well, it is a hitch i guess, but the fact that it is not closed (the device) like a ring means you can wrap it in 1 second rather than feeding the rope through the closed ring. a biner is not closed, but i know of no hitch that would work with rings or biners, that would be anywhere near this quick and adjustable. a clove hitch would hold, but is a pain to adjust, the munter can be adjusted easily (thats why they use it for belay/rappel emergency), but it is force from the belay/brake hand that locks the hitch, for a hammock, you would have to tie a seperate knott to perform this "lock off" function, and each time you adjusted it, you would have to untie the lock-off knot and then retie.
since you would be using tree straps, you couldn't leave it attached to the hammock line, only the straps, which means you would have to re-tie the hitch and the lock off knot each time you set it up. with the new hitch, only the hitch, no lock off.
so i guess ring buckles or cc buckles are faster than the nine, but only by the amount of time it takes to wrap the nine, like a second for each end, but for that matter i can tie my single sheet bend w/double bight directly to the webbing in about 2 seconds longer per end than it takes to adjust ring buckles. in fact, i bet the total time difference between ring adjustment and sheetbend adjustment is no more than a few seconds if you know how tie one quick, but sometimes it's just fun to play with hardware.
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