Synergistic atmosphere field generators

DaveC

Industry Expert
Nov 16, 2014
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I don't believe that is true at all. Noise from electronics baring a radio station coming through usually doesn't come out of the speakefs, say when you crank the volume with nothing playing. If its super bad maybe. What yoh really get is an abberation quality to the whole music spectrum, that shows itself to more and less degrees depdning on source music.

See, most RF inducers bring detail forward that otherwise is quieter or not noticed. You get a surreal nature of detail that can be fun. But you are nit hear the 800khz or whatever that is causing it. What is occuring is a voltage elongation effect that happens as you bleed off some RF in whatever inductance you have following, say as one example, the final amplifier stage. (One example of many) The effects of the detail also make sound stage often expand and imaging including 3D can be stronger. So it has benenfits many can appreciate, its all a matter of taste. The funny part is the wrong noise, introduced at the wrong place, will be fatiguing even though you're just hearing music (that is modified by the noise).

Don't fret if you're just now taking it all in, and if the whole "you don't hear noise, you hear the affect of noise" concept is a bit to take in. Even some seasoned electronics designers haven't made that leap in understanding.

I agree with that, you're right it's not audible noise unless it's a major issue, but the effects are certainly audible. I'd also say from experiencing the atmosphere demo that you're right about it's effects as well... in fact the atmosphere has different settings that modify perception of the soundstage and overall presentation of the music. It's certainly not all bad but I can only guess whether long term listening would become fatiguing. Personally, I'm fine with the music w/o the Schuman resonance effects.
 

Lee

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Feb 3, 2011
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I have the Synergistic FEQ device in my music room and it does enhance the sound quite nicely. It's subtle but noticeable. I am getting an Atmosphere XL to play with soon . I think it's pretty cool that these devices can help room acoustics in this way.
 

Lee

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Feb 3, 2011
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+1
I have a hard time with Synergistic Research for two reasons. First, Jon Valin and Peter Bruenniger like that stuff, which makes me suspicious. But, open minded as I am :cool:, I bought their latest power conditioner, the UEF 12 and their whiz bang AC power cord last August. Try as I might, I thought it sucked. Got rid of it after a month. Its putative Schuman resonance cancellation and other magic mystery juice failed to make anything sound better in comparison to no filtering at all. Plug your stuff directly into some good AC and spend your money elsewhere.

Marty, my personal experience has been different. I have been using the SR UEF SE conditioner and it is superb. Even slightly better than the sublime Shunyata Denali. The SR cables I have put throughout my system have also elevated my listening pleasure. I am doing a big review for PTA which will cover many of the Synergistic products. I even have been playing around with their "HT Carbon" headphone device which definitely adds clarity.

Some of what Ted does is cutting edge and may seem "out there" to some, but his stuff works.
 

barrows

Well-Known Member
Jun 28, 2012
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Boulder, CO
I agree that the approach of SR appears to be based on adding noise, but what this noise does psychoacoustically is probably what matters. I suspect the mechanism of how this works is a bit tricky, and I appreciate Ted's work in this area. I honestly think that this approach works for increasing resolution, in a similar way that dither works in digital systems. There is no question that dither "works", and it is an accepted and understood aspect of digital audio. It is likely that at least some of what SR is doing will become well established in the future, and accepted, even by the measurement crowd, once the psychoacoustics are better understood.
 

Ron Resnick

Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Jan 24, 2015
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At T.H.E. Show Irvine in 2016 in the Magico room Synergistic Research exhibited the dots things, the antenna thing that mounts on a wall and Black Boxes.

To my surprise I thought the Black Boxes improved the sound. I heard no effect from the dots or the antennas.
 

barrows

Well-Known Member
Jun 28, 2012
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Boulder, CO
The Black Box works by established resonance principals. It couples with and can dissipate some excess bass energy. We used one at RMAF a couple of years back to tame a bass peak in our room, and the effect was easily measurable with a simple RTA app running on my iPad. We had a bass peak around 80 Hz, and the Black Box attenuated that peak by around 6 dB (measured). Without the black box, some tracks with energy in the 80 Hz region were unlistenable (and due to the hotel room limitations, no amount of speaker repositioning was possible to deal with this), the addition of the Black Box made a large difference.
 

Mdp632

Well-Known Member
May 29, 2016
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I wonder if he could ever provide the patent numbers on some of his stuff. Probably not but he will continue to market "patent pending " ..

No doubt his products change he sound some what but he can't objectively describe why. What the hell is an electromagnetic cell to condition the power ? If his IP is so great why not Patent it ?

As for the reviewers that swear by his stuff. You'd swear it was a good value as well if you were getting the product for a substantial discount if not free.

Just a modern day PT Barnum
 

barrows

Well-Known Member
Jun 28, 2012
102
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Boulder, CO
I wonder if he could ever provide the patent numbers on some of his stuff. Probably not but he will continue to market "patent pending " ..

No doubt his products change he sound some what but he can't objectively describe why. What the hell is an electromagnetic cell to condition the power ? If his IP is so great why not Patent it ?

As for the reviewers that swear by his stuff. You'd swear it was a good value as well if you were getting the product for a substantial discount if not free.

Just a modern day PT Barnum

Well, if one takes a lot of time investigating and developing interesting and novel approaches to improving sound quality, would you really want to then give away your secrets so that anybody else might copy them? Synergistic offers a money back guarantee, so you can try things in your own system at very little risk. If you do not like the way they do business do not buy it, but I fail to see how bad mouthing them online is fair at all considering their guarantee.
 
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Lee

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2011
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I wonder if he could ever provide the patent numbers on some of his stuff. Probably not but he will continue to market "patent pending " ..

No doubt his products change he sound some what but he can't objectively describe why. What the hell is an electromagnetic cell to condition the power ? If his IP is so great why not Patent it ?

As for the reviewers that swear by his stuff. You'd swear it was a good value as well if you were getting the product for a substantial discount if not free.

Just a modern day PT Barnum

Hogwash. The stuff works and in my experience really opens up the sound. I came into this skeptical and Ted had even thrown me out of the demo room at RMAF four years ago. But I tried the gear and it greatly improved an already good system. I don't blame Ted for not sharing the blueprint for the devices. He's worked too hard to give away trade secrets.
 

BruceD

VIP/Donor
Dec 13, 2013
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I came into this skeptical and Ted had even thrown me out of the demo room at RMAF four years ago .

I wasn't "thrown out" of his demos --but was ushered out the door after I questioned --politely-- the "apparent workings" of what I'd just heard --

Sorry to be a Party Pooper-and while I appreciate you heard improvements that merited your purchases, fair enough and I recognise your enthusiasm :)

--my opinion was/ still is the opposite of the products and "sonic improvements"

I'm with Keith R--- I ---found they did/do zilch :(

BruceD
 

Folsom

VIP/Donor
Oct 25, 2015
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No one wants to admit they pump noise into something, in order to get the results audiophiles want and believe are lower noise....

And when you start asking, well...
 

Speedskater

Well-Known Member
Sep 30, 2010
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Cleveland Ohio
A skilled Ham radio operator should be able to tell what the box is transmitting.

But it works (or doesn't work) a lot like noise cancelling headphones and loudspeakers. Noise cancelling headphones work rather well. Noise cancelling speakers work OK for one listener with their head in a fixed position, like a car's driver's seat. But in a room with more than one listening position, they don't work at all.
 

barrows

Well-Known Member
Jun 28, 2012
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Boulder, CO
No one wants to admit they pump noise into something, in order to get the results audiophiles want and believe are lower noise....

And when you start asking, well...

Apparently you did not read my post? Do you understand how dither works in digital systems? My perception is that the Synergistic products increase resolution, especially low level resolution responsible for soundstage reproduction and ambience retrieval.
 

Folsom

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Oct 25, 2015
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Yes, they do all of that. It is by creating a lot of RF in a spectrum that doesn't cause other problems. Certain ranges of RF tend to sound bad, others do exactly what you describe. Either way it's a pretty impossible "sell", so no one claims it.

Measurements show it, too. All known electronics knowledge support it. But most people stand around scratching their heads because if something 'positive' happens, how can it come from something traditionally 'negative' in engineering terms? Well it isn't hard to figure out. First off the positive isn't accurate to real life, but helps give some things back that were taken while recording. In general, with live music that is acoustic, you NEVER get the level of "resolution", detail, or "imaging" that you can with a stereo. Sounds and our ears simply do not exist that way. It's because that low level information is trumped by the actual music itself. However the scale tends to be helped by RF as well, which is often a problem. The panning location is helped too, which can often be soft without a natural environment; and so forth. It gives us qualities we may want, by a different means than you'd expect.

The RF is "retrieving" lower information because it makes voltage growth occur, so the really tiny stuff gets bigger. This also has been measured in various forms, many times. Imagine feeding a tiny pure line through an audio piece of equipment, and grafting a signal to it. Now imagine feeding a fat line through it, that is a skinny line in the middle but looks fat because it has a lot of small RF on it that's high enough in frequency you can't really tell it isn't just a fat line... now graft a signal onto it. That is a complex thing, with many other elements, but should give you a sense of what occurs.

There is nothing wrong with it. It is what it is, and many people enjoy it. The biggest issue is that most people don't understand that rfnoise isn't audible 99% of the time by itself, but the effect it has is... Everyone is under an extremely false belief that they "hear" the noise in the playback (rfnoise & enoise), and not the abberational effects of it (which is what you do hear). Because of that, it's nearly impossible to be truthful about what you're doing with lots of cables, grounding boxes, etc. People won't stand for it because conceptually it's too much for them. For them, RF means the radio in the car, and that's all.
 

Speedskater

Well-Known Member
Sep 30, 2010
941
15
368
Cleveland Ohio
Well digital is one thing and analog is another!
That explanation just doesn't fly. There is no real added definition.

But sometimes a small amount of the right background noise does seem to add sparkle and apparent definition.

But how this box would do that is unclear. Just adding RFI isn't going to cut it.
 

Folsom

VIP/Donor
Oct 25, 2015
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Eastern WA
Well digital is one thing and analog is another!
That explanation just doesn't fly. There is no real added definition.

But sometimes a small amount of the right background noise does seem to add sparkle and apparent definition.

But how this box would do that is unclear. Just adding RFI isn't going to cut it.

I can't explain each and every individual piece...

But, you are wrong, RFI is plenty.
 

marty

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
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I wonder if he could ever provide the patent numbers on some of his stuff. Probably not but he will continue to market "patent pending " ..

No doubt his products change he sound some what but he can't objectively describe why. What the hell is an electromagnetic cell to condition the power ? If his IP is so great why not Patent it ?

As for the reviewers that swear by his stuff. You'd swear it was a good value as well if you were getting the product for a substantial discount if not free.

Just a modern day PT Barnum

Well in fact, he does have some patents.

US 8,737,632 B2 is for his "gong bowl resonators". The pdf was easily found using google patents
Denney, III (45) Date of Patent: May 27, 2014

His most recent patents (Aug 2017) were for "acoustical paint", also easily found in Google patents
Publication number
US9732234 B2
US 14/936,465
Publication date
Aug 15, 2017
Filing date
Nov 9, 2015

I've said before I wasn't a fan of his UEF 12 AC power regulator, but I can't criticize the fact that he does indeed have some patented technology.
 

ack

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
May 6, 2010
6,774
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Boston, MA
I just read patent 8,737,632 - good to know one can a get a patent based on groundless claims, as long as no one else has done that, and as long as it's presented in a semi-credible way. Nice.
 

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