Synergistic Research: SCAM

[Blackmorec]

Three observations here

1. I’m amazed that some of you can’t hear differences in the video. Im not a big fan of video recordings as they hide or lose 90% of the details and subtleties of the musical presentation yet I can still hear differences via my iPad Pro + Shure 535s in 

Ambience

Atmosphere

Air

Decay

Sweetness 

Depth

Hardness/sharpness/naturalness of voices and percussive instruments 

Bass 

 

2. Its always the same names populating this type of Snake Oil thread. It doesn’t bother me in the least that you hear no differences…..but as you’re so fond of pointing out, its just your subjective opinion and it clearly doesn’t match mine. 

 

3. A lot of SRs marketing hyperbole does lack any kind of scientific basis which can be very irritating, but here’s my take on this:

 

We either can’t or don't know how to measure some of the things that change the way we perceive sounds.  Our ears are exquisitely sensitive to certain changes in sound waves and we have to correlate those changes with things we can measure…and this is where we still have a lot of progress to make. For example, you can take two versions of the exact same bit-perfect data stream, one created using cheap switched mode power supplies and the other produced with super-high quality linear supplies and they sound very different,  the former sounding very unnatural vs the latter and missing a great deal of detail, presumably lost in the extra noise produced by the cheap SMPSs, yet people insist that 2 matching bit-perfect data streams cannot sound different.  Ted Denney III has found ways to manipulate certain parameters that affect the way we hear music but many are not recognised by science simply because they’ve never been thoroughly investigated, at least not that I’m aware of.  Ive tried quite a few SR products….some I’ve liked and kept, others I’ve returned because the changes did not match my system, but I haven’t had a single one that didn't make a very clearly discernible difference. But hearing sound quality differences in hi-fi is like tasting the qualities of wine. Don’t expect a great wine to bowl you over if you’ve just eaten a gourmet salad dressed in the finest balsamic.  

[Blackmorec]

9 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

Those who create and market products that can't be tested or measured using existing scientific methods, especially those that are in a direct contradiction to known science, are not inventing new things. They are making things up. The claim that a product is beyond known science is a frequently used marketing tactic for selling snake oil, one that relies on the ignorance of the consumer. 

How many PhD theses would you guess are published each year?  Probably quite a few. And each thesis represents new scientific knowledge that builds on what we already know. 

But in science, a researcher has to have the skill and training, an interest in the subject and sufficient funding to spend the time and effort to look into it.  I can guarantee you that a great number of very interesting topics go completely unresearched due to lack of those 3 necessities and so it is with hi-fi.

Suppose my local university discovers a new carbon material and I manage to get hold of some,  wrap it around a power cable and hear a massive improvement in sound quality.  Do you think that before I try to commercialise my finding I invest years of time, effort and cash trying to discover the exact effect this material has?  Who’s going to pay for the highly specialised expertise required to do that testing?  

Because something isn’t researched doesn’t mean it can’t be tested or measured and because something appears to contradict known science simply indicates that its not yet well understood.This is especially true when it comes to senses and the brain. 

Science is all about making new discoveries but in some way your post implies that we already know everything.  Take it from me as someone who spent their entire working life in and around science….we most assuredly don’t.  If we did, think how dull and boring the next thousand years would be. 

 

 

[Blackmorec]

23 hours ago, Confused said:

Did you miss the bit when I detailed the results of playing actual music at -60 dBFS?

 

There was very quiet music, and zero noise.

Hi Confused, 

 

Its really very straightforward how this works……

 

A digital data stream is basically ultra high frequency voltage polarity switches, running at frequencies that are orders of magnitude higher than anyone can hear. 

 

‘Noise’, also at very high frequencies, accompanies this data stream and disturbs the eventual processing of the stream and its conversion to an analog voltage signal representing the music.  So all you hear is the music….no noise because the noise is a. At too high a frequency and b. no longer present in the analog conversion. But what you do hear are the resulting shortcomings in the musical presentation. 

 

To rephrase, noise in digital isn’t something that you hear….rather it manifests as a loss of information like ambience, venue clues, atmosphere, note shape and the resulting listener involvement and emotional content. 

 

The cleaner the data stream, the better the resulting music’s presentation.  Digital noise is heard as a lack of finesse, beauty and emotion, which of course begs the question, what does finesse, beauty and emotion look like on an oscilloscope trace? 

[Blackmorec]

15 hours ago, botrytis said:

Not true about thesis writing, all are based on previous knowledge, hence why they have a literature review, as that ties back to previous research. I should know as I have wrote 2 Theses in my time as I have an MS and a PhD.

 

Also, no one says in a thesis, this is so new it can't be measured. That is BS. Same with their arguments.

Surely, given that you have written 2 theses you are familiar with the concepts and practice of indirect measurement and observation? Very common in scientific research, especially in psychology, where direct measurement is often not possible, simply based on the nature of what one is trying to measure.  

[Blackmorec]

4 hours ago, Confused said:

Ah, OK. So this would be measured as a "signal to signal" ratio, as this noise is not noise.

 

So what are, say, the top three causes of the "noise" that that imbeds itself in music? 

Here are few sources of noise that will benefit SQ when cleaned up

 

Wi-fi devices close to sensitive audio components

SMPSs on the mains supply

Poor quality power supplies

Oscillators (phase noise)

CPUs and Switching chip activity

Circuit board SMPSs

General cable and component leakage

General EMI in the environment 

Network traffic

 

[Blackmorec]

17 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

Deleted duplicate 

 

 

[Blackmorec]

Hi Botrytis, 

Actually no I don't get your point at all. A UV/Vis spectrophotometer is usually employed to do absorbtion measurements based on shining monochromatic light from a source through a sample and a reference cell, one with and one without the solution to be measured and the differential is the absorption spectrum.  What does that have to do with the eye’s sensitivity to blue? 

[Blackmorec]

21 hours ago, Racerxnet said:

I think that Botrytis is saying that test instruments are much more sensitive to changes than the human eyes and ears. He gave an example which is being taken out of context, or people are disingenuous with statements by others.

Hmmm…so obviously you didn’t get the implication of what I wrote. 

When discussing the eyes’ sensitivity to blue light, it makes no sense to compare it with a uv-vis spectrophotometer, because a UV-Vis is used to measure either Transmission or Absorbance of light in a sample vs a blank,  and uses a very intense light source, which is then monochromated to the desired wavelength, so ‘sensitivity’ i.e the ability to detect low levels of blue light is not something that has any relevance to a uv/vis spectrophotometer. The closest you’ll get is the spectrophotometer’s ability to differentiate how much light is absorbed or transmitted by the sample vs by the blank….the differential being down to the actual amount of sample in solution.  In a UV/Vis sensitivity is basically ‘the differential sensitivity’ rather than absolute sensitivity. 

Now lets get back to audio.  

If you go back to my post listing sources of sound-quality-degrading noise, what Synergistic Research and a host of other vendors are doing is nothing more than providing mechanisms to mitigate some of that noise, with different products acting on different areas of the hi-fi chain and different types and sources of noise.  If your system is already very quiet, noise wise, then further small reductions will have a large impact on SQ, whereas if a system is swamped in all kinds of noise, a small reduction in one area is going to bring about very minimal changes. 

 

I just got back from a hi-fi show with >70 systems playing music and what was very noticable was that most systems shared the same problems, namely:

Lack of purity and transparency

Lack of really good imaging and sound stage depth

Lack of bass clarity 

Lack of detail, musicality and finesse 

 

For the most part one heard 2 loudspeakers and quite a lot of one-note boomy bass.  So was that because the equipment wasn’t good?  I doubt it as there were plenty of systems with really great reputations. What was almost certainly the reason for this universal below average performance was the incredibly ‘noisy’ show environment in which the systems were expected to play. 

Overloaded, clipped mains,  heavy vibrations though foot falls and multiple systems  playing loudly, huge amounts of power supply noise with USB chargers in almost every room, huge amounts of emi from all the wireless devices and mobile phones and of course unoptimized rooms, networks and installations.

 

Trying to successfully demonstrate anything in that environment was next to impossible…success defined as getting the best SQ possible from the equipment.  The only hope of success would have been to use a combination of comprehensive power treatment measures, especially well screened cables, exceptional vibration isolation measures, specialist earthing measures, network isolation, clean-up and retiming and some room treatment….exactly the type of stuff that Synergistic Research manufactures and sells. 

 

The bottom line in hi-fi, be it analog or digital is to deliver as close to a perfect, noise free signal or data stream to the DAC/amplifier. The closer to the ideal you come, the better the sound quality you’ll hear.  In analog, the law of diminishing returns applies in that it gets increasingly expensive to avoid adding noise for increasingly smaller gains, whereas in digital, the cleaner and closer to perfect the stream gets, the greater the impact of removing the last vestiges of noise and timing inaccuracies.  

 

So, in my opinion at least, Synergistic Research’s products generally make a solid contribution to improving sound quality by mitigating various types of noise in different area. Where I would agree with critics is that a lot of their marketing text is really high on the ‘hyperbole’ scale and low on scientific content and value.  I’m guessing the reason for this is their desire to conceal IP and a belief that the actual science lacks sufficient excitement and mystique…..the same reason Sushi isn’t sold as raw fish. 

 

 

 

 

[Blackmorec]

22 minutes ago, Confused said:

No doubt much of the above stuff matters to some extent. As an example, it is well established how much noise some SMPSs can drive back into the mains.

 

That said, there is one point I made earlier that nobody has a (sensible and logical) answer to. In my system I can reduce the level of the music by -60dBFS (which is a lot) run my system at full volume (which normally would be ear shattering SPLs), and hear nothing but very faint music. When reducing the HQPlayer volume level by 60dBFS, the ONLY thing I am reducing in volume is the 1's and 0's that make up the music file. SMPS noise or anything else is not reduced by a software digital volume control.

 

I am not saying that there is no benefit from anything in your list, but I think the -60dBFS experiment must tell us something about what matters, where, and by how much.

 

I think the more the we can understand the exact mechanisms, the better we can focus out time and money on what matters. It is about knowledge and understanding.

 

And as an aside, when people say "trust your ears", I trust mine to a degree, but when we are at the very small change to SQ level I do not fully trust my ears. The problem I have with my ears is that they are connected to my brain, which is something not to be fully trusted I can assure you. (other brains might vary)

The SMPS noise isn’t noise you can hear directly….its far too high frequency. The SMPS noise has some sort of modulating effect on the conversion of the digital stream to an analog music signal so what you hear isnt SMPS noise per se, its the SMPS noise’s effect on the creation of the analog signal. The SMPS noise interferes with the conversion of digital stream to analog signal so what you hear has been subtly changed by the SMPS noise. You don't hear the SMPS as separate noise, you hear it as a loss of fidelity.   

 

 

[Blackmorec]

7 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Fiddling with any part of the system does cause a difference. It just happens to exist mostly between the ears, and not in the equipment. If you listen for a difference, you'll hear it - it's as simple as that. And even decent ears are not needed for this.

So let’s see what would be involved in actually making this happen. Firstly I’d need to be able to imagine a deeper, wider soundstage, increased 3 dimensional specificity, greater timbral accuracy and information, increased pace, rhythm and timing, clearer, sweeter, purer treble, deeper more sonorous bass, increased musically correlated harmonics, greater air and ambience, a better rendition of the recording venue, greater intensity, increased emotional response, listener involvement and joy.   And I’d have to do all that day in and day out, with perfect reproducibility, across all recordings.  Doesn’t sounds like listening to music would be very relaxing, not with all that super skilled, high intensity brain activity going on. I could imagine that listening to music would be exhausting, more like writing a maths exam than sinking into a immersive soundscape and letting the music take over.  No, according to your hypothesis, my brain would be cooking.  

 

Actually, what I think is really going on is that some systems are so swamped in noise and other problems that small improvements cannot be picked out of all the noise and resulting loss of detail, so differences become minuscule, so small and insignificant that they could easily be imagined with very little effort. The result would then of course be doubt…is this change real or am I just imagining it? 

 

 

[Blackmorec]

1 hour ago, Iving said:

 

OK - new gear may be like new spectacles ... those of us who wear them know that it takes the brain a few hours to adjust ... at first the visual field seems odd ... later entirely "normal" again (except that we can, in fact, see better than we did before the eye test if our optician is competent).

Nice post….I’d just like to mention one big sensory difference between new spectacles and audio gear upgrades.  

With spectacles, the subject always stays the same while what we use to look at the subject changes…..  everything we look at appears normal, because that’s what we are accustomed to, then suddenly it doesn’t. 

 

In audio its the opposite. What we listen with always remains the same (unless we have our ears cleaned) but what we listen to changes. 

But in both cases, repetition and familiarisation simply establish a new normal.  BUT, while the novelty wears off i.e the awareness that something has changed, the  quality of what we see or hear HAS changed in that it has moved to a higher level of clarity and resolution and while you may not be aware of this consciously, your subconscious is extremely aware of the improvements.  Whereas before you may have been consciously struggling to focus and resolve views, post new glasses you can simply enjoy and respond to the beautiful scenery, chrystal clear book page or whatever. Similarly in audio, you may have struggled to hear the lyrics, separate venue sounds from music,  understand the musical message or understand the subtleties of the musicianship, whereas post upgrade the music has more meaning and the feelings and emotion it subconsciously generates are stronger and more profound and the disturbances that detract from the music are fewer and less. 

 

So all this listening analytically and trying to compare before and after based on memory is of course potentially error prone. But what can’t be fooled are your subconscious reactions to the music. If its making you more emotional and generating more intense feelings, this isn't something you can consciously decide to do. Its an unbidden reaction from your subconscious, based on closer communication with the music. 

 

 

[Blackmorec]

4 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

No, all you need is to listen intently and analytically trying to compare it to something else to start hearing differences. Why do you think there's a break-in period to any tweak? Because when you first listen to it very intently and analytically, you will hear differences. When you later relax and start to forget to pay attention is when the difference goes away. Or, if you simply hide the identity of the gadget in the circuit -- the amazing differences vanish. 

 

All the stuff you describe (timbral accuracy, increased pace, rhythm and timing, spatial qualities) are all reproduced by your brain. In fact, most of the stuff you hear is filled in by the brain through interpretation and memory, it's not a true representation of the sound at the ears. 

 

Noise is very easy to measure with simple devices, and these are much more sensitive than the human ear. Postulating that systems are "swamped with noise" with no measurable noise seems like a good indication of imagination at play.

 

 

Hi pkane,

 

Firstly analytical listening. Not a good idea….much too effortful. The best is just to keep a notepad and pen handy, then just listen to the music and write stuff down spontaneously as it occurs good and bad. 

When you are listening to music, your brain is subconciously comparing the new sounds to what it carries subconciously which is what it has become used to.  It will highlight discrepancies, which is what you are noting.

Eventually further listening replaces the old memories, so the new sound becomes the norm and you stop noticing improvements, but the improvements are still there and are still noticed by your subconcious which consistently produces stronger feelings and emotions.  This is how you know you’re making progress 

 

The loudspeakers generate sound pressure waves. The ears pick up those soundwaves and convert them into nerve impulses.  Its only once the brain has processed those nerve impulses that they become concious music with qualities such as I mentioned. That’s clear

However, the quality of the picture the brain creates is governed by the completeness and accuracy of the sound pressure waves reaching the ears. The less the brain has to do, the more it can relax and the more natural and enjoyable the music it creates. The easier you make the brain’s job, the better the music sounds and the more enjoyment you get from it.  The brain makes the music but it uses the waves and impulses to do so. 

Regarding noise, you are the one saying there’s no measurable noise.  All im inferring is that there is noise, because as we all know, noise in our modern world is intrinsic. 

[Blackmorec]

22 hours ago, Confused said:

 

Thinking about this, lets take one example, say swapping a SMPS with a LPSU. Lets say I try this with my ADI-2 DAC fs, remove the factory supplied SMPS , swap in my SR-4, and I hear an improvement.

 

Is there any way to establish why the LPSU offered an improvement? We can speculate that eliminating noise and interference from the SMPS is a factor. But what if it is not and it is actually something else offering the improvement? As an example, I recall the last time I was looking at LPSU options, one factor that many people keep highlighting was the importance of low output impedance of the regulator circuitry. I also know that people like Paul Hynes would talk about transient response and ultra low settling time.

 

This post kind of relates to the one above. I firmly believe we need to do more to align subjective experiences with what can be measured.

 

Yes, we can swap in a LPSU and hear a difference, but unless we know exactly why the difference has manifested itself then it is possible we waste time focusing on the wrong things.

 

I firmly believe that we need a term for those half way between the subjectivist and objectivist camps. After all, it seems to me that most of us want the same thing, the best sound quality for money. A while back I proposed the term "lucidist"  - it hasn't caught on!

What i find frustrating about this is when clear changes to SQ are dismissed as some sort of psychological expectation bias.  For me there are several issues in play with this

1. It often happens that i make an upgrade that i am expecting will bring an improvement that doesn’t. My expectation and therefore bias is positive but the actual experience negative so the outcome is disappointment. I have experienced this often with vibration control devices, cables, CDPs, rooms, a USB re-timer etc. so for me at least expectation bias doesn’t overcome reality and my brain certainly does not have the ability to imagine very precise, musically correlated changes that are entirely reproducible, consistent across subsequent listening sessions and with different recordings. There’s a big difference between imagining a general change for the better and actually identifying specific sonic changes that can be repeated, reversed, consciously examined and confirmed across multiple recordings. 

2. Changes in SQ occur when something about the soundwaves hitting the ears changes. The brain seems to be exquisitely sensitive to very small changes. Now if you consider that a great deal of our hearing capability is based on the vanishingly small sonic differences between the left and right ears, separated as they are by a small distance, then clearly our brain is extremely sensitive to small shifts in phase, timing and amplitude, so many SQ improvements COULD be based on shifts in the timing, phase and amplitude relationship between left and right channels, but when was the last time you saw those relationships accurately measured? 

3. We have actually made very little progress in this regard. We’ve tried to understand why for example some people prefer the sound of tubes vs transistors, but there’s never been any solid research designed to correlate measurable differences with preferences, because such research would be tricky and expensive to perform and would likely involve several confounding variables that would be difficult to neutralise.  Research is always difficult when the detector is a sense like taste, smell or hearing and the measures must be based on and correlated with physical properties.  

[Blackmorec]

On 6/22/2022 at 7:44 AM, Archimago said:

 

Hmmm... How do you know any of this is true beyond mere conjecture? Do you have any concrete examples?

 

Typically the "euphonic distortion" spoken of is not "slightly worse" but clearly different with magnitudes which can be expected to be audible - we're not talking about nanosecond jitter sidebands or little THD+N differences down at -100dB or <0.5dB frequency response variations. For example when we look at measurements of stuff with euphonic distortion like tube amps, vinyl playback, or even the large ultrasonic hump of DSD64/SACD, the "anomalies" are obvious!

 

From what I've seen, you're typically talking about stuff that's unmeasurable. Little tweaks with this and that which no serious objective audiophile would likely claim would make a difference - much less "feel triumphant" about finding little variations. If we're still talking about Synergistic Research stuff, bona fide "euphonic distortion" certainly doesn't measure like these power cords/products. ;-)

 

That someone might claim the Synergistic power products above will result in audible differences (and worth their asking price) is IMO most likely an effect in the psychological domain.

I’ve just found this and felt I needed to point out that OF COURSE the effects are in the psychological domain…..where else would they be given that the last step in the listening process is entirely psychological……the brain taking the stream of nerve impulses exiting both ears and combining them into a complete conscious sound picture that makes sense rhythmically, tonally, spatially, combinatorially, harmonically, emotionally etc etc.   Any changes to the nerve impulses will have a direct influence on the brain’s processing of the signal.  Bear in mind that a lot of the brain’s processing is based on minute differences in tonal spectrum, timing, phase and amplitude and in the sensing of tiny differentials between L&R ears. So the question is, what’s changing in the incoming signal to make the brain’s processing more effective, accurate, detailed and ‘real’ sounding. It would only need to be vanishingly small differences in a combination of tone, timing, phase and amplitude to generate quite a large perceived difference.