[Greenleaf7]

Blackbody Ambient Field Conditioner http://www.lessloss.com/blackbody-p-200.html
 
Price: $1323
 
Awards won: Stereo Times Publisher's Award 2010
 
This one claims to absorb EM radiation and prevent 'harmful' EM radiation from reaching your audio equipment. Full marks for aesthetics though, nothing to fault there, Lessloss deserves credit for the design.
 
You can see how the blackbody got its name: by absorbing any EM wavelength, and by radiating none in our visible bandwidth, the device is as black as black can be; you might even say it is blacker than black, since it’d be the absence of light radiation altogether. Our version of the blackbody is not wired to gear and contains no batteries or power supply; instead, within the device is a special reflector whose emission pattern approaches that of the ideal blackbody radiator. By creating this near perfect blackbody, we’ve created a device that, simply by being placed in your gear’s ambient EM field, will absorb virtually any EM radiation at that location. There, gear will no longer be able to bounce EM radiation off proximate objects, only to have it return to influence its delicate signals and degrade sound quality. The Blackbody’s EM radiation pattern lacks a distinct spectral signature, making it impossible for its own radiation to cause sound coloration.
 

 
 

 

[SunshineReggae]

Quote:

What does "blacker blacks" mean? I'm assuming that it holds the same meaning as 'blacker background'.

I also love it when people say about an amp that 'the bass extends way down low'.

 

[jaddie]

Quote:

I also love it when people say about an amp that 'the bass extends way down low'.

My favorite is the concept of "fast bass".  There ain't nothin' fast about bass.  Damped bass, tight bass, deep bass, mega-bass, bass in your face, I'm good with all of that.  Just not fast bass. 

 

[Greenleaf7]

Another term occasionally used to describe sonic improvements of snake oil products is "fuller sounding". I never understood what that meant.

 

[dvw]

And what is better pacing? I guess you can't let the bass goes too fast that the treble can't keep up. I wonder if there's a pace tone like a pace car.

 

[xnor]

These terms usually don't have unambiguous definitions because everyone who uses them uses them as they see fit ("oh PRaT, that sounds nice, yeah let's use that in my review"). I wouldn't be surprised if these people didn't know what those terms meant.

 

[dvw]

Audiophiles are also gullible. It doesn't help when 90% of the Hi-Fi media are also promoting these snake oil. Remember George Tice's magic clock. It is supposed to clean up your power line simply by plugging it into the electrical outlet. Stereophile did a review and raved about it. Someone later found that the magic clock is the same as a digital clock sold by radio shack. Of course, Stereophile is not going to admit it's wrong. They ran another article claiming the Radio Shack clock works too, and how you can save mucho bucks by buying the Radio Shack clock instead. People are actually buying these argument. This is how you go from discussing fuse to psychic listening.

 

[chengsta]

I never believed in such a thing as a PRAT factor coming from phones/iems.  Because Pace, rhythm and timing, is technically the music itself, and so it can't be altered in any way by phones/iems.  I mean the drum beats twice per second if it's recorded that way, no matter what iems/phones you're listening to.  The closest would be JH audios freqphase though, by miliseconds, maybe.

 

[Currawong]

From the Posting Guidelines:

Avoid getting personal. Do not make personal attacks, even veiled ones, such as "All people who believe X are deluded.", "All people who can't hear the difference between Y are deluded.", "This will be fine for people without hearing problems." etc. If you disagree with someone's opinion, discuss the opinion, not the person. Likewise, avoid weasel or derogatory words such as shill, fanboy, koolaid, audiophool, snakeoil, placebo etc.

 
Regardless, last I checked, this was a forum about science. I don't see the religious attacks against things that one thinks are rubbish to be science at all. It certainly doesn't encourage actual scientists and engineers to post here, but actively discourages them.