Real or Ridiculous

Pt. 2 – How to Tell if a Tweak is Plausible (Before Your Wallet Gets Mugged)

In Pt. 1 I looked at the cult of the audiophile fuse, how a humble safety device was inflated into a four-figure “sonic revelation.” The psychology behind that story applies across the board. Whether it’s a magic bag of stones, a cryo-treated fuse, or an Ethernet switch that allegedly channels cosmic energy, the pattern is the same.

The snake-oil merchants thrive because many audiophiles rarely seem to have a filter between “that sounds interesting” and “take my money.” But it doesn’t have to be this way. With a little discipline, and perhaps a little less ego, you can learn to separate genuine sonic improvements from expensive placebo.

Here’s how.

1. Check the Origin Story
Real innovations usually have a lineage. They come from engineers, designers, or companies with a history of building actual products. If the creator can’t point to anything more substantial than a PDF manifesto, a website frozen in 2003, and a few blurry photos of their cat next to a hi-fi rack, be suspicious. Remember the fuse cult? The miracle fuses were rarely made by companies that designed anything else, just fuses, priced as though they contained fragments of the Turin Shroud.

2. Translate the Marketing Speech into English
If the product description reads like a séance transcript;“quantum realignment,” “molecular harmonics,” “phase-space synergy”, it’s almost certainly rubbish. Real engineering can always be explained in plain, everyday language. If they won’t explain it simply, they probably can’t, and if they can’t, you shouldn’t buy it. When you see prose that makes the fuse copywriters sound restrained, you’re in trouble.

3. Ask for a Blind Test
I don’t generally believe A/B blind testing is that useful, since it often takes time to form a proper impression of a system or what a component is adding (or subtracting) to/from the mix, but in the case of these sorts of tweaks, and the bold claims attached, it could actually be worthwhile.
This is potentially the garlic necklace against the vampires of the audio world. If the tweak really works, its effect should be audible even when you don’t know whether it’s active, and it should be immediate. Most sellers will sprint from this request. If their reply is some hand-waving about “blind tests not capturing the magic,” congratulations, you’ve just found snake oil. (This is why the fuse faithful never want to A/B their systems, because the soundstage never actually collapses when you swap in a 20 cent generic Bunnings fuse.)

4. Look for Independent Verification
And no, a five-star Amazon review from “FuseLover88” doesn’t count. Real evidence isn’t just a glowing testimonial, it means that others, outside the seller’s circle, can hear the same change under the same conditions. Ideally, that’s multiple people reporting consistent results, not just one person claiming “the heavens opened” after swapping a fuse or changing banana plugs over that have a ‘high resale value’. Measurements are useful and shouldn’t be dismissed, but not every meaningful difference shows up on a graph. What really matters is whether the effect is audible, repeatable, and survives a bit of healthy skepticism. If a product is genuinely transformative, it won’t just leave a trail of flowery adjectives; it will produce an actual, consistent listening experience across more than one pair of ears.

5. Check the Price vs. the Physics
This one’s easy: if it’s a $1,500 fuse, a $94000(!) power cable, or a $13,000 “anti-vibration platform” for your Wi-Fi router, you already know what’s happening. The cost doesn’t reflect the materials or the manufacturing or even the R&D invested; it reflects the audacity of the seller. Glass, copper, and rubber aren’t suddenly worth their weight in platinum just because you put the word “cryo-treated” in front of them. As we asked in Pt. 1: what possible construction cost could justify a £40 to £4,200 spread in fuse pricing? The equation simply doesn’t work.

6. Remember: the Burden of Proof is on Them
You don’t need to prove a product doesn’t work. They need to prove it does. That’s how science works, and audio is no exception. If someone makes extraordinary claims but can’t provide even ordinary evidence, you’re free to dismiss it without guilt. Their bruised ego on a forum thread is not your responsibility.

The Audiophile’s Quick Tweak Test
Before you pull out the credit card, pause and ask yourself three questions:

• Could the effect be explained by mood, expectation, or confirmation bias?
• If the product disappeared from the rack tomorrow, would you still enjoy the music?
• Does the explanation sound like a physics lecture or a séance?

If the answer to that last one is “séance,” close the browser tab and go listen to some records. Preferably as a mélomane, not a “golden ear.”

Eventually, in Pt. 3: the tweaks that actually work. They’re not glamorous, they don’t require “quantum” anything, and they’re rarely expensive.