plus speaker wires in that system.

Antique Sound Labs MG S1 15DT integrated receiver
Ah! Njoe Tjoeb 4000 tube output CDP with upsampler
Vance Dickason Titanic 10" sub
Michaura M55 speakers (very much like M22s)

Sounds beautiful.

LOL!!!

The single greatest audio scam is without question the Nuance speaker sales pitch, sold in a few miscellaneous outlets across Canada.

They take you into this room, tell you about how Nuance makes "special imaging speakers", then proceed to play a bunch of Q-encoded CDs so you'll be "amazed" by sounds appearing in 3D space. Without giving you a chance to ask any questions, inspect the units, or actually test the damn things with your own music, the pushiest salesperson on the planet offers you the "deal of the century" by bringing the price down hundreds and hundreds of dollars. If you're smart enough to actually demand your own audition, the salesperson literally starts insulting you.

Everybody MUST experience the Nuance scam, for sheer entertainment if nothing else.

That does sound like quite the pitch fhw.
Does this occur for every Nuance salesman across the country?
I don't know of any offhand out west otherwise i would certainly go give it a try. It sounds like oodles of arguing fun.

Just as information (click on Product Experience. Um. Yeah. I like the way they don't have product pages except for manuals. And those are pretty much assembly instructions. Not one bit of info on the tech or speakers. (at least, not that I found.)

As an aside, anyone ever notice that if you just put in the beginning of a speaker company's name as the url (ie, www.nuance.com) you ALWAYS find a business solutions company of some sort on the other side, virtually always with an overload of flash animation? Nuance.com is particularly good, because it has sound as well!

That site was awful.
No information at all.
I didn't hear any sound. Are you sure your stereo isn't the source of that music Ken?

No, the other site (nuance.com). I did discover that in their FAQ they had limited info on amp power and sensitivity, but nothing other than that. Including pictures.

Chess,
try Krazy Krazy, they've got Nuance (if you were looking to check them out). I think Visions used to carry them but I think they dropped them a year or two ago.