Snake oil - we have a winner?

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Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by Exalted Wombat »

Can anyone find a grain of justification in this rip-off?

https://www.russandrews.com/rans-1-hi-fi-review/
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Well, at £960 for a switch box, unless you can find someone selling actual snake oil, then that has to be a competitor.
But I note from the review that it's actually half the price of its competitor.
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by muzines »

Alan suggests that the RANS-1 offers a more subtle performance, “gently and quietly improving the lot of streamed audio by making it sound more ‘human’”.

Yes, it shows many audiophile qualities too -"Backgrounds are distinctly quieter, the treble is more refined and less harsh and forced sounding" - but it’s in its ability to present music in an unforced way, with ‘ease’ and ‘rhythm’ where it really excels.

Ah, hi-fi purists always need some way to convince themselves that spending more money improves things...
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by MarkOne »

Oh, good grief.

How come you can send an error free, (or at least error corrected) audio stream from a server somewhere in Silicon Valley multiplexed with thousands of other data packets over tiny threadlike glass fibres across oceans, through multiple hubs, switches, routers, and data centres along the way, down more fibre, probably down some Victorian copper to a router made in Shenzhen from the cheapest components the manufacturer could possibly specify, and somehow by putting this box between said router and streaming box, improve the data?
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by Mike Shand »

I had to laugh (or perhaps cry) when I read that it "improved" content streamed over the internet. Have they no idea how many switches, routers, DSLAMs, fibre drivers, bits of dodgy telephone copper etc. etc. the packets traverse on their way from the source? Not to mention buffering and packet loss.

Presumably the packets are "groomed" to remove the nasty "digital" sound!

:headbang:
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by Mike Shand »

Sorry MarkOne for the almost duplicate post. Didn't see it.
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by DGL. »

One joke being that for a regular switch that size the PSU would probably be a separate box anyway!
Hardly a fancy feature.
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by MarkOne »

Mike Shand wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:08 pm Sorry MarkOne for the almost duplicate post. Didn't see it.

No problem.

The issue with all these audiofool products is they take an idea from one engineering discipline and assume it applies universally. Power supply segregation is useful in DAC design, Cable capacitance is important in high impedance circuits, acoustic damping is important for turntables, connectors for microwave frequencies need to be special, etc.

By and large the people buying into it all are non-technical, even some of the product designers have a fairly dim grasp of how the technology actually works.

And confirmation bias will ensure you believe it all makes a difference. I’ve even heard someone in a hifi shop state that double blind testing is bad, because it puts unnecessary stress on the listener to make the right decision.
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by forumuser840717 »

I wouldn't give houseroom to a switch as poorly built as that Russ Andrews thing.

The ones I use for location work are a mixture of Luminex Gigacore - I have three of the Gigacore 10 - and two Artel Quarra 1G Compact switches. Plus a bunch of Cisco 300 and 350 series and Dell 2808 / 2816 for less important things and where the ruggedness and management tricks of the Artel/Luminex kit aren't required.
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by RichardT »

There's a test I can think of that I've never heard anybody do. Maybe it wouldn't work, but I can't think of a reason why off the top of my head.

If a component is supposed to make a difference, why not set up a mic in front of the speakers (in a very quiet environment) and record the system with and without the component through a high class AD converter - then compare the two signals?

I wonder what the results would be in this case? :headbang:
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by Drew Stephenson »

RichardT wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:51 pm There's a test I can think of that I've never heard anybody do. Maybe it wouldn't work, but I can't think of a reason why off the top of my head.

If a component is supposed to make a difference, why not set up a mic in front of the speakers (in a very quiet environment) and record the system with and without the component through a high class AD converter - then compare the two signals?

I wonder what the results would be in this case? :headbang:

Well, the mic and speakers would be the weak point in the chain. Better to keep it in the electronic domain and see if anything even shows up on a null test.
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Re: Snake oil - we have a winner?

Post by Hugh Robjohns »

When im travelling, I like to read a copy of the Beano, but if I can't get that Hi-fi+ magazine is just as funny. It's for people with more disposable income than functional brain cells.
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