Announcing Tweaky Awards

Sometimes I think I think went into the wrong business. What good is making no-compromise recordings in full high-resolution audio when all it takes is a $495 audiophile accessory to eclipse all of the expert engineering and production that goes into one of my releases. So I’ve decided that there should be an award given to the most ridiculous audiophile accessory AND the testimonial or review that extols the virtues of the new device or treatment.

The first recipient of a Tweaky goes to IPC Industrial Technology Ltd. located in Hong Kong for their Disc Energizer. Using Euphoria Technology(tm), this device “upgrades audio and video performance in 5 seconds! Here’s how it works:

“After 5 seconds of treatment by the Disc Energizer, the disc will carry a PVA Field (Proton Vibration Alignment Field) that will last for 120 minutes. Once the disc is excited by the laser beam inside the disc player, the entire signal path and equipment in the AV system within 1 meter of the disc player will be influenced by the PVA Field. This means all of the equipment will perform better.

In addition, the motions of atmospheric content – mainly air molecules – will also be aligned. Once the micro-phase alignment has taken place, the signal loss in the equipment and the sound transmission loss in air will be minimized. The result will be an audio and visual experience like never before.”

OK, got that? By zapping your discs with some sort of electrical “proton” alignment field, any disc will have:
• Enhanced audio intelligibility
• Enhanced stereo sound imaging
• Enhanced details and sense of dimension of motions pictures and;
• Enhanced color contrast and sharpness of graphics

Maybe you haven’t read my piece on how optical discs store digital data and then how optical laser pickups retrieve the data from a disc using reflected versus diffused light but in short, the IPC Disc Energizer in fact, doesn’t modify the sound coming out of your speakers. If you tried to convince me that it changes the listening perceptions of the person that spent $495 on one, I might agree with you. After all, if you got suckered into purchasing one of these units…would you want to admit that it doesn’t do anything to alter the stream of ones and zeros that enter your playback system?

For contributing to the outrageous claims made by the IPC folks, reviewers should also share in the honor of receiving a Tweaky. In this case, the review at Audiophilia called The IPC Disc Energizer by Roy Harris certainly deserves recognition for one of the funniest product “reviews” I’ve ever read. And it’s the most ridiculous. How any writer could makes the claims that he makes in his piece AND that owner of the site would allow it to be made available to the public damages the reputation of the site and the writer beyond redemption.

The ABOUT page on the site states:

“Edited and Published by Anthony Kershaw since 1997, Audiophilia has become a very popular web address for unbiased high audio journalism. Read each word with confidence for its integrity and honesty.”

You have to read the review to find gems like, “After the disc was treated, the piano sounded more defined, and I detected sonic cues of the ivory content of the keys.” Really?

And my personal favorite, “It was if the conductor was replaced, accompanied by a change in artistic interpretation of the music. The orchestra woke up, tempos got faster at times, the phrasing changed, some passages were louder, and the overall effect was a more realistic musical representation of the thematic content of Liszt’s tone poem, based on German folklore, specifically authored by Lennau.”

I actually wrote a comment on the site about how this review and product are bogus. The writer replied that he is entitled to his subjective opinions, as am I. OK fine. But it would help a lot if his writing didn’t contain so many impossible claims. The “tempos got faster”?

And to top it off, there seems to be a secret of society of accessory providers that write nice testimonials about each other’s products. I could help but notice that my next door neighbor in Pacific Palisades, California, Ben Piazza (the owner of Shakti Innovations) provided a very positive review of the Disc Energizer.

Stay away…stay very far away from these products AND avoid sites that allow ridiculous reviews to stand in for meaningful write-ups.