There’s a lot of snake oil when it comes to stereo equipment and Hi-Fi retailers. This one however takes the cake – Machina Dynamica.
Of their offerings I find the following the most hillarious. Intelligent Box: what this is supposed to do is treat cd’s (and DVD’s, SACD etc) and improve the audio quality. Anyone who thinks this actually works – doesn’t understand how a cd works.
The Clever Little Clock – basically a 200$ timex (from the pictures I’ve seen on the net) digital clock that is “specially tuned” so that when you place it near Hi-Fi equipment it clears up audio and pictures. Mmmkay. There’s even dire warnings on replacing the batteries it come with regular ones.
Codename Turquoise – how do I put this – basically some cardboard paper you glue in your CD player tray to reduce the “stray scatter laser light” inside the player. Again – you really should read up on how CD players work before buying this.
I could go on. If you do any research into the quotes they source (they are rare, but exist) – you’d find they are largely made up. For instance I can’t find anywhere where Hi-Fi news has reviewed any of their products – or if they did the reviews were pulled off their site, but Hi-Fi news is quoted repeatedly.
I think these sites are perpetuated by the same people who think tube amps, or vinyl records sound better than their solid state counterparts. The fact is – a cd is made of binary information – its either on or its off. Digital sound is made up of thousands of samples per second stored in this binary information. If you did have an issue with light scatter in your cd player, and for some reason that was an issue – your cd would simply not play properly. The Intelligent Box is supposed to (from the reviews I read – not on the site itself) change the way polymers adhear to the disk to increase fidelity. Again – binary information. There’s no real way to change what is on a cd already. If the information cannot be read properly the cd will not play.
