Even though offering a comment at this point risks raising the ire of delius, I thought I would venture a few thoughts.

Delius suggests that people who do not test a product should not comment on the product’s effectiveness. Can anyone afford to buy every product touted to improve anything in life, including audio, for a personal evaluation? And even if sums approaching the total worth of B. Gates were available, then there still wouldn’t be enough time in the day to determine what claims are valid and what claims are not. Any realist must evaluate through whatever means of research and reasoning is available to them and, compared to all that is available, vastly limit their investment of time and money in any personal enterprise. Humans learn from each other in almost everything – if we all started from scratch ignoring the experience and learning of others, we’d still all be hunter-gatherers living in caves. We learn from those we can reasonably trust to impart to us useful information in certain areas. We listen to the sellers of products and services, we also listen to those who have experience.

There have been a few persons who have and/or are testing such products as the CLC. Often the methods used are an attempt to evaluate without personal preference. If, as delius suggests, blind testing provides blind results, then delius is also suggesting that, with certain types of products and services, one must look positively upon, and believe in, a particular item or service in order to perceive the occurrence of the benefit – the benefit will not occur outside of our personal knowledge/belief system. Hmmm . . .

When most people begin flight training, there are instances when their innate perceptions tell them one thing while the instruments tell them something else. Among other things, pilot training teaches the principles of flight, the abilities and limitations of the equipment, and learning to change one’s perception and reliance system to include and trust, with scrutiny, instruments that provide information we would otherwise have no way of knowing with reasonable accuracy in many real-world situations.

In audio, while the phrase, “Do what sounds best to you” has some merit, it is far from an accurate measure. Many people unknowingly grow up with the perception that the proper level of loudness is reached when a general level of certain types of distortion in the reproduction is reached. Take these people into an environment where the reproduction is much more accurate than they are used to and they will, if left to adjust the volume to ‘loud,’ invariably turn up the volume to many times the level of their own system as measured by a dB meter. However, the interested person will learn to distinguish between amplitude and distortion and their listening habits change as a result.

Perceptions can be changed for better or worse. If the basic criteria is, ‘what makes me happy,’ then the measurable parameters could be all over the place. If I divorce myself from analytical procedures and reasonable approaches, then I am subject to the whim of every salesperson to come along.

Which brings me to my bottom line, which may, after all, at least partially fit into what delius is saying. If I believe a product is ‘bunk, snake oil, hooey, and/or hoax,’ I might as well not buy it because ‘bunk, snake oil, hooey, and/or hoax’ is the perception-during-use I would receive after buying.

Lastly, my perception of delius’ tone is that of a rant somewhere between irritation and anger. If I were the marketer of some product, and others doubted what I was saying, if the product could stand on its own without my building up a perception-in-advance, I might be disappointed, but I could say, “The product speaks for itself.” If the product needs to be ‘sold’ in the sense of snake oil, then I might be more upset – whether I truly believe in my product or whether I know it is bunk, people are not believing ME (my sales-speak), they doubt ME and I am personally offended. The person ‘selling’ a point of view is less likely to persuade an audience if the seller is obviously offended and angry with the audience.

Pardon my experience (EE and mass communication education plus three-and-a-half decades of real-world audio and video, production and transmission, technical and creative work), but I’m going to put my time and money into that which is, to a fair degree, usually measurable and verifiable.

Oh, can you see, in my business, if a product needs to be ‘pre-sold’ to the end user to be of any benefit, then none of the items such as the CLC would be of any benefit to have in the production facility – unless the audience were ‘sold’ on the idea that the audio was produced while CLC’s, or some other such product, were in one or more of the studio, control room, technical areas and the parking garage. So I would need to prompt the audience to go to a web site, learn about the wonderful product, then come back to the show to listen to the ‘improved’ audio, which might sound improved whether or not the devices were actually present since it is the perception being influenced, not the tangible attributes of the production, recording, transmission, reception or reproduction.

After all, it is the attributes of those functions in which I have been interested for over four decades. Perhaps I missed the boat somewhere . . .

[Edit: spelling correction.]