So there I was, stuck in the office, going about my business as usual on a typical weekday on a typically ugly late-March day in Michigan, when things suddenly got a bit more interesting.

It all started with an incoming message from the Syn-Aud-Con listserve slugged "Wonder Device". What ensued over the next few days could be called entertaining, at the very least, progressing at some point to a lesson that never seems quite learned.

The sender of the initial Wonder Device listserve message mentioned receiving a mailer about a pro audio product purporting to solve a heck of a lot of serious problems while also greatly improving overall quality. The tone of the message wasn't mean-spirited, but appropriately skeptical given the claims of the mailer. A web site address for Wonder Device was supplied, with a closing comment about how the arrival of this information seemed more than coincidentally close to April 1.

So I clicked on the URL to get to the site, and my immediate impression was that it seemed a bit surreal. First, it was poorly done and scant on any real information. Yet, the home page included voluminous (and many) claims about the amazing abilities of Wonder Device, along with a fuzzy front-view photo of the rack-mountable unit. Another page offered three poorly written testimonials by users of Wonder Device, yet another supplied a professional biography of the creator of Wonder Device. That was pretty much it.

A "hit counter" on the home page, used to publish a count on the number of visitors to the site, caught my attention. I logged on and off the site four times and noticed that the counter never changed. Hmm...

Wonder Device captured the imagination of the listserve audience; over the next 24 hours I was privy to a running dialog, filled with much humor, among many very bright, accomplished audio professionals. One message would purport to prove it was all a scam, a few minutes later another message would offer a point seeming to lend validity to the existence and perhaps viability of Wonder Device. Others speculated on the technology of Wonder Device, yet others discussed achieving the same results with other devices and approaches.

Several listserve participants submitted e-mails to the site, requesting more information and a demo of Wonder Device. A few messages were actually answered, but rather vaguely. At one point, the creator of Wonder Device e-mailed a message of complaint to the listserve administrator, complaining of "unfair" treatment by the listserve audience. (Tough noogies - it's called free speech!)

The plot continued to thicken, and then... The web site for Wonder Device disappeared! Then it reappeared! Completely re-designed, with some of the hype toned down, the ability to e-mail the site removed, most pages comprised of cute little "Under Construction" signs, the hit counter now just a placeholder icon (at least on my browser). And I noticed a banner ads at the top, which I didn't recall on the original site, one of them offering me a Visa card(?!?!)

So, what to make of all of this? I tend to think that Wonder Device and the people behind it are indeed real. Otherwise someone has gone to a heck of a lot of trouble to pull a very elaborate April Fool's Day joke, and has gone to even more trouble to keep it running.

But here's what I also think: this is a textbook case of what happens when a manufacturer is not careful about their hype. Most pro audio customers are pretty darn bright; they are well-educated, discriminating, passionate about what they do, communicate openly, and are generally open to a learn of better ways of doing their work. But they do not like being played for fools.

If real, Wonder Device is a rather extreme example of treating your constituents with an almost unbelievable lack of respect. But all too often, even well-established manufacturers get caught up in the "hype and buzz" tangle. And the moral of the story remains the same: you may fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.