READER Ewan MacGregor writes to us about 鈥渉i-fi bunkum and hocus-pocus鈥�. It seems that audiophiles who fancy they have especially sensitive ears have been upgrading the leads that connect their equipment to the mains power socket.
鈥淎m I the only one who thinks that this fails to take into account the bog-standard wiring from the fuse box to the socket?鈥� MacGregor asks. 鈥淲hat good can it do to spend 拢100 or more on the last metre of cable from the socket to the hi-fi?鈥�
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We have been here before. Not so long ago, hi-fi journals reported that people were buying expensive coaxial aerial cable for their TVs to tack onto the end of the long run of standard cable coming down from the rooftop aerial. Did it do any good? We doubt it.
MacGregor has also come across a company that bizarrely offers to cryogenically freeze cables and hi-fi components. This, says , will 鈥渆nsure the best sound鈥�.
鈥淐an it possibly be true?鈥� asks MacGregor.
Who knows? But after years of watching the audio industry peddle bunkum, Feedback has come to a number of conclusions.
The people who sell products that promise chalk-and-cheese differences in sound are as likely to say they don鈥檛 work as a waiter is to say 鈥渘o鈥� when a diner asks if the fish on the menu is good tonight. What鈥檚 more, audiophiles who have spent the family鈥檚 holiday money on a 鈥渕agic鈥� hi-fi fix are hardly likely to admit that they can鈥檛 hear the difference.
It鈥檚 probably best not to believe any of the magic fixes unless the company selling them can cite a statistically significant test with a panel of people who don鈥檛 know whether they鈥檙e listening to music with or without the fix. It鈥檚 no great surprise that such blind-test evidence is about as rare as hens鈥� teeth.
LONDON paper The Times announced last month announced that 鈥溾��. Colin Wainwright has written to point out that if it had devalued the currency by just 100 per cent, it would have been worthless. Devaluing it by 1200 per cent must leave it even less than worthless.
He wondered how a currency of negative value works and we鈥檙e not sure either. Perhaps it means that when you go into a shop to buy a bar of soap, you come out with the soap and a wheelbarrow full of currency notes as well. But The Times, with its understanding of such matters, might be able to explain it better.
LIKE so many Feedback readers, Graham Barrow has an enquiring mind and a zest for research. So when he found himself wondering how common his most frequent misspellings were, he went straight to a famous web search engine to find out. As a consultant specialising in training, he regularly miskeys that word and types 鈥渢raiing鈥� instead. He is not alone. The FWSE tells him there are 52,700 pages on the web containing the word.
That pales into insignificance compared with the next word he tried 鈥� 鈥渞igth鈥� 鈥� which appears 733,000 times (and which has often appeared in draft versions of this column). But even 鈥渞igth鈥� is a minnow compared with the last word he checked. 鈥淏ecuase鈥�, he points out, sounds like it ought to be a treatment for hay fever. If it was, it would be a very popular one, since it appears no fewer than 4,950,000 times in the FWSE鈥檚 listing.
Barrow leaves us with a challenge. Is 鈥渂ecuase鈥� the most common typo in the English language? Or can readers find a more popular one?
READER Michael Strawson was surprised to receive an honest error message when he was perusing the UK National Archive site : 鈥淭here was an error in the catalogue. However a user friendly version error description does not exist,鈥� he was told. Unfortunately, honest or not, the message was like most other error messages in that it was of no help at all.
鈥淎 sign at Eoin O鈥機onnell鈥檚 workplace reads: 鈥淣o Smoking alarms in use鈥�. Do they go off if you don鈥檛 smoke?鈥�
THE packaging on the Jeyes Parozone Anti-Limescale Block bought by our colleague Stephen Battersby proclaims: 鈥淪tops Limescale FOREVER*鈥�. The explanation is on the back: 鈥�*with continuous use鈥�.
Battersby wonders what other examples of this kind of product claim are out there. 鈥淏attery lasts forever (with continuous replacement)鈥�; 鈥淒oughnut satisfies appetite forever (with continuous consumption)鈥濃��
FINALLY, this month鈥檚 Good Housekeeping magazine contains an advert for a new CircoSteam oven. It tells us: 鈥淎ttention to detail means that Neff鈥檚 CircoSteam doesn鈥檛 have complicated functions 鈥� just simple one-touch controls, including 52 cooking programmes鈥︹��
Xavier Mooney, who alerted us to this, suggests this statement contradicts itself, and we agree.