What is the Silliest Accessory You Have Ever Seen.

Mahgister, well said. audio2design,glupson, myself and a few others are "stupid." I am getting good at this trolling stuff. I may be stupid but I am certainly not defensive. Maybe you and millercarbon should go out and get a drink together. Cool off. Talk about the old days when you could tweak yourself silly and everyone would just ogle at the genius of it all. 

@glupson, Good to know. Very useful. Time for tea.

Personally, I prefer mine anodized.

Just what I thought :-)))

It is one of the greatest Tweaks and you actually save money with the lights off!

Don't know. I'm one of those people that can't be hypnotized. 

@rauliruegas , Raul, not "rejecting", you meant "projecting," like a projector. Rejecting means to throw away or to disavow. 
Just trying to be helpful.
@glupson, You have a valid point! Humans do not like absolute darkness. It makes them uncomfortable, one of the reasons we are so fond of fire.
The only problem with eyes closed is that sometimes I wind up falling asleep:-0

Sorry about the mistakes. I was using my medical Dragon Dictate then had to get to a patient and prematurely hit the post button.
Change "permanent" to primitive. Change "goes across" to those.
Some of the mistakes are strange. I run music in the background and I think it must confuse it. I'll have to turn the volume down more. 

WOW, I have not seen that version of G Spot Tornado. That girl is dynamite and that is some outfit. Great Find Tom. 

1+ syntax :-))))
daveyf, did you actually buy those things? They are a complete and total rip off. They do not do a darn thing to improve the sound of a modern Hi Fi and probably make it worse rattling around on the floor. Stop trying to justify this s--t! I was hoping this was not a site for mysticism but I may have been wrong.

I use tin foil to line my baking pans so I don't have to clean them after cooking. This makes me happy so I enjoy the music more:-)

I certainly lose on the "knowing no fear" part. The problem with modern digital communication is that you can not see or hear the other person's expression. Expression can turn a statement 180 degrees around. It is frequently not what you say but how you say it. 
Where is cleeds? Have not seen him around in a while.

Cal91, exactly what I am not. So, I guess you don't have to worry :-)
Now lets get back to the insanity of $2200 fused and $1600 kindergarten wooden sculptures.

@ cal91, this is the problem with this type of communication. You can not see or hear the other person. Expression is totally missing and words never tell the whole story. 
No insult was intended. Millercarbon and mahgister admit to liking this kind of stuff. To each his own. As for never "ridiculed or insulted anyone"?
My backside. Ask audio2design. I sincerely dislike politically correctness.
 

I also appreciate all the tongue in cheek comments. It makes me happy to know so many of you feel the same way I do.

Millercarbon. sometimes you really p--- me off. This was not at all a comment on people who might buy these things. It is a comment on the people who make them and unfortunately sell them. My intent is to keep people from wasting their money on garbage like this.
Lewm, you are close. I could make them in this country for $25 in poplar
Labor, finish and shop time $200. $225 x 3 = $675. This would be the legitimate price if they worked not $1600. So, it is a rip off on all fronts and I told Upscale Audio exactly that. 
I do not see these things in any of the videos of Mikey's system. I would not think any better if he had them.
There are heavy psychological biases in audiophilia. It is just the nature of the thing. You always have to filter this when you make changes and evaluate new gear. Those of us with a scientific education have a responsibility to point things out and attempt to extinguish those who would take advantage of this to make money. In this case the whole thing was made up for just that purpose. I hate it when the pharmaceutical industry dose it and I feel no different here. hat kind of money would always be better spent on equipment, room treatment or flowers for the wife. Talking about the wife I just got sucked into buying new carpet for the media room so the price of my new speakers just went up 5 grand.

The question is, are there that many rich people that are that gullible? We'll see how long Shakti Innovations lasts. They certainly do not have a long list of successful products.  

I was hoping to see more ridiculous products and less opining. Here is another one,  https://walkeraudio.com/product/talisman-magnetic-optimizer/  Sad coming from this company. The turntable was the original tour de force of turntables not that I would ever buy one. There are aspects of it's design I personally do not like but, seeing this for sale on it's web site was very disappointing . 

I missed the $2000 fuse. 
@cd318 1+++ You better hope none of the fan boys see this:-)
@jperry  there are plenty of things you don't have to hear, they are that STUPID, more likely to make things worse not better, and there are plenty of people watching this thread that feel exactly the same way they are just more polite than I am. Fine, I'll be that voice.
I'm sorry daveyf but I am under the opinion that your wife had better lock up your credit card. Next you'll be buying a camel to use as a live bass diffuser. 

Jimminy crickets, No everyone, I have not heard them and would never give them that honor. I could make a pair in about 1 hour but do not like wasting my time. Daveyf if you think they make your system sound better, that is the power of psycho acoustics for you. Why the heck would I want to dissipate energy after spending so much money to make as much energy as I possibly can? EMF detrimental? With the system cranked to 95 dB I can not hear my wife pull in in the 911, the refrigerator, the washing machine, the HVAC, my daughter on the elliptical trainer and my whole house buzzing. I would think all that would be more detrimental to sound quality than EMF which has ZERO effect on biological systems such as us. Unfortunately, cell phones do not cause brains to rot. We'll have to come up with something else.
Audio2design, I really enjoy your posts but IMHO you are just too politically correct. Call a spade lug a spade lug. The only change is sound quality these things make is the rattle they make with the floor. You can patent anything by the way. It does not have to work.  

@audio2design, the first denial would come in about 6 months usually stating "Prior Art." To keep it going for 17 years with lawyers would cost a fortune but I am almost sure the patent office would offer a final denial after they had had enough. 
@grannyring , there is a sucker born every minute and they are the fish these hoodlums' feed on. If you do not know enough to make an intelligent decision ask someone who is. When humans are involved it is always best to doubt everything.
@pokey77 you have to be kidding. I have decided I'm going to make my fortune creating a string of companies that make nothing but audiophile absurdities. You have convinced me there is a growing market for such things. If they can get daveyf for $1500 I bet I can get him for at least $2500. I'll start with a full system demagnetizer (just a fancy power strip you plug all your stuff into) and follow it up with the Phonograph Holographer ( a little box you plug up between your phono stage and preamp, gives you a holographic sound stage.) Next, lets see...ah! The Image Synthesizer, a triangular wooden box 6 feet tall you put in-between your main speakers. Prevents that hole in the middle. It will all work. I promise! Such is the power of psychoacoustics. 

@daveyf, knock yourself out. Just because you are gullible does not mean the rest of us have to be. I'm really sorry that you wasted your money. My intent was not to attack you. I had no idea you had wasted your money on these things. Frankly I thought everyone would laugh at the silliness of them. I had no idea someone would take them seriously. From an ethical standpoint you can't sell them. Maybe you could donate them to a museum? Maybe millercarbon or mahgister will take them off our hands. 

I have to say that cable lifters while doing absolutely nothing look sort of cool and draw attention to those stupidly expensive cables some of us like to buy. It is fashion, nothing else.
As for fuses, they are there just to get U/L approval. U/L operates as if circuit breakers do not exist. Fuses do not protect the equipment. They are there to prevent a fire, but your circuit breakers do that. Lightening, as an example will blow transistors before the fuse has a chance to blow. The equipment winds up protecting the fuse! I bypass them with heavy gauge wire. If an amplifier is going to self destruct the fuse is not going to save it. When my old Krell KMA 100 burned it's output stage, the fuse remained intact and the circuit breaker did not blow. 

@lewm , Lightning (excuse my spelling) did strike my house in 2003 or so. Fuses saved nothing. Every piece of equipment that blew had fuses that did not blow and that would be, the telephone system, the burglar alarm system, two garage door ops, two preamps, and every computer in the house that was plugged in. The power amps that had bypassed fuses all did just fine. None of my breakers tripped. This episode is the basis of my opinion and the insurance adjuster backed this up wholeheartedly. The equipment protects the fuses, the fuses protect the house.
Power transformers are expensive and maybe very small ones might be delicate but big expensive ones are just huge slo-blo fuses. Maybe if you dumped 12 volts DC into one for 15-20 you might be able to blow one. You would certainly get it smoking. Transformers are not in the habit of seeing DC. I have never seen a transformer blow. I suspect if one did it would be more likely a manufacturing defect that took it out. 
The job of the circuit breaker is not to protect equipment it is to prevent fires. By the time a single piece of equipment is over drawing a circuit which is rated for it the damage to that equipment is carved in stone. Occasionally you get lucky and get a bad breaker. I am talking only about line fuses, not speaker fuses. None of my speakers have ever had them but if they did I would bypass them also. 
IMHE, which admittedly is shallow, electronic equipment failures tend to result in open circuits, not short circuits. The most common causes of electrical fires are here https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/firefightingtools/articles/5-common-causes-of-electrical-f...
In modern houses it is now rare to see faulty in wall wiring cause trouble unless someone drove a nail through it or played around with an outlet. Modern breakers are also very good. Several years ago I f---ed up and shorted out a power tool doing a repair on it. The very instant I plugged it in the breaker tripped. 

@eudisam, I hate to burst your bubble eudisam, it is all psychoacoustics. There is a connection between your eye and your ears. What you see changes what you hear. If you do not believe this, tonight play one of your favorite songs listening as carefully as you can. Now play it again but turn the lights off. Best tweak going! The more complicated the music the better this works. Any symphonic work will do. My favorite is Weather Report's Nubian Sundance on Mysterious Travelers. How's about a tweak you actually saves money! The Hallographs only make things sound better because of the way that they look. That is the scam. Sell them if you can. If not use them as towel racks, the hipsters will think you are cool. Steep price to pay but hey, we all make mistakes now and then. The Transcritors Vestigial tone arm I bought once was just as pathetic.  

There is a question here that is important. 
Masking is a concept we use in medicine daily. You can provide meaningful pain relief by creating a stimulus that is louder than the pain. If you don't want to hear your car rattle turn up the radio. The simple Band aide is such a technique. Put one on a cut and within a minute the pain goes away. When I give 4-6 year old's injections I have mom stand in front of them and they give her a big hug (looking in the other direction)
They never feel the shot. They always ask if it is over yet. Yup, then a giggle and big smiles. With adults you just squeeze the skin firmly and they don't feel it. There are numerous other examples.

So in audio we have these "tweaks" that in many instances have no reasonable explanation for effectiveness. Anyone with a science oriented education will say right away that they are bogus. Then some people swear on improvements which they are sure they are hearing when in reality if I did a blinded experiment they would not hear anything. But, is this any different than masking. Masking is real pain relief. Are imagined sonic improvements as good as real ones? Much of it is harmless enough. Some manufacturers come by it honestly. Others blatantly lie and create misleading and sometimes stupidly silly marketing to sell the product as in the case of the Hallographs. So, it is not only a quality argument but an ethical one also.
All of us are subject to virtually the same physiology. Education, training are the major difference. The training an electrical engineer gets is way different than what a lawyer gets and one will know virtually nothing about what the other does. Some of us will not hear an improvement because our training will not allow it. Others are more suggestible.  What I find most interesting is that you hardly ever hear of a tweak making things worse. The odds favor that a certain percentage should make things worse but the way we procure and utilize them always favors an improvement and that is purely psychological. 

Audio2design, did you read the marketing behind the Hallograms? Go to the web site. It will make your day :)

It is wonderful how the mythology spreads. Humans will say almost anything that suits their purpose. You'd think every bodies electronic gear is blowing up and catching fire. I just does not happen very often. The only time I ever got close was with a power tool and it was my fault. Power tools do not have fuses. They must be regulated differently. They are certainly subjected to way more abuse. 
I worked in Audio for 15 years selling and installing equipment. I saw maybe three dead pieces. No fires. Nothing dramatic just dead. A bunch of bad switches in cheaper gear. No transformer failures. A lot of blown speakers.

@tomic601 , are you OK?

@tomic601 , Least of all me. 

Donna seems really stress out. I'm trying not to pester her. She says I'm in line but she won't take a deposit. That makes me worry. Is she afraid she won't be able to fill the order? 

It is not BS because he may seriously believe what he says or he is trying to protect an advertiser. Whatever. The marketing and the premise are total BS. Follow this fellow and see if he keeps them in his system. If he does then he is very susceptible to psychoacoustics. If he does not then he is FOS. You just can't win.  

@tablejockey , Nice find! The marketing is fabulous BS. What a riot.

@tomic601 , Phew, I was worried you were having another manic break. Nice to here you are OK. God just works, no 0's or 1's. That's just us trying to understand. A long way off still.

I just realized I am in trouble. My trusty old Sota Sapphire just walked out the door. Fortunately with a real nice young fellow who seems awfully happy to get it. But, I have not been without a turntable since I was....4 years old. Not kidding. Maybe a couple of weeks on vacation traveling but that is it. Sota is way behind schedule because of this dumb virus. My table is probably 3 months out. I think I'm going to have a seizure. Maybe if I get my wife to hide all the records it won't be so bad.

@mahgister, there you go insulting me again. Lack of good faith? You have to be kidding. These guys create a totally fictitious story to sell a cheap wooden construction to soak money out of uneducated (in science)  audiophiles which I am trying to expose and I am the one operating in bad faith. People may not like what I have to say because it offends their sense of political correctness, to which I say "Get over it."
You want to ogle over silly tweaks, start your own thread. This is about exposing them. 

@glupson, My group of people shunned the Soundcraftsman units at the time. We had already started to slide into the minimalist units without tone controls. Units like the Soundcraftsman were in part responsible for that movement as they seriously screwed up soundstaging/imaging. 
Now the Argent Room Lens. If one end of the pipe is open then they could function as Helmholtz resonators but I fail to understand why you would want something resonating by your speakers. As long as the pipes do not ring I suppose they could operate as diffusers at higher frequencies. They look like big door bells. They certainly have more potential to do something than the Hallographs which are too spindly to do anything. IMHO the best way to deal with room acoustics is to use directional speakers so that you do not bounce sound all over the place. Then a little absorption here and there is all you should need. In the small rooms we listen in you really want to decrease the amount of stray energy rather than redirect it. It is like clearing fog out of the way. Room treatments is another area where there is a fair amount of chicanery. Good contoured foam tiles are all you really need but unfortunately, they are not the look that some people want. You have to spend a lot more for decorator stuff that works. I am very lucky in that my wife does not mind them at all. I didn't even have to buy her flowers.

millercabon, I'm surprised! You can't tell that a Sherman tank can't fly?
Oh, your insulted. I'm terribly sorry I insulted you. That was not the intension. I apologize. Really.

@cleeds , Glad you liked my post. Thanx for joining in:-)

Right. Lets say cleeds (this is just an example) says mahgister saw a Sherman tank fly. I take a look at a picture of a Sherman tank and reply that mahgister is hallucinating again. We have to increase his thorazine dose. Cleeds replys, "How can you say that? You just saw a picture!"
Now I know darn well that unless he is back on the sauce again, cleeds can look at a picture of a Sherman tank and know for an absolute fact that that thing ain't flying. He is just pulling my leg for fun. 
Well folks, some of us are gifted and can tell by looking at some things that they are absolutely not suited for the suggested purpose. We do not have to go through the ordeal of a blinded AB comparison. If you want to prove to me that something sounds better you have to show me the blinded AB comparison study with at least 10 subjects. Otherwise, it is just an opinion and when it comes to audio the opinions of strangers are close to worthless. There are times when you can't even trust your own opinion.

Thank you recluse, I needed that:-)

@mitch2 , you might as well get the money out of them. Go Tesla!

I have had more negative experiences than I care to admit but usually not from "tweaks" but from poorly designed or misused equipment. I fell for the marketing. My favorite example being the Transcriptors Vestigial Tonearm. Try not to die laughing but I even tried to put a Koetsu in it and then blamed the Koetsu for poor tracking. When the right bass note came along it would pop right out of the groove. Worse it was on an LP 12.
My formative years. A V15 did not even fare well in that arm.

There was always better equipment to buy. Who wanted to waste money at the margin. The really stupid stuff didn't start until the early 80's and by then I had set up over 100 systems including the entire PA system at Flagler Dog Track. Experience and reading had gotten me well up to speed. The days of falling for marketing were over.

@glupson, are you ever wrong? 

I need to stay up later at night, missed a lot of fun. 

What is the dynamic that make us so gullible when it comes to audio quality. Why does all this junk always make things sound better and not worse. Why are there always some people who are unable to understand that their hearing, all of our hearing is excellent at playing tricks on us. Seeing is believing, but hearing is not. Hearing is a very emotional sense. If you hear danger you are in big trouble. We can see much farther away than we can hear 99.9% of the time. If you see danger coming you generally have a lot more time to deal with it. It is why we stand on two legs. Good thing Indians were scared to attack at night. 
Lack of understanding/knowledge and ego I think are most to blame. None of us likes to be wrong. Because most of this stuff does no harm (no benefit either) other than financial it is much harder to fault. 
I am lucky I suppose in that my own mistakes have always screwed things up enough to notify me that I had botched it. Certainly people with a better understanding of the science behind all of this are less susceptible to the chicanery.
When dealing with strangers it is always best to proceed with a high degree of suspicion. Someone who is for real knows this and will go head over heals trying to show just how good their stuff really is at shows and such.
You get up in the morning and check your email box 3/4 of it is somebody trying to scam you. It may be sad but you have to keep that in mind when dealing with strangers.

theaudiotweak, by radical do you mean ineffective? Resonance control systems can be very important. The Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory in Vermont had a huge problem. It's compressors were driving it's neighbors nuts. The screens surrounding them rang like a tuning fork. They hired my brother's company to stop it. What component parts do you make?

Cleeds, obviously, any sense can be deceived. I think most people got the gist of what I was saying in the absence  of deception. Again, thank you for the kind an understanding comments. Your second paragraph was wonderful.
millercarbon, you seem to be descending into psychosis. Besides getting lost is there anything we can do to help. Really.

Lewm, I fully agree, You have to know what the real deal sounds and feels like to have a prayer of getting that kind of performance at home....with live recordings. Many recordings were not meant for that. The artist had something else in mind.
There are two major characteristics I think in achieving a realistic live performance. Power projection, the ability to create the dynamics and volume of a live performance across the entire frequency band. And the right frequency response which is tricky because this includes the room.
Power projection is actually pretty easy. You just need the right speakers and enough power to do the job which depends on what you chose for the right speakers. The right frequency response is much harder. If you think you can trust your ears for this you are out of your mind. Human hearing accommodates to frequency very quickly. I have tested many systems that the owner was happy with and they were all way out. If you are use to listening to a bright system (most common) A system that is relatively flat will sound dull at first. People also have no idea what their room is doing. Making empirical changes in room acoustics is a crap shoot. First you have to get to flat. Flat is the only acceptable reference point. After that you can start tilting things to your preference and you will know exactly what you are doing. The easy way to achieve this is room control. But theoretically you can do this with a measurement microphone and some smarts, but for certain it will take you a lot longer to get there.
You will never have the best system you could have trying to balance it by ear, never. I have measured too many systems that people thought were just fine only to come up with a substantial mess. They had just gotten use to their sound. Measurement microphones and programs are not that expensive. IMHO Every audiophile should have one. This is immeasurably more important than any tweak you could buy.  It is like having a good protractor for your turntable. It is also a lot of fun and a great learning experience.   

@glupson, Stop trying to be a wise guy:-)

Lewm, There is a right frequency response, perfectly flat from each individual speaker within it's operating range. Once you have that you can alter things to suite your taste. I run my subwoofers a little forward and tilt the treble down 3 dB at 20 kHz for some recordings. I also use a 4 kHz notch filter for harsh recording. 
You should stop being a stick in the mud, spend a couple of $100 and get yourself a calibrated microphone and computer program. It is a lot of fun and a great learning experience. But, if you are happy where you are nobody can argue. Yes, this is certainly a hobby, the mechanical part of it. Listening to music is a necessity.  

@teo_audio, such negative vibes. Exactly who's life are you describing? 
Certainly not me. Except for my right hand I consider myself very lucking and I certainly would not kick a dog. But I do like lighting fuses. It is that human fascination with fire and explosions. Plus I love the tweakaholics.
They are a never ending source of entertainment. No animosity intended.

Go for it audioguy85, but the pipe will give you mouth cancer so I would suck on something else. Try an M+M pop.

@lewm , We are actually in close agreement. I always have said that you have to control the acoustic of the room to the greatest extent possible before resorting to digital adjustment. You just stop before the digital adjustment. You should measure your system. I think you might be surprised. As for tweaks we feel exactly the same way. That money is much better spent on equipment and effective acoustic treatment. If any of it does anything it is miniscule in comparison. Whenever I get flowery, bombastic descriptions of the improvement "product X" made I dismiss that opinion out of hand. 
Now as for my career. I am a board certified family physician licensed in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. 
I started building Dynakits as a kid. I got so good with a soldering iron that while in high school I got hired by dBx in Waltham to wire the power supply chassis of 32 channel noise reduction units which I did for two Summers. In 1976 I traveled to Miami, FL for medical school. To help with finances I got a job at Luskin's Hi Fidelity nights and weekends as a salesman. It was a discount box store  selling mid fi mostly but we did have some nice stuff like Revox and Accuphase. The big high end store was Peter McGrath's Sound Components. I got most of my own equipment there. A friend of my cousins (very wealthy) asked if I would set up a system in his new house which I did using equipment from Peter.
Other wealthy people heard his system and I started getting requests. I left the job at Luskin's and started working on my own. Peter gave me discounts on equipment which I sold at retail with an added labor charge.
I then got all my own equipment at salesman's comp. That for me was the jackpot. The final system I set up was the entire PA system at Flagler Dog Track. The old system started having trouble and needed to be replaced including the exterior speakers. Nothing like climbing through steel girders and trusses hanging from the roof of a huge grand stand. The electronics were up in the announcers booth hanging from the roof dead center. I had to build the main control console which fed 8 JBL amplifiers and controlled two R2R's, two 8 tracks, a radio, a TV and two microphones. Along the way I developed a relationship with Jim Strickland of Acoustat fame. I had Acoustat X's which I got through Peter.
They were very pretty but the enclosures were awful and resonated like crazy. I pulled the panels out and mounted them in a solid frame, covered it in grill cloth and mounted a 3 inch thick maple plate to the top and bottom then stuck them on top of two RH labs subwoofers. Peter heard it and dragged Jim over to hear and he was impressed. The design turned into the Monitor 4 and Monitor 3. Jim had this plastic base made that lifted the speaker 18 inches and housed the amplifiers which I thought was ugly but it was a huge improvement. A year later he switched to the Model 1,2,3,4 followed by the 1+1, 2+2, 3+3 and the monster 4+4. This was at about the time I moved to Ohio for residency. I wanted a set of 2+2s when I got to Ohio so Jim set me up with a dealer in Akron called The Golden Gramophones. He sent the speakers up there and told John Ashe the owner to give them to me at dealer cost. I think but I am not sure that Jim charged John less than the usual dealer cost. John and I became close friends. He got me a deal on my first Porsche, a  944 Turbo. Now that I had an income as a resident I only set up system's for friends. I always got the from John and he always took care of me even after I moved to New Hampshire until the store closed in 1998. 
I hope that explains everything lewm.

What brains?

Rauliruegas, you have never made more sense and you are absolutely right. I certainly have fallen for a few things over the years. The best teacher is experience. 

Audio2design, also true. The default mode is trust vs not trust. That is why big tech and the media have become so dangerous. Our default mode has to be "not trust." Humans are just too dangerous. Just look at your email in the morning. How much of it is people trying to scam you.
How many people do you trust with your wallet, your car, your kids. A hand full maybe, mostly family. Otherwise it is safe to assume every human is out for themselves. In the words of Layne Staley. " Why does it have to be this way."

docfar, not true! Music always sounds better with the lights out. But, that is exactly what they reminded me of when I first saw them, candle holders.