Synergistic Research: SCAM

[Archimago]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

Ah, yes ... it goes something like this:

 

Someone thinks they have a rather special audio system- but, it's actually a bit mediocre, in some areas. But they have measured everything, using conventional means, and everything comes up trumps. Therefore, they confirmed that it's "as good as it gets". And they are content

 

But then they hear a rig, that to their ears, sounds "a bit better" than theirs. Ah hah!! They know what to do in this situation - it must be euphonic distortion; because they have confirmed that what they have can't get better - the numbers were there! So, they will dig, dig, dig to find a bit of distortion that the other rig must be prone to, which only has to be slightly worse than the best; they find it, and feel triumphant ... they have, umm, confirmed why that other setup sounds better ...

 

It's quite beautiful how it all falls neatly in place, don't you think?

 

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.

[Rexp]

2 hours ago, Archimago said:

serious objective audiophile 

Oxymoron.

[pkane2001]

9 hours ago, fas42 said:

Ah, yes ... it goes something like this:

 

Someone thinks they have a rather special audio system- but, it's actually a bit mediocre, in some areas. But they have measured everything, using conventional means, and everything comes up trumps. Therefore, they confirmed that it's "as good as it gets". And they are content

 

But then they hear a rig, that to their ears, sounds "a bit better" than theirs. Ah hah!! They know what to do in this situation - it must be euphonic distortion; because they have confirmed that what they have can't get better - the numbers were there! So, they will dig, dig, dig to find a bit of distortion that the other rig must be prone to, which only has to be slightly worse than the best; they find it, and feel triumphant ... they have, umm, confirmed why that other setup sounds better ...

 

It's quite beautiful how it all falls neatly in place, don't you think?

 

This is in contrast to someone who has heard what he thought was a good system 30 years ago, and can't reproduce this experience ever since. He keeps trying to change random things, mostly completely unrelated to sound quality, all in the hopes of repeating this transcendental experience one more time. But alas, he keeps failing. ..

[pkane2001]

2 hours ago, Rexp said:

Oxymoron.

 

I resent being called an oxymoron ;)

 

[fas42]

11 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

This is in contrast to someone who has heard what he thought was a good system 30 years ago, and can't reproduce this experience ever since. He keeps trying to change random things, mostly completely unrelated to sound quality, all in the hopes of repeating this transcendental experience one more time. But alas, he keeps failing. ..

 

Nice bit of twisting there ...

 

Let's straighten it up, shall we? So, here it goes:

 

I heard my system switch from a conventional standard of replay to one which made the experiencing of the music 'transparent' to the playback mechanism 30 years ago; only one or two systems of the hundreds I looked at at that time came close to producing that SQ. I have been constantly reproducing that experience over the years since, with a variety of combos of equipment - each of those have had inherent weaknesses, which I spent time on investigating - because I want to understand what's critical in achieving that quality, versus areas which are far less relevant.

 

I change things, based on my experience so far, what I read of other people's experiences, visual inspection of the components, and feedback from what I hear when I try things. And sometimes intuition. Some things make the SQ worse, some do nothing, and others make it better - for some strange reason I keep the changes that improve the SQ, . The changes are related to SQ because they address faults, weaknesses in the implementation and design of the gear - just like a poorly made car will be unpleasant to drive, but can be rescued by fixing, compensating for, and working around the flaws. I haven't heard any of my systems work at the best possible quality, for years on end, but what they do is produce enough of the "good stuff", enough of the time, to be highly satisfying.

 

Currently, I'm very pleased. An extremely low cost setup is producing a very high standard of sound, which is making some of the recordings that I've had for 30 years sound better than I have ever heard them before - not as transcendent as it can get, but mighty close.

[fas42]

16 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

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. ;-)

 

What I need to tweak for has changed - decades ago, amplifiers were pretty hopeless; with SQ that collapsed when higher volumes were asked for. These days, noise and interference problems - which always been a key issue - are still the big ones to address. No-one does measurements that actually detect these factors; meaning everyone has to chase band-aids, and "snake oil", to try and improve the integrity of their setups.

 

 

[pkane2001]

33 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Currently, I'm very pleased.

Very happy for you,  Frank! :)

[Confused]

On 6/23/2022 at 12:26 AM, fas42 said:

What I need to tweak for has changed - decades ago, amplifiers were pretty hopeless; with SQ that collapsed when higher volumes were asked for. These days, noise and interference problems - which always been a key issue - are still the big ones to address. No-one does measurements that actually detect these factors; meaning everyone has to chase band-aids, and "snake oil", to try and improve the integrity of their setups.

Are you sure nobody has performed measurements relating to noise and interference issues? I have seen some.

 

Maybe you do not think that the right measurements have been performed?

 

So in terms of the issues that you think need addressing when "sorting" an audio system, what type of measurements would you like to see performed. For example, could you suggest some experiments that would cover the static issues that concern you? Or anything for the cable touching and moving scenarios? Measurements that would identify changes to the mains feed, electrical interference or anything else? What is practical? What would satisfy you? 

 

Where I am coming from here, I am not a great fan of the subjectivist versus objectivist thing. If something can be subjectively observed, lets find a way to identify the cause, measure it, test it, understand it, improve it further.

 

What do you suggest? Maybe you and @Archimagocould join forces? He seems to be good at measuring things and I'm sure he'd welcome a bit of "blue sky" thinking in terms of testing methodology. You might even become friends and make the audio discovery of the decade - Synergistic Research look out!

[Confused]

On 6/19/2022 at 12:40 PM, Blackmorec said:

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

 

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!

[fas42]

Just now, Confused said:

Are you sure nobody has performed measurements relating to noise and interference issues? I have seen some.

 

Yes, the objectivists attempt to measure changes in behaviour, but the normal outcome is that the numbers have nothing significant to say.

 

Just now, Confused said:

 

Maybe you do not think that the right measurements have been performed?

 

It's not going to be easy. A tool like Paul's DeltaWave will be extremely useful; but the right set of input waveforms will need to be worked out; and then what the important characteristics in the differences between two noise and interference scenarios are.

 

Just now, Confused said:

 

So in terms of the issues that you think need addressing when "sorting" an audio system, what type of measurements would you like to see performed. For example, could you suggest some experiments that would cover the static issues that concern you? Or anything for the cable touching and moving scenarios? Measurements that would identify changes to the mains feed, electrical interference or anything else? What is practical? What would satisfy you? 

 

The most important thing is establishing a correlation between what one hears, in terms of some type of degradation, and numbers. Unless this is done early in the piece then we will end up with, yes, some numbers changed - but the link between that and what one hears is tenuous. And be no further ahead. We need to get to the point of being being able to say; look, those numbers changed, and therefore for at least some people the SQ should be significantly impacted .

 

Just now, Confused said:

 

Where I am coming from here, I am not a great fan of the subjectivist versus objectivist thing. If something can be subjectively observed, lets find a way to identify the cause, measure it, test it, understand it, improve it further.

 

I like your thinking, ...

 

Just now, Confused said:

 

What do you suggest? Maybe you and @Archimagocould join forces? He seems to be good at measuring things and I'm sure he'd welcome a bit of "blue sky" thinking in terms of testing methodology. You might even become friends and make the audio discovery of the decade - Synergistic Research look out!

 

Hell Freezes Over comes to mind ... .

 

Only kidding !!!

[fas42]

15 hours ago, Confused said:

 

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.

 

This sort of thing is quite straightforward - a power supply should act as a perfect battery, be an ideal voltage source. No real life device or circuitry is, so the circuit which is fed by that power needs to be robust with respect to that - so again, it comes down to the competence of the designer to mitigate against fluctuations in its supplies. The term PSRR, Power Supply Rejection Ratio, refers to the ability of a circuit to reject 'noisy' voltages; and is measured with respect to frequency - and, as is always the case , things always get worse the higher the frequency - who said electronics design was easy! Hence, talk of "transient response and ultra low settling time".

 

This sort of behaviour can be modelled in Spice simulators; and it's quite trivial to observe how lesser circuits are badly affected by non-ideal voltages ... no mysteries here .

[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.  

[fas42]

32 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

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.

 

A lot of audiophiles have brainwashed themselves, as to what they're seeking in reproduction - they seem quite incapable of recognising obvious distortion, and lack of detail, in what they hear. Which is why non-interested parties, like wives, are often the best judges of overall SQ, .

 

Learning to become consciously aware of flaws in the sound is just anything else - you draw a person's attention to some aspect of what can be heard - a simple one is, say, that the cymbals sound like white noise, rather than instruments. Then you have to overcome their tendency to sweep this under the carpet, by proclaiming, "But it's a bad recording!" ...

[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. 

[DrT]

To all of the Synergistic Research naysayers & haters out there, after much defense of Synergistic Research products, and truly enjoying their performance in our audio system, I finally have several of their products that I would not recommend; and that do not work well for us in our system. Their router & switch combination. Both are deceptively attractively priced but after the required cables and antenna, are quite expensive (the router with cables & antenna cost us $6,900; and the switch another $3000). After receiving these, I saw little value in their performance and intended to return them to Scott Walker Audio but Josh Doyle insisted that we give them more time. Well, it's now six months and they add virtually nothing; in fact, the music sounds better with them removed.

The other issue we had with these was that we had frequent dropouts from Roon with them in place. Roon would not respond to our prompts for a desired tune and would require a re-boot of our Antipodes streamer to reconnect. I tried different locations of the Synergistic router and its antenna; tried angling them to other positions, to no avail. These frustrating interruptions to our service occurred every time we had our system playing. Now that we have removed them from our system, the problems are gone. We'd mistakenly thought the problem was with Roon but the problems were obviously due to the Synergistic Research router & switch. BTW, Josh & Scott Walker now refuse to take them back, in any way, even as used items at a reduced price. If they suspect there is a defect with these, they are right down the road from Synergistic Research and can easily have them checked out. But... they say they have too many in stock. Before anyone else gets stung with these items, you've been warned.

[botrytis]

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/audiophile-snake-oil

 

Just came out. WOW - he will need to get a fire proof suit.

[Speedskater]

It's a must read excellent new paper by John Siau at Benchmark!    

[Jud]

On 4/24/2024 at 4:33 PM, botrytis said:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/audiophile-snake-oil

 

Just came out. WOW - he will need to get a fire proof suit.

 

2 hours ago, Speedskater said:

It's a must read excellent new paper by John Siau at Benchmark!    

Just wondering what his basis is for the following statement:

 

“Replace any component that cannot deliver at least a 115 dB SNR.”

 

Is it supposed I can hear noise 115dB below signal in my listening room with ~30dB measured background noise? (It’s a very quiet room in a well insulated home with radiant floor heating miles from any road with appreciable traffic.) Or do I have the wrong idea about what -115dB SNR means?

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Just wondering what his basis is for the following statement:

 

“Replace any component that cannot deliver at least a 115 dB SNR.”

 

Is it supposed I can hear noise 115dB below signal in my listening room with ~30dB measured background noise? (It’s a very quiet room in a well insulated home with radiant floor heating miles from any road with appreciable traffic.) Or do I have the wrong idea about what -115dB SNR means?

Perhaps he’s selling something with at least 115 dB SNR :~)

[dericchan1]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Perhaps he’s selling something with at least 115 dB SNR :~)

I think most things he sells indeed would be at least 115db snr hahaha

[Jud]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Perhaps he’s selling something with at least 115 dB SNR :~)

I recall him writing about how Benchmark DACs using ASRC reduced jitter to so far below audible levels that asynchronous USB input was completely unnecessary (implying it was essentially a scam). Then Benchmark started making DACs with asynchronous USB input (as well as ASRC), and those comments went away.

 

There’s much of what he wrote I agree with, but an “objectivist” position can be used as another marketing angle.

[botrytis]

I think some of the equipment at AXPONA really pushed his buttons. There were many horrid rooms (some of the most expensive equipment too) and some were OK, a few were great. 

 

I just saw that and had post it here for some reactions. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I’m all for expressing opinions, and I usually like reading John’s. This specific missive came off differently to me though. I felt like, just make the best stuff you can and sell it on how good you think it is rather than write some strange post about a bunch of other stuff you don’t like or agree with. 

[botrytis]

11 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I’m all for expressing opinions, and I usually like reading John’s. This specific missive came off differently to me though. I felt like, just make the best stuff you can and sell it on how good you think it is rather than write some strange post about a bunch of other stuff you don’t like or agree with. 

 

That is why I said - WOW when I posted it - I was flabbergasted. He seemed angry and dismissive - not a good look. I wanted to know I was not the only one thinking that way.

[botrytis]

45 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I’m all for expressing opinions, and I usually like reading John’s. This specific missive came off differently to me though. I felt like, just make the best stuff you can and sell it on how good you think it is rather than write some strange post about a bunch of other stuff you don’t like or agree with. 

 

More importantly, I put something up in the who you going to see in concert thread for you 😁