My favorite is the horrendously expensive MIT speaker and interconnect cables that have their "mystery electronics" in little boxes at the ends. So people spend a couple grand (yes...thousands) for a pair of MIT Oracle speaker cables to use them as fancy tone controls for their speakers. 8-)

Unfortunately, the cable/interconnect business is chock full of manufacturers who make dubious claims and then spend lots of money throwing ads in the various audio/theater rags. And editors/readers lap it right up....

Cheers,

There really are some crazy marketing gimmick products out there (often with frightening price tags attahched to them)... ZoFo's cable-lifter post made me flash back to this slightly less-than-serious discussion from a year or so ago.

nice flashback gonk.

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Plus I would argue that the requirements and testing needed to gain the THX cert is a lot more daunting than any other home theater certification I'm aware of.

Dolby doesn't require you to meet quality minimums with every piece you make. They don't offer up a complaints number for products or theaters that don't live up to their standards, but THX does.

I mean, if someone wants to talk about shlock, look at all the crap that has ever been put out with Dolby's symbol on it.

About the only thing more daunting than going through the THX cert process is to go through the public opinion process, particularly in this day and age where everyone can blog and have a voice.

An excellent point, and quite fitting for a forum like the saloon. Companies like Outlaw today both thrive and suffer at the hands of Internet communication - they all suffer at times, but its the good ones that build on successes and gracefully adapt to the public stumbles that succeed in a market that they probably could never have found even a toehold in just ten years ago.

Quoting of excerpted portions is completely legal as fair use unless you're actually under an NDA. Indeed, if ANY quoting or public performance was copyright infringement, why would we need NDAs?

And for the record, I strongly suspect the specs THX wires are required to meet are pretty easy to hit with any reasonable construction - which sort of makes that whole "why use THX cables" point.

I highly doubt THX has a QA person on site white glove testing each unit as it rolls off the line either. In the end a good manufacturer has to earn customers trust by making good product, THX, XYZ, or not. Has THX EVER forced anyone to cease using the logo due to QA issues? I strongly doubt it.

Yes, they have actually. I do believe that Technics had to remove cert from a receiver back in the day because shipped units weren't meeting specs.

And while THX may not have someone onsite, as far as I know, you can't get a unit certified unless you have a comprehensive QA process in place for the unit.

But hey, if you don't believe the enterprise delivers on their intended goals of making it possible for everyone to experience in their homes or theaters what the creators of the film intended by matching as closely as possible the performance of the end user systems (either home or theater) with that which the film creators experienced in the studio, then you certainly don't have to buy their products.

I, on the other hand, have seen where it does work and do believe that it is a worthwhile enterprise and will continue to favor THX certified products where I think it makes sense.

Of course, I cannot say that I am a die-hard, blue in the face, backer of the program as I did just order an Outlaw 990 preamp a few days ago...which we all know is NOT a THX certified product.

All things being equal, however, I would buy a THX product over a non-THX product every time...of course as well know, things are almost never equal.

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