Depends on your definition of “snake oil.”

The IsoAcoustics products are effective at isolating loudspeakers but also change the sound; I’ve used the stands with over 30 pairs of bookshelf loudspeakers and they all sound more neutral or cooler when used compared to being placed on the top shelf of my media unit.

Cables are form of tone control and having tried everything from $0.40/foot stuff from Home Depot and $2,000/foot speaker cables and power cords — there is some serious BS going on in terms of the claims companies make.

Spending a few hundred dollars on speaker cables makes sense in the context of a $10,000 system. Spending $1,000 on a single Ethernet cable is stupidity.

Power conditioners can make a system sound worse. I’ve tried 4-5 over the years and they all ended up in my HT system with source devices and my OLED TV.

Cable lifters? Tennis ball cut in half can do the same thing.

Bamboo cutting boards from IKEA work under components rather well.

Ian White

The better the quality of components, the better quality signal. If you’re into the audio hobby you’ll want to try different things to see how they work for you and your system. In my experiences over 40 years most so called snake oil works in many cases. But if you prefer to get your info off audio forums, you’ll never know.

I agree that the marketing terminology is weird and somewhat laughable.

That being said…and I hate expensive cables, it’s a really good cable. I’ve tried it with 13 DACs and network amplifiers and I wouldn’t want to swap it out.

Ian