Blast from my past – Franck Tchang's acoustic resonators stymied comprehension and set the peanuts galleries ablaze with ridicule. Yet my exposure to them was at the hands of the man himself, first in our Paphos/Cyprus digs, then once more in Chardonne/Switzerland. Watching Franck stick his tiny devices to various room locations with BluTac was incomprehensible yet fascinating as the sonic effects were undeniable. A jeweller by trade but also gifted guitar player and all-around renaissance man who even built his own guitars, Franck's grasp on his audio invention was more intuitive than scientific. His explanations for its MO thus lacked bench-test hardness, making the resonators an easy target for snake-oil callouts. To boot, not knowing how to properly use them confirmed the ridicule. Yet properly installed, these mysterious devices were potent enough to have numerous Munich HighEnd exhibitors harangue Franck with requests to tune their show demos. This wasn't lost on competitors who soon introduced fakes or inspired-by variants. In my audiophile career, the resonators are reminders that understanding is no prerequisite for making friends with benefits. Message to self: keep an open mind and try things for yourself. Ignorance over how/why something works can go hand in hand with the bliss of hearing the benefits even if saying so in public backfires. But then the question becomes, do we care more about what total strangers think to willingly deny our own experience? Would you not marry the woman you love just because your parents don't like her?
