Lets not call things foo it can be deeply offensive to those who own and are pleased with some items and feel compelled to mention it.

I have found where forum members enthuse greatly about something and I have done the open (but sceptical) mind thing it has done zero or had a negative effect.

If someone wishes to take offence at the descriptive language i choose to describe a product then they are welcome to well and truly throw their toys firmly out of the pram, have a little strop, jump up and down and shout 'none believer' at the top of their voice till it makes them happy.

We can all count on the fingers of one amputated hand times the number of times a piece of 'foo' audio gear has had any effect on the wider fields of science. It should probably tell you something.

Basically I am on the same page as Tim. I know some people take offence when their expenditure on certain products is laughed at here or elsewhere. That even goes to the extent that some people have made unsubstantiated accusations about backhanders, probably because they are baffled that anyone would enthuse so much over a £130 fuse. I maintain I don't have to hear the bloody things to query their use as I'm not bothered about the possibility of the small benefit I might hear with the wind in the right direction. There are just too many other variables that affect our perception of sound or system performance from day to day. Two things I feel need to be highlighted is retail price v material involved and legality. These audiophile fuses appear to fail on both counts. I won't even give time of day to some paint on a panel. Plenty room treatments you can try for a few pounds or for free. I just think fussing about such small changes becomes a psychological problem that interferes with the main purpose of hi-fi in reproducing music. Some people need to buy more music and spend less on minor tweaking.

What's ruining the thread and the forum is some members refusal to observe our simple and long standing request to leave their old squabbles behind them when they post here. You shouldn't have needed to be reminded of that in this thread, Richard.

Coming back to the OP, I have no problem with people expressing their beliefs. It's another matter when they declare them as absolutes.

For instance, there's a huge difference between saying "I don't believe in God" and declaring "God doesn't exist". The latter leaves no room for other people's "truth".

It's even sillier when we come to hifi because someone else buying/using a fuse can have ZERO impact on someone else's life. Religion, on the other hand, sometimes can. If you don't believe in specialist fuses, acoustic paint, Peter Belt products or whatever, nobody's asking you to buy, listen to or read about it. If you wish to share your disbelief/scepticism then fine. Nobody should take offence as long as you don't attempt to deny others experiences.

Of course you could always just refrain from reading such threads if they upset you. Nobody is asking you to suffer for them. 

I had similar experinece. I got those electret foils free with a hifi mag. I heard no positive impact. I tried some free samples including a small ferrite on a safety pin, some labels marked property of the dominant male/female and two thicknesses of spiratube. No obvious impact either.

I also bought a PWB CD stabiliser which has "beaten" all comers over the last 30 years. They also sent me some electret cream which I applied to my CD player display. Now the difficulty here is that you can't exactly remove this and replace for A/B comparisons. The audible improvement was obvious though.

In a similar vein I tried a Bedini ultra clarifier. This actually made the CDs I treated sound subtly "worse" to me.

I just take the view that I try something and decide for myself. I don't need to buy into the manufacturers theories of how something works either. There is every possibility that a maker has found something that works and developed a theory to support their findings. Whether the theory is correct or not, it doesn't atfect the efficacy of the product.

There are products which most people struggle to believe in, eg the the previously mentioned Peter Belt ones. There are the likes of cables which divide opinion - do they or don't they make a difference; USB cables and mains cables being hotly argued over. Fuses are of course another one - my view is they can make a difference but if the difference still exists if you eliminate the fuse vs using the exotic fuse then the fuse is doing some non-linear tailoring of the sound.

I believe most of these products can make systems sound different. Mostly I prefer not to indulge in anything expensive. My reasoning is that the designers of these products have found areas where they can make some sonic differences, some good - some not; but in areas such as fuses and USB cables there seem to be weaknesses which can be attended to but the solutions do not need to cost crazy money. For example my best USB cables are either very short diy ones or simple hard wired connectors; approaching USB cables from another perspective- it's becoming apparent to me that the latest isolation and reclocking techniques nullify USB cable differences. Building in isolation prior to reclocking in DAC helps produce what some might call a "competently" designed DAC (I not a fan of the convenient getout word "competant" in this context).

So what about the word "foo". We all have our own ideas about where foo starts and ends; for a few even Peter Belt won't be foo but for others exotic USB cables will be foo. Let's not get caught up with trying to come up with a different word for foo. It's not the word that's the problem - it's the way some people use it, ie as an insult. Let me draw a parallel, a somewhat risky one but bear with me. In racism it's often not the actual word that's the issues but how it's used and with what intent. Today we say "people of colour" which seems to be fine; decades ago people used "coloured" which is now totally verboten. The words really are not that different! The problem was that some (or many) people used coloured in a very negative context. You can change the word foo and it may help as it did in my racism example but what really happened is that it changed peoples' overt behaviours around the use of language - but did it change what they thought?

The other issue is that this is the internet...interactions from people who are relatively anonymous tend to me more extreme than they would be face-2-face where they might want to avoid a punch up the throat for doling out insults.  Givers and receivers need to chill more.

That point is long overdue for reminding, Chris. We have never had a ban on discussing NVA and some members need reminding that two of us own NVA components. What we don't permit is this constant bringing in of petty arguments from over there. If you want to have those kinds of discussions, then go join HFS.